The remaining descriptors of constructivist teachers
As you work with your plans for technology staff development, consider the other 9 descriptors of constructivist teachers set forth by Brooks&Brooks. Including these descriptors in your planning assures an emphasis away from traditional drill and practice activities and more toward an environment where students can use their creative, intellectual abilities to solve real-world problems. The remaining 9 descriptors are as follows:
Descriptor 4
Constructivist teachers allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.
Descriptor 5
Constructivist teachers inquire about students’understandings of concepts before sharing their own understandings of those concepts.
Descriptor 6
Constructivist teachers encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another.
Descriptor 7
Constructivist teachers encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.
Descriptor 8
Constructivist teachers seek collaboration of students’initial responses.
Descriptor 9
Constructivist teachers engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
Descriptor 10
Constructivist teachers allow wait time after posing questions.
Descriptor 11
Constructivist teachers provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.
Descriptor 12
Constructivist teachers nurture students’natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model, published by Atkin and Karplus (1962). This model involves three steps: (1) teacher provides open-ended opportunity for students to question and interact with the material, (2) teacher introduces concepts aimed at focusing students’questions, and (3) teacher provides for concept application which encourages students to work on new problems based on the concepts previously studied. The traditional teaching model avoids the discovery phase until last, with usually only the brighter students participating. Moving the discovery step up front allows for students of all abilities to experiment early on with ideas, hypotheses, and discovery.
An example of staff development for teachers in technology: linking technology and the 12 descriptors of constructivist teaching
So how do we use technology to encourage students to use such higher order thinking skills? More importantly, how do we help teachers understand and value the connection? Allow me to present a staff development program used in a south-eastern Idaho school district, as they focused on using technology to encourage the components of constructivist teaching and learning. The following example is an actual staff development module used with K-8 teachers during the 2000-2001 school year.
The purpose of this professional development module was two-fold: (1) to focus on the relationship between technology and constructivist learning principles and (2) to actually use technology as the medium for delivery of the professional development to the district’s teachers. The method of delivery was an asynchronous online course developed collaboratively by the building principal and a university professor in education leadership, who together monitored and guided the course delivery. The course was entitled, Uniting Technology and Constructivist Teaching and Learning Environments, offered to school faculty as a 3-credit master’s level course. Involving the principal actively and regularly was viewed as a requirement to gain the knowledge and understanding along with the school faculty.
