making meaning

Here at ktm-2, we've been behind the curve.

We've been thinking constuctivism was about constructing knowledge.

It's not.

Constructivism is about constructing meaning.

• In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms by Brooks & Brooks

• The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand by Howard Gardner

• D.C. Philips: Thus, von Glasersfeld's epistemology.... leads him ....to argue that each individual science and mathematics student is responsible for building his or her own set of understandings of these disciplines;....teachers cannot assume that all students
  have the same set of understandings, or that their own ways of understanding are shared by their students. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: the Many Faces of Constructivism (pdf file) by D.C. Phillips Educational Researcher, Vol. 24, No. 7, pp. 5-12

• According to [constructivist] theory, learning occurs only when students make an effort to construct their own understanding out of a problem situation. Constructivist-Compatible Beliefs and Practices among U.S. Teachers (pdf file) by Jason L. Ravitz, Henry Jay Becker, Yan Tien Wong Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations U. California Irvine July 2000

Naturally all this stuff is driving parents crazy, especially seeing as how constructivist educators have stopped teaching for mastery but have carried right on testing for it. Well, everywhere except Scarsdale, that is.

Unfortunately, our plight doesn't elicit much interest from policy wonks and education journalists, most of whom^* apparently believe that a quarter century of constructivist training in our schools of education has little to do with the achievement gap. (Interesting, isn't it, how it never seems to be progressive educators who make any headway narrowing the gap...I wonder why that is?)

So naturally I've been enjoying the spectacle of eduwonk getting the constructivist treatment:

OK, I am increasingly convinced that there is a reading crisis in our schools. On his blog, Fred Klonsky, a teachers' union head in Illinois, writes about the article(s) that Rick Hess and I have done on the competition - equity tension. But he ascribes a conclusion to us that is not in the article...and then he further tries to muddy the issue when called on it. Klonsky says that what he did is "make meaning" of what we wrote. Oh brother, try just reading what it says. It's an article, not a work of political philosophy.

That was Tuesday, June 19.

Today is Thursday, and eduwonk hasn't recovered:

....one lame, pseudo post-modern BS, attempt to spin out of this, “make meaning” from it as though this is a political theory seminar and we’re debating Montaigne....

yeeeaaahhhh

Let's have more of that!



update from Linda Seebach:

When I was a graduate student in mathematics (decades ago, that was) a significant part of the first-year courses was intended to develop students' intuitive understanding of the unfamiliar and abstract object that populate the mathematical universe, and you'd better believe that the professors expected all of us to acquire "the same set of understandings" they themselves had.

constructivist lollapalooza (thank you, instructivist)


^* with a few notable exceptions (see: Linda Seebach, Debra Saunders, Andrew Wolf)