Constructivism at Work
In a previous post (Constructivist Theories), I explained about constructivism, this learning theory that trainee teachers are supposed to base their practice on. As set out at the beginning of the PGCE course, our university teachers would model how to teach our students, so let us see a few examples of how they taught us these techniques based on constructivism.
Most often, we are split at different tables; we get a set of cards and we have to classify them in ‘I agree’, ‘I don’t agree’, ‘I’m not sure’, or we have to discuss something and make a mind map, or write elements of answers on post-its… The lesson on how to plan a lesson is an edifying example. In its first part, we learn that learning objectives, outcomes and aims are all different, and we look at some different verbs (our teacher uses the term ‘doing word’ as ‘verb’ is apparently too technical for the PGCE audience) that are appropriate to describe them. Then, we quickly hear about Bloom’s taxonomy that classifies learning objectives in different levels of complexity. And, finally, we are asked to pick a bullet point of the key stage 3 (KS3) national curriculum, for instance “Energy as a quantity that can be quantified and calculated; the total energy has the same value before and after a change”, and to plan in pairs a sequence of four lessons. For that, we are given a lesson plan pro forma — and off, you go! We haven’t started yet teaching at school; we have no schemes of work to help us identify what content should be taught in correspondence to the national curriculum’s bullet point; we have no knowledge of what is usually taught at schools in KS3 (some of us may remember from their time at school, but obviously I can’t, having had my secondary education a long time ago and in France); we have absolutely no idea of teaching — what a surprise, it is September! Towards the end of the exercise, there appear on the tables some examples of lesson plans — but as we are far from completing our lesson plans, we don’t even notice. And that’s it; time is up and we need to go. No follow-up, no feedback.
I wish I not only had time to look at the examples of lesson plans but had been guided by our teacher in a thorough and pertinent analysis of them: “look at the good points here; look at this and that in these plans which may hinder learning, or pose a behaviour management problem; look at these two equally good ways of doing the same lesson — which one do you personally prefer? Look at how this lesson will (or will not) ensure that learning progresses through Bloom’s learning levels. Now what do you think are the main elements which make a good lesson plan? Yes, so a good way to make a lesson plan is first to think of… and then to consider… “ In a word, I wished I could have received some of our teacher’s expertise.
Another example is given by the seminars on school policy and teacher practice that follow the lectures on this topic. Most of the time, we are asked to discuss in groups something no one had any idea of. Typically, it has just been outlined during the previous lecture and no one in the room is a specialist in education — except of course the teacher. However, it has been decided that the teacher doesn’t lead the seminar but two or three students, different for every seminar. The teacher, on purpose, almost never intervenes; when we are lucky, this happens at the end of the seminar. As a result, dull and boring discussions ensue where we take turns in sharing substantially uninformed opinions. I remember one seminar where we debated a law that would make teachers subject to criminal sanctions if they didn’t report their suspicions that a student may be a victim of abuse. I found the subject very interesting, and I longed to get some insights from the knowledgeable teacher as to the implications of such a law. But we didn’t — it is well known that best learning takes place through interactions with peers, isn’t it?
We also made an ‘open inquiry’, like our students would do, during one of our sessions at university. The topic was ‘cooking spaghetti’ and, in groups, we had a few minutes to decide what we wanted to investigate about cooking spaghetti — and off we go! All this was completely out of any curricular context. Was this lack of scientific context a model for the future inquiries we would organise for our own students? I guess this is something we were supposed to discover. As we had only a little time to think this through, the first idea that came up to someone’s mind was to study the increase in the spaghetti’s length during cooking. We went for this and we decided to cut pieces of spaghetti of a certain length, put them all together in boiling water and at different times extract a piece and measure its length. Jackie was leading the session. She would circulate in the room and ask each group what their investigation was. When she heard of our plan, she asked how we would take into account the fact that taking some spaghetti out of the pot would increase the water temperature. I remained speechless for a few moments — her question was quite a non-sense as the water is constantly boiling when spaghetti cooks, meaning the temperature is constant and at 100°C. Moreover, if the amount of spaghetti in the pot affected the temperature of the water, then the heat transfer rate would be affected as well, and so one would expect to have different cooking times for different amounts of spaghetti to be cooked — which we all know is not the case. I shared my thoughts with David, in my group. He seemed to keep a healthy lack of interest in the whole inquiry session and made Jackie satisfied, when she came back, by telling her that we thought that taking out that tiny bit of spaghetti wouldn’t affect the temperature given its tiny size. Except for this unexpected question that could have stimulated interesting discussions on which situations the cooking time does depend on the quantity (or shape!) of food, there was no questions or follow-up on the scientific context of the inquiry. As for the lack of time to think the inquiry through, the absence of follow-up on the science behind the inquiry was a common pattern in almost all our hands-on sessions at university.
I must say that I wouldn’t like to be an education scientist and have to teach future teachers how to teach. Our teachers at university had to make incredible intellectual contortions every day. Already at the start of the course, when they told us that we would have to present a 10-minute explanation in front of our colleagues (playing the role of secondary students) on a given subject, they insisted that it would represent only a tiny, tiny part of a lesson. In fact, why rehearse scientific explanations altogether if we are not supposed to explain anything in the classroom? Andrew, my tutor, seemed to be in the midst of a professional crisis. During one of our tutorials, he told me that he believed they (education scientists) may have gone too far along the road of constructivism. He continued that he was not sure any more that students would discover the structure of atoms on their own, if we (teachers) didn’t tell them anything. I was shocked. Any more?
But what I found particularly preposterous and highly irritating is the fact that while they argue, on a philosophical level, that there is no absolute truth in hard sciences, when it comes to education science, however, we should show the most dogmatic acceptance of their theories. I call that intellectual dishonesty. To illustrate my point, let me tell you how Jackie, one of our teachers, trained us on how to teach the topic ‘energy’.
There is a full day dedicated to the topic of energy for future physics teachers. It starts like a normal constructivist session, in which we have to measure the time it takes to burn on a flame different food items without any discussion whatsoever on the actual link between the time it takes to burn and the chemical energy stored in the food. Then, we have to sort different food labels. I start to have some thoughts about whether or not the calorie content of a food item changes when it is cooked. As chemical reactions occur during cooking, it seems reasonable to assume that the calorie content — i.e., the energy transferred to our body via digestion, which involves other chemical reactions — changes as well. Our group is also busy considering the calorie content per portion of each food and as a result we are behind the others. Jackie teases us because of this. Then, we realise that we are just supposed to order the food labels in an increasing order of their calorie content per unit of mass, which Jackie calls a highly mathematical activity. While this could be an enthralling session starting with some biochemical background to digestion and making the link between calorie content of food and the concept of energy taught in physics, the appropriateness or not of asking students to bring food labels from home is discussed at length instead.
In the afternoon, we have to sort cards displaying some statements on energy under the categories ‘I agree’, ‘I disagree’, ‘I don’t know’. Then Jackie asks us what energy is. One of us says it is what makes things happen. Jackie seems to disagree. She takes her phone, holds it with her hand in the air, and asks “if I release the phone, why will it fall? Because of the force of gravity, not because of its energy!” I am surprised: The gravitational potential energy and the force of gravity are two aspects of the same ‘thing’ (gravity). Saying that an object falls because of the force but not because of its potential energy is thus questionable, but nobody dares to say anything. Then an incredible session follows, which would supposedly shake our certitudes and prevent us from sleeping the following night. To make a long story short, we are told that we are not allowed to teach energy using the words forms of energy, conversion of a form of energy to another form of energy or heat. Energy, it is argued, is one and single concept, and thus it doesn’t make sense to speak of various forms of energy. Instead, we would have to talk about stores of energy and transfer of energy between different stores (e.g. between the chemical store to the thermal store). Only kinetic and potential are authorised adjectives for the word ‘energy’. Jackie gives us a short text about energy, a story about ‘Dennis the Menace’, and I think it is specially written by some education scientist for KS3 students. I will find out later that this text had in reality been written by Richard Feynman[1] (why was the author not acknowledged?). The best part of the text had been actually removed — and guess what, this part is about forms of energy…
This afternoon session was quite surprising because for once the teacher gave us something of her expertise — but in such an authoritative and patronising way! I would have found it more appropriate if the teacher had reported on some studies investigating students’ misconceptions of energy and their following recommendations, namely to teach energy using the words “energy store types” and “transfer between stores” rather than about “energy forms” and “conversion to another form of energy”. Why not? In the end, it seems to be much more of a vocabulary shift than anything else. But why make such a terror of it and try to convince us that they have actually revolutionised the concept of energy? Was it to convince us that they had found the absolute truth??
