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Constructivism in the Community College Classroom
Michael Henry
Prince George's Community College
and University of Maryland University College
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FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS, teaching the United States history survey course has been the focus of the my professional life. At both the high school and college level, I have introduced students to the sweep of American history from Jamestown to Watergate. During those years, I have grappled with the conundrum of how to make this often-unwieldy course meaningful to my students. I wanted to give them an experience that was more than " a dry compilation of facts and...a set of questions already answered."1 But in my search for a means to address my students' needs, I always bumped up against the survey's greatest challenge—the need "to cover" material. While I have agreed with John Scott that "when you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing: the big picture remains a blur,"2 as a high school teacher I felt compelled to deal with all the topics that might appear on Advanced Placement tests or state-mandated achievement examinations. In the process, I engaged in a mad dash to finish the course syllabus to satisfy various academic deadlines and requirements. I now teach at a community college outside of Washington D.C. and I am still caught on the horns of the coverage dilemma. Even at the college level, I have continued to search for a means to provide my students with the salient information of the survey while giving them an opportunity to reflect on the critical issues of American history. |
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As I continue to seek an approach that promotes new understandings and perspectives while building on students' existing historical knowledge, my goal is a curriculum that moves beyond a series of facts and events to be memorized for a test and challenges my students to analyze and synthesize data. In short, I want to give my students the factual sweep of the survey at the same time they learn to think historically. This academic tension inherent in the survey course has defined my search for successful models of classroom instruction but I now believe I have discovered a theoretical paradigm that addresses this challenge. It is "constructivism," and I have recently introduced its ideas and methods into my United States history survey. |
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Constructivism has been around for over sixty years, but it is currently receiving renewed attention from educators. (See bibliography for some current citations.) The most influential thinker in its development was Jean Piaget.3 He provided much of the basis for the psychological theory of cognitive constructivism. He believed that individuals build understandings by a process of active interaction with their environment and that human beings are developing organisms "not only in a physical, biological sense, but also in a cognitive sense." For Piaget, equilibration was the mechanism by which changes in cognition and understanding occurred.4 According to his theory, equilibration consisted of two polar behaviors: assimilation and accommodation. In assimilation, individuals arrange experiences within their current structure of understandings. They view the world through familiar constructs in an effort to preserve autonomy within a personal system of meaning. As they confront new information and experiences, they modify and adjust existing structures to create new mental images to organize data. They reconstitute previous behavior to accommodate new experiences and stimuli. This process often fosters contradictions to previous understandings that have to be addressed and resolved.5 |
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The back and forth activity between assimilation and accommodation is not an invariant, step-by-step operation, however. There is no sequential process of assimilation, then conflict, then accommodation. Rather, it is a "dynamic dance" of equilibria, adaptation, growth and change. As students assert themselves to integrate new experiences and information they sometimes exhibit a type of behavior which simply assimilates data, but at other times, they are "reflective, integrative and accommodating."6 In Piaget's paradigm of development, rather than knowing an objective reality, individuals only construct a version of it for themselves. As students engage in the process of equilibration, they build their knowledge through experiences and create schemata, or structures of mental images, that define their current reality.7 |
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In recent years, the work of Daniel Ausubel has supported and reinforced constructivist ideas. His concept of building an intellectual scaffolding upon which to place new knowledge, and his dictum that the most important factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows, have been foundations used to justify the practice of constructivism in the past twenty years.8 With regard to classroom practices, constructivism also owes a substantial debt to the new social studies recommendations of the 1960s and 1970s. Emphasizing open-ended questions, student-centered inquiry, and primary source materials, these reforms foreshadowed many of the ideas and techniques of the constructivist movement.9 |
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Drawing heavily from these sources, constructivist theory holds that "learning means constructing, creating, inventing and developing one's own knowledge."10 From this principle flows the belief that the mind actively constructs knowledge and invents concepts using existing understandings. Constructivism suggests that students remember more and process information better when it is clustered around existing and related ideas. The teacher's task is to facilitate the building of intellectual scaffolding upon which increasingly sophisticated understandings can be erected.11 |
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In a constructivist classroom, the focus is on how individual students accommodate information into their existing mental schemata. They are challenged to reorganize their cognitive world to account for new experiences. They embrace problems as their own, use prior knowledge as a starting point, accommodate new information and construct tentative solutions by integrating old and new knowledge together.12 Learning is anchored around "big ideas" that can be generalized across experiences. Instead of focusing on discrete pieces of data and collections of facts, students conceptualize in a more global sense.13 Facts and information are not merely memorized and reproduced, rather they are used as tools to form generalizations and understandings with greater meaning. Students pursue open-ended investigations and generate several possible solutions or explanations to a problem, which may be expressed as concepts or generalizations.14 They actively question and interpret materials to develop conceptual understandings. In such a setting, student "learning is deeper, more comprehensive and longer lasting."15 In such an environment the classroom teacher is both a facilitator of inquiry and a transmitter of knowledge. As Steffe and Gale have pointed out, "From a didactic perspective, a teacher is a presenter of knowledge. From a discovery perspective, he or she is simply a provider of experiences. In a constructivist approach, both these functions are combined."16 |
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The introduction of constructivist ideas into a survey course does not eliminate lecturing as an instructional tool. It is still worthwhile to spend significant class time behind the podium. While lecturing continues to provide an efficient means of covering information, in a constructivist framework, it serves a more complex function. Not just a device for imparting facts, lecturing establishes a context in which to place class discussions of critical issues. Lectures serve as a foundation upon which students can build further understandings. They provide a structure of major events that allow students to construct a larger mosaic of historical awareness.17 Even in the constructivist classroom, lecturing remains an important pedagogical tool. It is an effective means to build an intellectual scaffolding upon which to build new information configurations. Nor does the introduction of constructivism into a class preclude other traditional teaching methods. A teacher may still provide direct instruction. The question is really how much intervention and how much direct instruction is appropriate.18 As one supporter of constructivism said "it is difficult to imagine any learning encounters without a certain amount of transmission [of knowledge] on the part of teachers."19 |
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Primary sources play a fundamental role in the constructivist setting. In fact, these materials are the conduit by which constructivist theories and methods enter survey courses. Documents, as the raw materials of history, are the vehicle that students use to practice historical skills as they construct new understandings. Working with them, students decode data, debate their meaning, and establish new interpretations. Overall, they move away from "the predigested summarization of history served up" in many history classes and build upon previous knowledge to construct new meaning and understanding.20 In addition, the use of primary sources provides constructivist ideas with a patina of authenticity. Documents, the actual voices of individuals, "speak of historical periods more eloquently than can even the most accomplished historian...they bring forward dramatic human interaction of particular times and places."21 The use of documents in the construction of new knowledge fuels genuine excitement as the human element of a historic movement emerges.22 |
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Dealing with documents in a classroom also provides students with another important skill—putting questions to data. One cannot construct new knowledge without making reasoned judgments and one cannot make reasoned judgments without asking good questions. In class, students are often so preoccupied with getting the "right" answer that they ignore the need to ask the "right" questions. Thomas Holt has stated that being able to pose questions "is part of the process of learning about history. It is about the questions as well as answers."23 The skill of asking questions is not innate to students, they need directions in how to pose good questions just as they need guidance in developing other critical thinking skills. Further, when students interact and question sources, they will confront conflicting ideas and positions. As they weigh evidence, they will question their classmates, their teacher and themselves. Often the questions raised will generate new issues that cannot be clearly answered by the available evidence. In short, students will come "face to face with the messy world of historical interpretation."24 The process of asking questions, formulating hypotheses and revising them as the evidence requires, will help develop critical skepticism in approaches to historical problems. Thus, as students use primary sources to construct new knowledge they will develop important thinking and reasoning skills. |
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The combination of lecturing and analyzing documents in a constructivist-oriented setting allows the instructor to give students an enriched academic program. This strategy can provide coverage of important content over a span of time and allows for frequent stops for in-depth examinations of critical issues in American historical development. In lectures, the teacher can present the factual information that defines the major content of the survey, content which is likely to appear on end-of-semester tests or other types of summative evaluations. At the same time, primary sources allow for "post holing" interludes along the way as students hone their skills of historical thinking and construct new ideas and understandings. The use of documents gives students the opportunity to "pause in the relentless rush to cover long periods of history...[and in so doing]...students discover the complexities and ambiguities of history."25 The skills of analysis and synthesis, which are fundamental to the constructivist paradigm, can be promoted by a series of in-depth, sustained concentrations on a limited number of topics or questions.26 |
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An example of a topic from my survey that effectively weaves constructivism into the college classroom is Puritan ideology and its impact on colonial development. It required two class meetings, beginning with a short lecture on colonization which focused on conditions in Great Britain that motivated people to come to North America. After this intellectual scaffolding was in place, students were asked to focus on the settlements in Massachusetts. They were asked to list four or five characteristics they knew about the Pilgrims/Puritans and to share their information with the class. In most cases, the lists contained some misinformation and little understanding of the settlers' significance to the colonial era. Students knew the Puritans dressed in black, were very religious, were somewhat intolerant, celebrated the first Thanksgiving, and raised tobacco (confused). Yet, these ideas provided a base upon which to build further understandings. |
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Students next put their lists aside and divided themselves into four groups. I then presented each group with one primary source written by a Puritan leader to study. The documents included John Winthrop's discussion of liberty in The History of New England, his "Reasons for Undertaking a Plantation in New England," and "A Model for Christian Charity." I also used John Cotton's "Christ, the Fountaine of Life." After discussing their document among themselves, each group of students presented its summary to the rest of the class. Everyone took notes, and when the reports were completed, students discussed contradictions and conflicts inherent in the sources. Here, the Puritan's view of God, liberty, authority, community, work and gender crystallized. In the discussion, students debated the clash over liberty and authority apparent in the documents. They saw the dangers to individual freedom inherent in an activist church. They also raised questions such as: Why was conformity thought to be essential to the colony's survival? And what consequences did the Puritans envision if their experiment failed? |
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An interesting side discussion emerged from Winthrop's definition of liberty as submission to authority. Several students questioned his credibility and suggested that his position as an authority giver in the colony colored his point of view and gave him a vested interest in maintaining quiet adherence to the rules he created. Students began to realize that in evaluating a source, the position and agenda of the author must always be in the forefront of any analysis. This concept was fundamental in helping students to think historically. At the end of the discussion, students returned to their list of characteristics and revised it in light of the new information they had discovered. |
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For homework the class was given four new documents to read and summarize for the next meeting. These documents included speeches by Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, a Massachusetts Court Record that defined children's responsibility towards their parents, and a law that required certain types of dress for different classes of people in the colony. In the next session, the entire class discussed the four documents as a group. Students were fascinated by the Massachusetts law that prescribed death for sixteen year olds who "curse or smite their natural father or mother." After the class got over its outrage, they asked if anyone was actually put to death (No one was executed). They also wondered what level of maturity a sixteen year old had in 1651 and how that compared to a sixteen year old today? More profoundly, students speculated on the Puritans' obsession with obeying rules, following roles, and submerging themselves for the good of the larger social unit. They realized that many colonists believed this subordination was the sine qua non for survival in New England. |
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The class evaluated another statute that declared "complete disapproval of men and women of meane [sic] condition who wear the clothing of gentlemen, such as gold or silver lace or buttons." They also pondered the ramification of Williams' call for separation of church and state on the Puritans' value system. Finally, the Hutchinson document raised the issues of the role of women and the consequences of censorship in the New England colony. |
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The instructor facilitated the discussion by asking questions about enforced conformity, the benefit of single-mindedness in achieving goals and the tension between liberty and authority among the Puritans. In some classes, students raised all or some of these issues themselves, on other occasions, that duty devolved on the teacher. To conclude the topic, students once more edited their list of Puritan characteristics. By now, most had identified both their strengths and weaknesses. They recognized the Puritans' strong spiritualism, their dedication to family, their hard work in pursuit of their calling, and their strength of community. On the other hand, students saw their intolerance, closed mindedness, exclusiveness, elitism and arrogance. |
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As a concluding and out-of-class assignment, students used their lists as an outline from which to construct a two or three page letter to a friend or family member in England. The correspondence was written from the viewpoint of a colonist describing both the successes and tensions found in Massachusetts Bay. Students were encouraged to take the position of either a "visible saint" or a dissenter in the colony. The letters were turned in to be graded. |
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The class sequence was designed to move students back and forth from assimilation (perceived current reality) to accommodation (challenging students to reorganize their cognitive view). Students were asked to deal with new information as they read various primary sources and to revise their views and understandings of the Puritans. The instructor functioned as a facilitator making sure that class pacing was maintained, and when necessary challenging students' concepts of the Puritans. Because the coverage issue always lurks in a survey's shadow, it is worth noting that although two class periods were spent on the topic, students learned about Massachusetts Bay's religious foundation, its economic system and its social mores. Further, they were introduced to the ideas of Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, John Winthrop, John Cotton and the Congregational Church—a considerable amount of material, even for the demanding pace of the survey course. |
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The assessment process in a constructivist-oriented classroom should focus on writing. Students need to demonstrate their mastery of American history by constructing and evaluating arguments, identifying varying points of view and using evidence to support theses. Essays should be assigned for both in-class and out-of-class evaluations. In addition, students should be evaluated on the types and levels of questions they put to historical sources. An effective assignment might be to grade a set of questions students raised about a historical problem rather than their answers to it. One interesting written evaluation could require a document based essay that asked students to analyze primary sources, put them in a historical context and construct answers that support or refute the documents' positions on an event. |
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My students' evaluations of my constructivist-oriented courses were very positive. Students especially enjoyed the introduction of documents into the traditional lecture format. They liked having a break from the passive, note-taking approach that had often dominated their history classes. They appreciated the active learning that constructivism offered. Students found the challenge of creating responses to documents and formulating questions about them stimulating and rewarding. In their specific responses to the use of primary sources, students said they believed the documents "clarified and personalized history" because they gave a voice to historical figures and allowed them to see exactly what people were saying and doing. Most importantly, students were "able to see for themselves, not just hear about it [history]." Overall, they believed they benefited from and enjoyed the student-centered, constructivist classroom. |
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I have concluded that bringing constructivism into the classroom is an effective way to add vigor and interest to the traditional survey history course. By blending lectures and having students question and respond to primary source docments, an instructor can address the demands of covering material at the same time he encourages historical thinking in his students. With expository techniques, a teacher can lay the factual foundations of the survey, and through inquiry-oriented constructivist exercises, can allow students to build on these foundations. Although constructivism is not a panacea for all that ails the teaching of history, it is an important tool in strengthening classroom instruction at the post-secondary school level. |
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Bibliography
Beyer, Barry. "Critical Thinking: What Is It?" Social Education 49 (April 1985): 270–276.
Beyer, Barry. Practical Strategies for the Teaching of Thinking. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. 1987.
Duis, Mac. "Using Schema Theory to Teach American History," Social Education 60 (March 1996): 144–146.
Engle, Shirley H. "Late Night Thoughts About the New Social Studies," Social Education 50 (January 1986): 20–22.
Fleury, Stephen. "Social Studies, Trivial Constructivism and the Politics of Social Knowledge," in Constructivism and Education, ed. Marie Rochelle, et.al.,152–172. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Fosnot, Catherine T., editor. Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice. New York: Teacher's College Press, Columbia University, 1996.
French, Joyce N. and Carol Rhoder. Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1992.
Holt, Thomas. Thinking Historically. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990.
Jadallah, Edward. "Constructivist Learning Experiences for Social Studies Education." The Social Studies 91 (September/October 2000): 221–225.
LaRochelle, Marie, Nadine Bednaz and Jim Garrison, editors. Constructivism and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Madgic, Robert. A Guide to Inquiry Training. New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1971.
Marlowe, Bruce A. and Marilyn L. Page, Creating and Sustaining the Constructivist Classroom. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press Inc., 1998.
Mayer, Robert H. "Connecting Narrative and Historical Thinking: A Research-Based Approach to Teaching History." Social Education 62 (February 1998): 97–100.
McMann, Francis C. and Carolyn Jepsen McMann. "Authentic Evaluation in History." OAH Magazine of History 7 (Spring 1992): 6–9.
Nash, Gary B. and Linda Symcox. "Bringing History Alive in the Classroom: A Collaborative Project." OAH Magazine of History 6 (Summer 1991): 25–29.
Norris, Stephen P. "Synthesis of Research on Critical Thinking." Educational Leadership 43 (May 1985): 40–45.
Onosko, Joseph and Fred Newmann. "Creating More Thoughtful Learning Environments," in Creating Powerful Thinking in Teachers and Students: Diverse Perspectives, ed. John Mangieri and Cathy Block, 27–49. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994.
O'Reilly, Kevin. "Teaching Critical Thinking in High School U.S. History." Social Education 49 (April 1985): 281–284.
Scheurman, Geoffrey. "From Behaviorist to Constructivist Teaching." Social Education 62 (January 1998): 6–9.
Scott, John. "Historical Literature and Democratic Education." Occasional Paper, National Council for History Education, 1991.
Steffe, Leslie and Jerry Gale. Constructivism in Education. Hilldale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
Welton, David A. "Teaching History: A Perspective on Factual Details." Social Education 54 (October 1990): 348–350.
Notes
1. Geoffrey Scheurman, "From Behaviorist to Constructivist Teaching," Social Education 62 (January 1998), 9.
2. John Scott, "Historical Literature and Democratic Education," Occasional Paper, National Council for History Education (1991), 3.
3. Scheurman, "From Behaviorist to Constructivist," p. 8.
4. Bruce A. Marlowe and Marilyn Page, Creating and Sustaining the Constructivist Classroom (Thousand Oaks, California: Crown Press, Inc., 1998), 18; Edward Jadallah, "Constructivist Learning Experiences for Social Studies," The Social Studies 91 (September/ October 2000), 221; Catherine T. Fosnot, "Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning," in Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives and Practices, ed. Catherine Fosnot, (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1996), 11–13.
5. Fosnot, "Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning," 13–14.
6. Ibid., 14.
7. Ibid., 23.
8. Leslie Steffe and Jerry Gale, Constructivism in Education (Hilldale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995), 272.
9. Geoffrey Scheurman, "Revisiting Lexington Green," Social Education 62 (January 1998), 10.
10. Marlowe and Page, Creating and Sustaining the Constructivist Classroom, 10.
11. Steffe and Gale, Constructivism in Education, 273; Mac Duis, "Using Schema Theory to Teach American History," Social Education 60 (March 1996), 144; Fosnot," Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning," 26.
12. Steffe and Gale, Constructivism in Education, 14; Marie LaRochelle, Nadine Bednaz and Jim Garrison, eds. Constructivism and Education (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 157–158; Schuerman, "From Behaviorist to Constructivist," 8.
13. Fosnot, "Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning," 30; June Gould, "A Constructivist Perspective on Teaching and Learning in Language Arts," in Fosnot,
Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives and Practice, 93.
14. Fosnot, 29–30; Gould, 93.
15. Marlowe and Page, Creating and Sustaining, 12.
16. Steffe and Gale, Constructivism in Education, 399.
17. David Welton, "Teaching History: A Perspective on Factual Details," Social Education 54 (October 1990), 349.
18. Marlowe and Page, Creating and Sustaining, 257.
19. Schuerman, "From Behaviorist to Constructivist," 8.
20. Robert Madgic, A Guide to Inquiry Training (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1971), 5
21. Gary B. Nash and Linda Symcox, "Bringing History Alive in the Classroom: A Collaborative Project," OAH Magazine of History 6 (Summer 1991), 25–26
22. Robert H. Mayer, "Connecting Narrative and Historical Thinking: A Research-Based Approach to Teaching History," Social Education 62 (February 1998), 97.
23. Thomas Holt, Thinking Historically (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990), 26.
24. Schuerman, "Revisiting Lexington Green," 10.
25. Nash and Symcox, "Bringing History Alive," 25.
26. Joseph Onosko and Fred Newman, "Creating More Thoughtful Learning Environments," in Creating Powerful Thinking in Teachers and Students Diverse Perspectives, eds. John Mangieri and Cathy Block (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994), 31.
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