Peters

This article discussed the views of Piaget and Vygotsky and how they can be implemented in a constructivist classroom. The differences between Piaget and Vygotsky's ideas were specified as well, and this is important because I think it's a good idea to find what you like from each point of view and use that in combination in your classroom. Piaget focused on cognitive constructivism and the different stages of development. He thought that students had to be at the correct stage of development in order to enhance their learning. Vygotsky, on the other hand, focused on sociocultural constructivism. This has more to do with how the environment around a student contributes to learning, and he believed that learning led to development.

In my opinion, it's important as a teacher to pay attention to Piaget's stages of development for a general outline of how to teach your students. For instance, in the concrete operational stage (upper elementary school), students are able to do more thinking processes but still can't think abstractly. Therefore, it's important to include a lot of concrete materials and real life experiences to make their learning more meaningful. I think that it's also important to stretch students in this stage to think abstractly so that they can move on easily to the formal operational stage (especially if they are 11 or 12 years old).

Personally, I think it's more important to focus on Vygotsky's ideas because he placed more emphasis on learning being constructed through social situations. I think that it's very important for students to share their thoughts with each other in class and to encourage social collaboration. Peer tutoring is also a good idea because students at a lower learning level can benefit from being scaffolded by a more capable peer. The problem with this, as I mentioned in my response to the Krajcik article, is that teachers need to make sure that higher level students still have a chance to be challenged. Ideally, students would be switching the role of teacher and learner so that everyone benefits in the end.

The ideas presented in the article about the scientific language were also interesting to me. The whole language approach has the merit of being more in context, but I wonder how I would approach teaching difficult words. It seems like students would struggle to read something if they didn't know many of the scientific terms. Maybe we could discuss them as a class when students come across those words.

Overall, the constructivist approach seems very beneficial and like it would make learning meaningful, but I'd really like to see it in action to know how to make it flow smoothly.