On Constructivism:
I admire Dewey’s approach to education. When I think about Dewey’s endeavors, I liken it to bedside manner for doctors. Dewey understands that learning must focus on the person doing the learning, in short, he put the focus back on the learner rather than on the concepts. Throughout my tenure, I ascribe to continuously remember Dewey and his theories. When I design curricula, it is easy to apply design principles and completely forget about students. In fact, I think many teachers do this because it’s easier to simply design a task with a few scaffolds and then give it to students. How does this perpetuate learning, however?
As I progress through my cognate, the emphasis on making “learning [an] active process in which the learner uses sensory input and constructs meaning out of it” is a challenge of sorts (Constructivist Learning Theory | Exploratorium, 2016, para. 12). It’s a challenge because I endeavor to do right by this process and make sure that I address this. Since my cognate involves music, by default I am accessing sensory learning, however, I can’t just play a song and then expect it to fulfill this theory. Rather, we are looking at the rhetoric of the song. Therefore, in order to prepare students to engage in analysis, I give them a few moments to listen to the song and reflect, so that they develop their own connection to the material. Giving them the space to do this is helpful so that they already have an association with the song and therefore meaning-making has already started. This leads to students “[learning] to learn as they learn” (Constructivist Learning Theory | Exploratorium, 2016, para. 13) as they are learning about the rhetorical structures embedded within each song as they reflect on the meaning. In addition, as I provide students with scaffolds, they learn how to approach rhetorical analysis as they learn about cultural identity.
Discovering more about cultural identity and honoring students and their lived experiences is the mainstay of my cognate. I’m trying to continually make sure that I give them the space to understand cultural concerns as well as learn to empathize. This is why leveraging their curiosity is so important. Without sparking curiosity, then asking students to authentically engage in the curriculum is impossible. They may not choose to learn to empathize if they are not curious about the material. Since learning is so personalized, a key component of that is being curious. Since the “same brain regions in processing hunger and curiosity” (Williams, 2020, para. 9) then imagine how voracious students can be to learning if they are very “hungry”, or in this case, curious! Bringing the material back to them helps them make sense of their own world and make meaningful connections and stimulate curiosity. This connects to Lowenstein's 1994 study The Psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation where he describes how motivation increases when they can refer to something they already know (p. 89). The idea is that when people have a prior reference to something the desire to know more increases, which is why making connections in one’s known world is so important for learning motivation. Helping students see how their world echoes other worlds and the global nature of culture is the root of my cognate.
References
Constructivist Learning Theory | Exploratorium. (2016, January 6). Exploratorium. https://www.exploratorium.edu/education/ifi/constructivist-learning
Loewenstein, G. (1994). The Psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75. https://doi-org.sonoma.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.1.75
Williams, S. (2020, October). Curiosity and Hunger Are Driven by the Same Brain Regions. The Scientist Magazine®; The Scientist Magazine. https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook/curiosity-and-hunger-are-driven-by-the-same-brain-regions-67992