What is? Cognitive Constructivist Theory
The How To Guide
Learning is a social process and it’s best done when we’re interacting and manipulating and providing structure and feedback as a social group. I want to list some assumptions about our our classes, at least from the way that people who do research with education think about the learning space.
- One is that personal connection to content leads to learning. Learning is a social element where you have that personal interaction.
- The best understanding happens when a learner actively is manipulating or using or doing something with the content that we’re working in.
- People learn best when they’re interacting with each other.
- Learning is a social process.
Effective teachers are there to monitor and guide student learning by providing that timely structure, timely scaffolding, and feedback of how students are doing. That’s a big part of what our role is is helping students to not see failure as an endpoint but rather this is an opportunity for them to further learn a particular piece.
About the Author
Dr. Stephanie Kusano, is the assistant director for the Center for Research on Learning & Teaching at the University of Michigan. Her background is in engineering with a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, a Master’s degree in biomedical engineering, and a Doctoral degree in engineering education. Kusano’s research focuses on how students’ learn, particularly outside of the classroom.