This study built on a 2001–02 classroom observation study of Washington K-12 and technical schools that identified the extent of constructivist teaching activity. Results from classroom observations found that strong constructivist teaching was observable in 17 percent of the classroom lessons. The other 83 percent of the lessons observed may have contained some elements of constructivist teaching, but up to one-half had very little or no elements of constructivist teaching present. More constructivist teaching appeared to occur in alternative schools and integrated subject matter classes. There appeared to be no differences among elementary, middle/junior, and high schools in the degree to which constructivist practices were used. This study explored the relationship of this practice to student achievement, examining the percent of variance in student achievement accounted for by constructivist teaching beyond that contributed by low-income. Data came from the original observation study and from school-level standardized test scores of 4th, 7th, and 10th graders. Results found large correlations between study variables (a negative correlation between school-level family income and student achievement, large positive correlations between constructivist teaching and student achievement, and a negative correlation between constructivist teaching and school-level family income).

This paper proposed the application of the constructivist approach in virtual university where learners can learn based on their learning style, information and skills to succeed in life and also in their job. Constructivist learning and the strategies in constructivist learning can foster in-depth learning and practical application. Integration of communication and information technologies into curricula offers significant potentials for designing new learning environments, and advancing research and development in learning theories. Based on the main aspects of the constructivist approach, traditional universities and classroom cannot provide the conditions for learners to construct the knowledge for themselves, for this reason virtual university with the communication and information technologies (ICT) can implement constructivist strategies in the process of teaching and learning. In virtual university, constructivism promotes the learner’s skills to solve real-life problems and practical problems.

Key words: virtual university, constructivist learning, constructivist approach in virtual university.

Design-based research studies are conducted as iterative implementation-analysis-modification cycles, in which emerging theoretical models and pedagogically plausible activities are reciprocally tuned toward each other as a means of investigating conjectures pertaining to mechanisms underlying content teaching and learning. Yet this approach, even when resulting in empirically effective educational products, remains under-conceptualized as long as researchers cannot be explicit about their craft and specifically how data analyses inform design decisions. Consequentially, design decisions may appear arbitrary, design methodology is insufficiently documented for broad dissemination, and design practice is inadequately conversant with learning-sciences perspectives. One reason for this apparent under-theorizing, I propose, is that designers do not have appropriate constructs to formulate and reflect on their own intuitive responses to students’ observed interactions with the media under development. Recent socio-cultural explication of epistemic artifacts as semiotic means for mathematical learners to objectify presymbolic notions (e.g., Radford, Mathematical Thinking and Learning 5(1): 37–70, 2003) may offer design-based researchers intellectual perspectives and analytic tools for theorizing design improvements as responses to participants’ compromised attempts to build and communicate meaning with available media. By explaining these media as potential semiotic means for students to objectify their emerging understandings of mathematical ideas, designers, reciprocally, create semiotic means to objectify their own intuitive design decisions, as they build and improve these media. Examining three case studies of undergraduate students reasoning about a simple probability situation (binomial), I demonstrate how the semiotic approach illuminates the process and content of student reasoning and, so doing, explicates and possibly enhances design-based research methodology.

A rising epistemological paradigm in the cognitive sciences – embodied cognition – has been stimulating innovative approaches, among educational researchers, to the design and analysis of STEM teaching and learning. The paradigm promotes theorizations of cognitive activity as grounded, or even constituted, in goal-oriented multimodal sensorimotor phenomenology. Conceptual learning, per these theories, could emanate from, or be triggered by, experiences of enacting or witnessing particular movement forms, even before these movements are explicitly signified as illustrating target content. Putting these theories to practice, new types of learning environments are being explored that utilize interactive technologies to initially foster student enactment of conceptually oriented movement forms and only then formalize these gestures and actions in disciplinary formats and language. In turn, new research instruments, such as multimodal learning analytics, now enable researchers to aggregate, integrate, model, and represent students’ physical movements, eye-gaze paths, and verbal–gestural utterance so as to track and evaluate emerging conceptual capacity. We – a cohort of cognitive scientists and design-based researchers of embodied mathematics – survey a set of empirically validated frameworks and principles for enhancing mathematics teaching and learning as dialogic multimodal activity, and we synthetize a set of principles for educational practice.

In the drive to improve standards, the collection and dissemination of numerical data still directs much contemporary educational policy. However, recent publications and debates seemingly attempt to reorient discussion from performance to learning. In support, constructivism is often referenced as a contributor in this endeavour. However, constructivism is not a single unified theory either of knowledge or pedagogy. This article identifies one version of constructivist thinking, social constructivism, both in terms of its underlying epistemology (theory of knowledge) and related pedagogy. Contemporary educational theories are then outlined to demonstrate that many practical solutions and theoretical ideas now presented as ‘good learning and teaching’ have much in common with social constructivist thinking. Finally, the article concludes by identifying two issues that require further discussion and debate if pedagogy of a social constructivist nature is to be considered.

Education has institutionalized a process that reifies cultures, ecological communities, and ultimately evolution itself. This enclosure has lessened our sensitivity to the pedagogical (eteragogical) nature of our lived relations with other people and with other living beings. By acknowledging that learning and teaching go on between species, humans can regain an eteragogical sense of the interspecies curricula within which they exist. This article explores interspecies lived curricula through a selection of ideas from ecopragmatist Anthony Weston, and cybernetician Gregory Bateson, and through lived experiences with shorebirds of Lake Ontario. Some gulls and a tern teach the author to enrich and diversify, rather than constrict, the potentiality of life. In so doing, being ecological and being educative become unified concepts. Relevance: The publication is concerned with the relational implications between humans and other species of Bateson’s cybernetic theory of learning.

Consideration of a possible use of virtual reality technologies in school contexts requires gathering together the suggestions of many scientific domains aimed at understanding the features of these same tools that let them offer valid support to the teaching–learning processes in educational settings. Specifically, the present study is aimed at creating a theoretical framework for the didactic use of VR technologies in schools, highlighting the characteristics of these tools that are supported by a view of teaching that enhances sensorimotor activity in learning. The theoretical approach, through the study of the international scientific literature on this topic, offers interdisciplinary suggestions for realising teaching–learning practices that are supported by scientific principles and a concept of learning that is consistent with the processes that these tools may activate.

Over the past decades many teaching strategies have been proposed by various educators to improve education of all students including students with special needs. No single one of these proposed teaching strategies meets the needs of all students. The new Every Student Succeeds Act, successor to No Child Left behind Law, which transfers oversight from federal level back to states, could be a benefactor for constructivism and special education. Educators are also optimistic that the new Every Student Succeeds Act will be better for vulnerable students in special education because it will introduce more flexibility in how individual states carry out evaluation of students and teachers. In addition, it will provide more flexibility on testing and adapt the curriculum to student’s needs. It would further reduce time and energy for students preparing for standardized tests or statewide exams. It will also end “Adequate Yearly Progress” – a measure that required schools to show test score gains. Constructivist teaching philosophy is all about accepting student autonomy where student thinking drives the lessons, where dialogue, inquiry, and puzzlement are valued and assessing student learning is in the context of teaching. It helps teachers to draw on new ideas as they make decisions about which teaching techniques are most appropriate for all students to learn. Now is the time to revisit the great debate of constructivism versus teacher-centered instruction and special education. Time has come to effectively explore our educational system and examine the core unit of the whole enterprise, the textbook, the classroom, a setting that is often dominated by teacher talk and students listen.

Key words: constructivist teaching strategies, student with special needs, academic outcomes, students with learning disabilities, positive learning, policy makers, indirect instruction, every student succeeds act.

This paper reports a study on conceptions of assessment held by students and instructors. The conceptions of assessment are considered to be one of the four interrelated sets of conceptions which together constitute the conception of education. The three other sets are the conceptions of (1) knowledge, (2) learning, and (3) instruction. Conceptions of knowledge were measured using an adapted version of the Epistemic Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ). Conceptions of learning and instruction were measured with the Teaching and Learning Conceptions Questionnaire (TLCQ) developed by Elliott (2002)1, and Chan (2004)2. Since no instrument was available to measure conceptions of assessment, an experimental Conceptions of Assessment Scale (CAS) was developed and tested. Students filled out a 32-item forced-choice version, while instructors filled out a 25-item version in a four-point rating format. On all three instruments a dichotomy was created to distinguish subjects with ‘traditional’ conceptions from the ones with more ‘constructivist’ views. Results indicate that students and instructors hold different conceptions of assessment. Students have more traditional conceptions of assessment than instructors. With regard to conceptions of knowledge, students are more traditional than instructors. The conceptions of teaching and learning also show students to be more traditional than instructors. With respect to the congruency of conceptions of education, students seem to be equally (in) consistent as the instructors. An important implication of the present study is to pay more attention to the alignment between the educational philosophy of an institute and the conceptions of education held by its students and instructors.

Excerpt: The first challenge we face in this endeavor is to define two philosophies which provide the basis for most teaching practices: positivism and || constructivism. Next, we intend to familiarize teachers with the influences these philosophies have had on teacher education programs and the classroom. Our final task is to help teachers identify these philosophies within their own practice so they may determine whether or not their teaching style actually reflects their personal beliefs.