I just read over this section on pg. 4 of the Morrison text. It seems to clarify and support what we talked about last week in class, that the way you teach does not necessarily label you as an "ism" (i.e., behaviorism or constructivism). Right off the bat, Morrison is making a very clear distinction between learning theory and instructional theory. I like the terms Morrison used to describe each: calling the theories "descriptive" (learning theory) and "prescriptive" (instructional theory).
This has been quite relieving to find out that no matter how you believe that humans learn, all instructional strategies are still on the table as viable options. I do agree that how we believe people learn will affect the instructional strategies that we employ. During my undergrad teaching methods courses, I was pretty much led to believe that anything that resembles "traditional teaching" is a waste of time. I found myself in my first year of teaching completely at a loss with implementing a curriculum that did everything in the constructivist column of the table (if you've seen that table), however had no resources or support to pull it off. After several months of frustration, I resorted in many ways to what I was familiar with, and that was teaching how I was taught: lecture and book work Boring!!!
This is actually one thing that led me to integrating technology into the classroom. I found that I absolutely hate lecturing day in and day out, so I tried to find any kind of supplement possible to replace me being the talking head.
As I said earlier, it is very refreshing to begin to understand now that it is just fine and in fact preferred to employ a range of instructional strategies, and you don't have to live in one "teaching methods column" or another based on the "-ism".
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Amen, bruthah!
I can see how you would be at a loss in your first years of teaching, especially trying to implement all constructivist teaching methods. At times there just seems to be a lot of nothing going on in the classroom except getting into groups and talking. I too have tried to implement constructivist approaches into teaching accounting. I have seen some good results from group work, however, it can also be very frustruating because of my lack of practice and knowledge of grouping activities and management. I too am relieved to know that there is a place for other types of teaching approaches that work for different types of information and learning areas.
I have a question, if we are not using the constructivist approach are we just lecturing and being boring? does it have to be this way?
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