Gilberto J.W.Teixeira ( Doctor BA,FEA/USP)
The behaviorist theory popularized by B.F. Skinner still drives much of the practice of science education. For more than a quarter century, schools and teachers have been creating behavioral goals and objectives. Curricula have been tightly sequenced according to a belief that the best way to learn is to master small bits of knowledge and then integrate them into major concepts. Assessment practices have tended to focus on measurement of knowledge and skills, with little emphasis on performance and understanding.
Since the late 1980s, however, researchers have been building an understanding of learning that grows out of cognitive and developmental psychology. The key notion in this new "constructivist theory" is that people learn best by actively constructing their own understanding. The fundamental beliefs underlying this new paradigm for learning have been generally summarized as follows:
1. All knowledge is constructed through a process of reflective abstraction.
2. Cognitive structures within the learner facilitate the process of learning.
3. The cognitive structures in individuals are in a process of constant development.
4. If the notion of constructivist learning is accepted, then the methods of learning and pedagogy must agree.
The constructivist classroom presents the learner with opportunities to build on prior knowledge and understanding to construct new knowledge and understanding from authentic experience. Students are allowed to confront problems full of meaning because of their real-life context. In solving these problems, students are encouraged to explore possibilities, invent alternative solutions, collaborate with other students (or external experts), try out ideas and hypotheses, revise their thinking, and finally present the best solution they can derive.
Contrast this approach with the typical behaviorist classroom, where students are passively involved in receiving all necessary critical information from the teacher and the textbook. Rather than inventing solutions and constructing knowledge in the process, students are taught how to "get the right answer" using the teacher's method. Students do not even have to "make sense" of the method used to solve problems.
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