Augmenting Elementary Education with Constructive Approach

Abstract

Early childhood stage is the foundation stage of learning. It is rightly said that if the foundation is strong, the building will definitely be strong. This saying is also applicable in the field of education. Our present experience always contributes in the development of future experiences. We all remember the first poem learnt during our initial school days. But we are not able to recall the poetry that we learnt during our graduation or post-graduation courses. This shows that first impression is the last impression. It is rightly said by Atkinson in his theory of Information processing that whatever impression has been cast on the wet cement for the first time remains forever. In the same way during early childhood stage of learning whatever child learns has ever lasting impression for whole life. From the above discussion we can say that whatever child learns during initial years of school becomes the base for future learning. So the initial stages of childhood learning should be very effective.

The beginning of elementary schooling (I to V) is marked as the formal introduction of the child to reading, writing and arithmetic, culminating in the introduction of the formal disciplines such as sciences and social-sciences towards the end of elementary school. During this period of elementary schooling tremendous cognitive development, shaping reason, intellect and social skills, as well as the skills and attitude necessary for entering work place happens. Being a parent, when one searches a school with quality education even in a big city, one gets bewildered. Because many so called private and public schools may have play fields, drinking water facilities, toilet and libraries, but they may lack teacher- taught ratio and more important the strategies of transaction of curriculum which are the main determinants of quality education. This paper is an attempt to highlight the effective early childhood learning strategies based on constructive approach to enrich the elementary education.

Early Childhood stage is the foundation stage of learning because this period marks the formal introduction of the child to reading, writing and arithmetic, culminating in the introduction of formal disciplines such as science and social science towards the end of elementary school. During this period of eight years, tremendous cognitive development occurs. Every parent, during this stage of development tries to search a school with quality education to their wards to enrich their cognitive development. Most of the so called private and public schools which claim to provide quality education though have good ancillary services but may lack appropriate teacher-taught ratio and more importantly, the methods of transaction of the curriculum which are the main determinants of quality education.

The class teacher teaches all the subjects including-English, Hindi, math, environmental science, moral science etc. with a strength of approximately sixty students in a class. In each subject, the teacher just introduce the chapter, by writing questions and answers, word meaning, fill in the blanks, opposites etc. on the chalkboard. The students are supposed to copy down quickly and correctly from the chalkboard and learn all the things from home. The impulse of teach everything to the child arises from lack of faith in children’s own creative instinct and their capacity to construct knowledge out of their experiences. The size of syllabus has been growing over the years, even as the pressure to include new topics and subjects mounts and efforts to synthesize knowledge and treat it holistically gets weaker. School administrators and teachers are guided by the belief that there has been an explosion of knowledge. Therefore, vast amount of knowledge should be pushed down the throats of little children in order to catch up with countries. This put stress on children to become aggressively competitive and exhibit precocity.

Schools are also being drawn into increasingly competitive environment and at the same time the aspiration of parents place a tremendous burden of stress and anxiety on all children including the very young which results into the detriment of their personal growth and development, and thus hamper the inclination of joy of learning. School promote a regime of thought discourage creative thinking and insight. What is presented and transmitted in the name of learning in school bypass vital dimensions of human capacity to create new knowledge. To address above mentioned deep structural problems, the National Curriculum Framework 2005 elaborates on the insights of ‘Learning without Burden’.

The guiding principles of this document are; connecting knowledge to life outside the school; enriching the curriculum to provide for overall development rather than remain textbook centric; making examination more flexible and integrated into classroom life; and nurturing on over-riding identity informed by caring concern within the democratic policy of the country. This document has emphasized on the need to recognize the child as a natural learner and knowledge as the outcome of the child’s own activity. The teacher can provide the situation and act as a facilitator in the context of guiding principles of NCF-2005 with the knowledge of constructivism-a philosophy of learning and changing his/her attitude accordingly. Following constructivist approaches may prove quite beneficial for their cognitive development and for helping them to enter in the workplace in near future:

Promote Play Way Method

When enjoyment is introduced in an activity, it is said to be done in the ‘play way’. Many educationists like John Dewey, Maria Montessori and Frobel have advocated play way method at elementary level. All the subjects like literature, language, mathematics, science, nature study, moral and social training can be imparted through this method. According to Lev Vygotsky, a social constructivist, play mediates the learning of children, and, through play, children develop abstract thought. Mediate means that, in play, children reach beyond their selves as they take on the roles of the characters they choose to be, and take action appropriate to the behavioral rules that govern those roles e.g. a child pretending to act as a teacher follows the rules of teacher behavior in the classroom. As children enact in make believe, they come to better understanding of social norms and expectations and strive to follow them. Moreover, in a play the child experiences the pleasures of performing a task for its own sake.

Encourage Interaction

Students’ interaction with teachers, with peers, as well as with those who are older and younger can open up many more rich learning possibilities. According to constructive approach of learning, teacher and students together construct the knowledge of the classroom through their interaction, blazing their own educational paths. It means that teachers and peers can be jointly contributors to the students learning.

In peer tutoring one student teaches another. In cross-age peer tutoring, the peer is older. In same-age peer tutoring, the peer is from the same class. Cross age tutoring usually works better than the same age peer tutoring. D.Fuchs, L.S. Fuchs, Mathes & Simmons (1997) conducted a study on effectiveness of peer tutoring programme for three learner types: low-achieving students with disabilities, low-achieving students without disabilities and average achieving students. The finding of the study was that irrespective of the type of learner, students in the peer tutoring class showed greater progress over their counterparts who did not receive peer tutoring. Therefore, whenever the teacher is busy with some other activity of school, s/he must utilize and exploit the situation and use these new strategies. In the early school years, beginning has been made in the area of group work. Dewey pedagogy encouraged teachers to engage students in problem solving projects. He argued that learning in schools should be purposeful rather than abstract and that purposeful learning best be accomplished by having children in small groups pursue projects of their own.

Consider Individual Differences and Past Experiences

Each person is different genetically and in terms of their past experiences. Even when a standard curriculum is presented using established pedagogical methods, each student will have a different quality of experience. Thus, teaching and curriculum must be designed in way that allow for such individual differences. Though teachers can’t control students’ past experiences, but they can try to understand those past experiences so that better educational situations can be presented to the students. Ultimately, all a teacher has control over is the design of the present situation. The teacher with good insight into the effects of past experiences which students bring with them better enables the teacher to provide quality education which is relevant and meaningful for the students. According to NCF2005, the curriculum must explicitly incorporate the progression that learner make from the concrete to the abstract while acquiring concepts.

Accept Wrong Answers, Diagnose and Try to Remove Gaps in Knowledge

Childhood stage involves development of one’s physical and mental capacities to the fullest. It also involves being socialized into adult society, into acquiring and creating knowledge of the world and oneself in relation to others in order to understand, act and to transform. Jean Piaget is also of the opinion that in the developmental process of a child there is a step of wrong notions (pre-operational stage), and this wrong and incorrect notion or answer of child is the indicator that now the child is able to understand and learn the right concepts. We can’t expect from a student to be correct all the time, rather the teacher must expect the wrong answers of students, diagnose him/her accordingly and provide variety of learning experiences to remove the gaps in the knowledge. Informal learning in the society builds on the learners’ natural ability to draw upon and construct their own knowledge, to develop their capacities, in relating to the environment around them. For this to happen, opportunities to try out, manipulate, make mistakes and correct oneself are essential.

Help The Child to Learn Without Burden

Present education system is examination oriented. Quality of education is considered with number of subjects in turn number of books with heavy syllabus. This results in burden on students destroying their natural development. Time table does not give young children enough break to stretch, move and play. NFC 2005 elaborates on the insights of learning without burden. This document seeks to enable teachers, administration and other agencies involved in the design of syllabi, textbooks and examination reforms make rational choice and decisions. It also enables them to develop and implement local specific programs. Jerome Bruner, was one of the leaders in the curriculum reform of this era. He and his colleagues provided important theoretical support for what became known as discovery learning, a model of teaching that emphasized the importance of helping students understand the structure or key ideas of a discipline, the need for active student involvement in the learning process and a belief that true learning comes through personal discovery. Thus, according to constructive approach, there is no short-cut method to learning. It takes times to organize and recognize the learned material. The goal of education is not only to increase the size of student’s knowledge base but also to create possibilities for student’s invention and discovery.

Encourage Student’s Initiatives in the Classroom

At elementary level students love and like their teachers very much and think whatever teacher tell them is right. For teachers also the ‘good student’ is one who accepts the teacher’s word as ‘authoritative’ knowledge. Children voices and experience do not find expression in the classroom. Often the only voice heard is that of the teacher. When children speak, they are usually answering the teacher’s questions or repeating the teacher’s words. They rarely do things, nor do they have opportunity to take initiative. According to NCF 2005, the curriculum must enable children to find their voices and nurture their curiosity.

Reorientation and Preparation on the Part of Teachers

If we want our students’ to ask questions and to pursue investigations, sharing and integrating their experiences with school knowledge rather than their ability to reproduce textual knowledge. There is a need to reorient and prepare the teachers accordingly. Teachers need to be prepared to:

• Be receptive and be constantly learning
• View learning as a search for meaning out of personal experience and knowledge generation as a continuously evolving process of reflective learning.
• View knowledge not as an external reality embedded in textbooks, but as constructed in the shared context of teaching learning and personal experience.
• Appreciate the potential of productive work and hands-on experience as a pedagogical medium both inside and outside the classroom.
• Own responsibility towards society and work to build better world.

When the teacher’s guides students to use different approaches to construct knowledge, students become involved in the process of exploratory learning. They interact with each other, share ideas and information, develop valuable problem solving skills by formulating their ideas, discussing them, receiving immediate feedback and responding to questions and comments by their partners. Students learn from one another because while discussing the content, cognitive conflicts arises, inadequate reasoning is exposed, disequilibrium occurs, and thus higher quality understanding emerges. This is level of student empowerment which is unattainable with the lecture format or even with a teacher-led whole class discussion. The empowerment of students produces an environment which fosters maturity and responsibility in the students for learning. The teacher then becomes a facilitator instead of a director and the students become willing participant instead of passive followers. The role of the teachers should be to construct a platform and create an atmosphere where students formulate their own constructs and solutions by thinking critically, become actively involved in defining questions in their own language and work out answer completely instead of reproducing material presented by the teacher as the text book.

Conclusion

To conclude we can say that elementary education is the foundation stage of formal learning. If the foundation is strong the building will definitely be strong. So the augmentation of secondary and higher education depends on the quality and enrichment of elementary education. Learning and development are reciprocally interwoven process, which occur formally and informally across many settings, and the most important stage in education is elementary classroom. The dream of augmenting quality education will be fulfilled in true sense when the students at all the level starting from elementary will be able to construct knowledge rather than receiving it.