An Earth Adventure - Constructivist Learning

Warner, A. (2009). Creating earth adventures: Self-guided programs to connect children with nature. The Green Teacher, 85, 3-8.

Summary of an outdoor constructivist lesson

An Earth Adventure is a program developed to help youth rediscover the natural environment. An Earth Adventure includes:

-hands-on activities
-an engaging storyline with a final discovery
-time to reflect in nature
-links to local natural history and environmental information
-opportunities to work together
-suggestions to reduce our environmental impact (4)

Essentially, students participate in an adventure through nature. They play a role in the adventure and actively help to progress the storyline. In doing so, the student has a chance to uncover information about the past, present, and future of their story's setting.
A successful Earth Adventure takes practice in program design, "environmental education...creativity, writing skills, and attention to detail" (7). However, the greater the planning and preparation, the greater the success of the program will be.

Why is this article relevant to teaching?

An Earth Adventure is a somewhat alternative approach to teaching than the well known lecture-based style. This approach is based on the constructivist learning theory.

What Wiki Says about constructivist learning theory -
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28learning_theory%29)

Dallas's Wiki Summary

- Knowledge and meaning is created from our own experiences.
- Mainly adopted from Jean Piaget's ideas of internalizing knowledge.
- Learning is seen as unique and guided by more knowledgeable individuals.
- The student determines the importance and truth attributed to shared knowledge and is thus responsible for their own learning.
- Subsequently, motivation for learning is internal instead of being applied externally.
- In the classroom, the student and teacher relationship needs to be changed. The teacher becomes a facilitator who asks questions and converses with the student to aid the student in reaching their own understanding of material.
-Meaningful learning comes from social and environmental interaction. Students should not be isolated but should help build the collaborative knowledge of the classroom.
- The teacher, as part of the classroom, does not hold the "correct" viewpoint, but instead holds another viewpoint in which the students can use to solve a problem.
- Diversity in a classroom is important for developing deeper meanings.
- Students need to learn in many different contexts. If the students are expected to learn how to think from a feminist perspective, they need to take part in a feminist activity in which the feminist context is identified and applicable feminist thinking is modeled by the teacher.
- (Side Note) In addition, Albert Bandura would argue that effective modeling requires students to be attentive, motivated, and able to access and retain pertinent information, as well as, be able to present a clear reproduction of the modeling being presented.
- Assessment no longer involves testing, but instead is based on the dialogue between the teacher and student.
- Knowledge is not divided into strict disciplines but instead flows between subjects.
- The classroom should be a challenging environment for the student, and the students should be showing mastery of problem solving and well as the problems involved.
- Constructivist learning is not a free-for-all. There needs to be a balance between the underlying structure which guides the student towards a particular outcome and the student's freedom to pursue the knowledge they find relevant.

Criticism

- How can constructivist approaches work within the Mathematics and Science disciplines?
- What about students who do not have experience in free thought?
- Students learn in different ways, what about those who do not want to participate?

Criticism of Criticism

- Problem-based learning is structured and constructivist.
- Learning should revolve around behaviour and change, not just memorization.

Criticism of Criticism of Criticism

- If you start children with "learning by doing" they will develop slower cognitively.
- Lazy teachers will simply turn discovery learning into just discovery.
- The fundamentals of mathematics cannot be learned through simple discovery.

Criticism^4

- Constructivist learning does not need to abandon structure. However, as youth get older, less and less structure should be provided to the student.
- At the core of constructivist learning is expert guidance.

Cheerio.
Dallas.