The reading on “Generating and Testing Hypotheses” relates to constuctivism in that the student who is going to generate a hypothesis must understand certain facts before he can even hypothesize, and therefore must search out these facts in an active manner. After attempting to organize and understand these facts, he must then construct his hypothesis, and formulate a way to test it. All of this is very active and student-centered learning. And an artifact, in the form of an experiment, or a survey, or a report, can be presented to a class, or placed on display, or published on a blog.
At a deeper level, the generation of a hypothesis draws from a student’s current schema, or overall view of the world, whereas the testing of the hypothesis may very well cause a student to feel what Orey referred to as disequilibration (a term coined, along with the following few, by Seymore Popper) – a feeling of discomfort because of a new fact that doesn’t fit into the student’s world view. This discomfort can be relieved either by assimilation of the new fact into the student’s current schema, or by a process called accommodation, where the student actually adjusts his world view to accommodate the new fact. All of these processes are just what is meant by constructivism, which in the words of Orey is “a theory of knowledge stating that each individual actively constructs his own meaning [of the world].”
My field of physics (and I suppose any field of study for that matter) actually grows by the generation and testing of hypotheses. And the history of physics is rife with examples the battles between assimilation and accommodation among the scientists of all eras, with the discovery of new facts that did not fit into the neat schemas of the times.
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Timothy, I enjoyed reading your post. I really liked you connection to schema. I feel that a person's prior knowledge and experiences are of great importance when considering how they learn and what they learn.I am a firm believer in it being a valuable part of learning and have always worked very hard to make connections to students' schema when I teach. It is a huge part of the constructionist learning theory, considering a students' prior knowledge would effect how they construct knowledge, and I am a little disappointed that I did not include it in my thoughts!
ReplyDeleteSarah Horner
Thanks for the comment, Sarah. I agree that trying to get a glimpse into a student's schema is important, and difficult. I admit that I seldom try to make those connections in a personal way (for example, this year I have 167 kids!). My best bet is to make the connections in a general way - "world views" shared by the majority of my kids. Luckily I have a teenager of my own still at home, so I can make at least some connections. I hate to think how hard it will be for me in ten years' time! Parent-teacher conferences were just last night, and at my school most of them were 3-party in scope (parent-teacher-student) and I saw about 30% of them. This helps me get a better feel for each student's schema.
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