Reading Introduction:

This weeks reading was chapter 11, “Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective” by Ertmer, P. A. & Newby, T. This chapter was very intresting and got me thinking about what type of instruction style I use. These theories are new to me, are they new to you?

Here is a summery of the three styles:

Behaviorism – Students learn through stimuli and are reinforced through positive feedback or rewards. Teacher uses rewards, practice, and repitition.

Cognitivism – Teachers help students understand and organize information. They use strategies like outlines or diagrams.

Constructivism – Studnets learn by doing, exploring, and building understanding based on experiences. Teachers use real-world problems/senerios and encourage collaboration to solve the situation.

A visual of the three types of instruction in a Ven-diagram to show their overlap.

Photo from Nav’s blog

As I was trying to find a visual for the three styles, I stumbled upon a past students blog post from 2020 for a EDCI 339 class. The topic was similar to mine and had this great image which is easy to follow and understand. I thought this was pretty cool and I’m interested in exploring his website.

My Instruction Style:

I consider my current instruction style to be more constructivist. One of my top teaching values is a focus on setting students up for future sucsess in their adult lives. This includes life, coping, and problemsolving skills/knowledge. In order to do this I tend to add in real-world situations and problems. I love collaboration and include it in most of my lessons. I beleave everyone needs to learn how to work with various types of people and that collaboration is a nessesary life skill which magority of people use daily in their adult lives. I also prefer to act as a guild raher than a lecturer. When students ask me a question, I don’t blankly tell them the answe. I make them think about it and I ask guilded questions to push them towards the answer and let them problem solve. I think this fits the constructivism category well. I do use the other two styles as well, but I think I use this one the most.

My Examples:

I have many examples of me using the constructivism style in my instruction. However, I’ll limit it to two quick examples from different learning environments.

Example 1 – I teach a lot of dance classes, and the start of each season looks very similar. I always start out with team building activities as a way to break the ice, get to know eachother, and build a strong welcoming team. The closer a dance group is with eachother, the better they will preform. My favourite activity to play is called “The Human Knot”. If you haven’t heard of this before I highly recomend checking it out.

Heres a video tutorial if your curious!

This game is not only fun, but it gets students to collaborate, commuicate, critically think, and problem solve. I never let them give up as every knot can come undone. This can be frustrating for some students who want to start from the beginning. However, that teaches them to control their emotions and persevere. These are vital life skills that they will most likely need in their future careers.

Example 2 – Another dance related example is about when I teach a hip-hop move. I love to use real-world analogies when describing a move. For instence, when we are ducking low in a circle I say “Pretend your ducking under a fence”. Another one is when we do the party groove “Fila”, I always explain how you lead with your shoulder as if your holding heavy buckets of water which makes your hands come last. Relating dance moves to common real-world things helps kids understand and replicate.

Note – I haven’t had much opportunity to instruct in a classroom using these styles but I have created mock lesson plans that do. During my recent practicum, I included self discovery activities and links to outdoor education. We taught a unit on poetry which included poetic devices. My student and I made a real-world link between poetic devices and song writing. He had found that many songs include various poetic devices. This was a really cool moment for me as a teach because he self discovered that, although it was in the back of my mind.

Conclusion:

I think I use a mix of all three styles with an emphasis on constructivism. Being well rounded is a great quality in a teacher and I hope to learn more on how to incorperate all three instruction types.

Thanks for reading my blog!

References:

CBC Kids News. (2023, December 13). What is AI and how does it work? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/MVAAoRqXHZo

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2018). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: Historical Roots and Current Trends. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism