Examined how teacher education influenced preservice teachers' beliefs about the roles, practices, and purposes of education. Surveys of university faculty and beginning and exiting student teachers indicated a lack of professional norms across teacher education programs regarding education's purposes. Certain types of teacher education programs…

Suggests that the teaching/learning/research process should be rethought of as a collaborative social learning for constructivism to be meaningful in science education. Includes perspectives on George Kelly's personal construct psychology and Glaserfeld's radical constructivism. (AIM)

Instead of presenting a body of research attesting to constructivism's effectiveness, Lynn Chrenka cites a litany of "supportive" comments from dead geniuses. The teacher as expert and lecturer is anathema to constructivist doctrine. Sages who speak passionately and authoritatively about a subject they love are increasingly rare in public schools.…

Compared the effects of constructivist instruction and instruction based on texts and demonstration on third-graders' conceptualization of force. Found that constructivist instruction was more effective. Patterns of reasoning related to force were identified in levels of conceptualization. (JPB)

Presents seven classroom practices for beginning and senior science teachers. Categories include community, curriculum, constructivist connections, confidence, competence, computers, and caring. (YDS)

Explores social constructionism as an alternative to cognitive therapy, which assigns causative primacy for psychological problems to the cognitive process of the individual knower. Social constructionism underscores the inextricable connection between the personal and the social, challenging the merit of decontextualized accounts of psychological…

Examines educational change from the perspective of differing research and development paradigms. Describes total quality management, zero defects management, systems thinking, and implications of these paradigms. Also discusses postmodernism, constructivism, and the future for development in education. (AEF)

A review of environmental education literature revealed a paucity of constructivist-based research. A review of science education research of this type situates different approaches to educational research in relation to different epistemologies. Reviews constructs used in constructivist science education research. Concludes with proposals for…

Discusses the use of educational media in compulsory schooling in Europe and focuses on teacher's needs for new competencies in using educational multimedia. Topics include constructivism, situated learning and multiple intelligence; literacy, multimedia competence and the Fiks model (pedagogic/principles of learning, didactics/organization, ICT…

Describes a "Basics of Teaching Physics" course as an approach to training teaching assistants (TAs) in science, math, engineering, and technology (SMET) departments. The regular graduate course is based on constructivist learning: TAs construct their own understanding through guided questions, problem solving, reading and analyzing papers,…

Examines how, through discourse processes, a third grade teacher and her students came to situationally define science in their classroom. Uses a discourse analytical approach to examine the classroom members' experimentation logic, their explanations and scientific decisions, and their accounts of events. (Contains 82 references.) (Author/YDS)

Illustrates an optimistic view of music education focusing on: (1) the use of a more constructionistic philosophy; (2) the use of music technology to teach music more effectively to a wider audience; and (3) a more considered approach to assessment that includes both traditional and less-traditional ways for students to demonstrate understanding.…

Offers guidelines to faculty and designers in higher education regarding transitioning from face-to-face classroom instruction to Web-based instruction. The framework used involves four perspectives: managerial, including student needs; pedagogical; technical; and social. Compares Web-based design under objectivist and constructivist assumptions.…

A professional development experience introduced 102 traditional teachers from rural Michigan to constructivist pedagogy over a 3-year period. Participant comments reveal three themes: frustration with the uncertainties of changing mindsets and incorporating constructivism into practice; the usefulness of representing thoughts about constructivism…

Focuses on defining constructivism, which includes learning as an active process of knowledge construction and instruction as a process of supporting that construction. Discusses 10 constructivist assumptions about learning. Describes 11 actions that define the constructivist teacher. (AEF)