Computers, Constructivism and 'Engaged Learning': Sue ... - CiteSeerX

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Computers, Constructivism and ‘Engaged Learning’: Sue Shaw’s Story Dr Geoff Romeo, Monash University

Abstract ‘Sue Shaw’ is a Year 6 teacher at Moomba Park Primary School. Although Sue is fictitious, she is an amalgam of the many teachers I have met who understand that there is more to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools than simply teaching students about computers and how to use application software. This paper describes a typical morning in Sue’s classroom. It shows how she and her students interact with the technology and how she weaves it into a dynamic curriculum designed to challenge and motivate. Sue’s ideas on what is good teaching are discussed. In exploring her rationale for the use of ICT in the classroom the concepts of constructivism and engaged learning are investigated.

Introduction With the growing popularity of the World Wide Web, email, and multimedia, it is easy to assume that the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the classroom is a 1990s phenomenon. It is certainly true that much of the technology that we now enjoy using only became available in recent years. However, the use of ICT in education has a long pedigree and, underpinning much of the current thinking regarding the use of computers in classrooms, is over two decades of research and reflection. Consequently, a substantial, and growing, body of literature is now available. Significant documents, such as Teaching, Learning and Computers: Report of the NACCS (NACCS, 1983), Teaching, Learning and Computers in Primary Schools: A Report (NACCS, 1985) and Technologies for Enhanced Learning (Smith, 1994), demonstrate that the current ideas on the use of ICT in education are the result of a long and complex journey that always, at least in Victoria, had at its core the enhancement of teaching and learning. Even a cursory glance reveals that the primary goal of using technology in the classroom has been, and still is, the promotion of student centred learning environments. The difficulty has been, and still is, in articulating and describing exactly what it is we mean by student centred learning environments and what role ICT is to play in helping to establish them. Success for boys: Boys and ICT Module

It is popular to label technology-enriched teaching and learning environments as constructivist and to describe them using the discourse of constructivism. I think this can be confusing especially when the academic debate focuses on theory instead of practice. The purpose of this paper is an attempt to describe the technology-enriched teaching and learning environment that I think we should be striving to achieve in schools and, relating that to what we know about good teaching, constructivism and engaged learning. The paper concludes by stating that constructivism may be an inappropriate label and that ‘engaged learning’ might be a more relevant and useful one. Why start with a story? Many of us - teachers, administrators, politicians, the media, parents, the community - are struggling with the notion of ICT in education. Is it computer education or computers in education? Is the objective Microsoft Office whiz kids or independent thinkers and learners? During 1999 I have used Sue Shaw’s story on many occasions while speaking to teachers about ICT in the classroom. It seemed an appropriate way to express my views. The story is not supposed to be definitive, but a vehicle for discussion and reflection. Sue Shaw, her class and her school are fictitious, but they represent an amalgam of ideas and people I have met. This is Sue’s story.

Sue Shaw’s story Sue arrives about 8.00 am. Already, there are children milling around the entrance to the classroom. It is the same every morning. She knows what they want. They want to check their e-mail, crib some computer time to finish off a project, experiment with their latest MicroWorlds creations or simply to chat. Sue will let them in the room. They are no trouble, and she will be able to prepare for the day without too many interruptions. She knows they are excited, they started a new topic a couple of weeks ago – ‘Australian Discovery and Exploration’ and the children have been jumping out of their skins with enthusiasm. When Sue starts a new topic she does a lot of brainstorming, concept mapping and question development. She likes to give the children an opportunity to discuss what they know about a topic and what they would like to know. The concept mapping helps them to organise their thoughts and © Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2006

ICT make connections; the questions are used to drive an inquiry into the topic. She believes the children develop a sense of ownership when she does this. Some of the other teachers think it is a waste of time, but Sue believes it is a significant factor in motivating the children. She sits at her desk, plugs her laptop into the network socket, and fires it up. As she logs on, she glances at the children. They have organised themselves into groups around the six networked computers that are placed strategically around the classroom. One of the computers is connected to a large television screen. The machines come to life. The children all know what to, where to go, what to get. It never ceases to amaze Sue at how quickly they develop the necessary skills. It took her ages. She did the Computing Across the Primary Curriculum (CAPC) course, another couple of short courses with the Computing in Education Group of Victoria (CEGV – now ICT Education Victoria) and the South Eastern Regional Computer and Technology Centre (SERCT), a Navigator School practicum at Apollo Parkways PS, hours of practice, hours of frustration. The kids taught her a lot. They did not care that she was not an expert, neither did she. Her attitude was that after 20 years of teaching and experience she was still a student and would be until her dying day. She hoped that attitude rubbed off on her students. As the network accepts her password Sue carries out the following tasks.

Check e-mail She checks her e-mail. There are a few messages from the listserves she subscribes to, the one about problems with MicroWorlds looks interesting, so does the one about web sites for student examples of MicroWorlds projects. She will read them later. She will also read a couple of personal e-mails. She deletes many messages without reading them. She has her own personal e-mail address. There is also a class email address. She checks the class e-mail. There are many messages addressed to the children and to the class. The children have been sending messages to their keypals for about two months now. The keypals are in grade six at Mesa Elementary School in Phoenix Arizona. Sue found the school through the Global Class-room web site run by the Department of Education, Employment and Training, Victoria (DEET). There are many safe collaborative projects at this site and Sue is planning to get involved in the Environmental Murder Mystery

Success for boys: Boys and ICT Module

Resource 3 Project next term when the children investigate an environmental topic. For the moment, keypals is enough. Again she glances at the children. They are reading email from the American students. There is much laughter and excitement. Ms Juanita Alvarez, the grade six teacher from Mesa, has sent a message to Sue asking for some information about the Platypus. Sue replies, telling Juanita she will send it in a couple of days. Sue also includes the address of a web site related to Australian Animals. Although Sue has never met Juanita personally, they become great friends. They are having preliminary discussions about a teacher exchange.

Netscape Sue opens Netscape and goes to her own homepage, which has been conveniently bookmarked. She opens her work program and checks what is planned for the day. Sue’s homepage sits on the school’s Intranet and is available to other teachers. The Intranet is a local area network, it connects to VicOne which is a wide area network, both of course, have gateways to the World Wide Web. Sue finds the Intranet very useful and has just started to write her own web pages using MS FrontPage. She uses the Intranet to store her work program (she no longer produces a hard copy) and other curriculum documents, to store files that the children might need, to publish the children’s work, and to store documents related to the children’s assessment. The Intranet is not accessible to the public and all folders and files can be password protected. A tape back up system installed by the systems manager automatically backs up her work. Sue also finds VicOne very useful. Apart from being able to keep in touch with colleagues, she finds the resources supplied by SoFWeb and the Global Classroom to be excellent. She is also confident that using such sites as gateways to the WWW is a safer way for the children to surf. VicOne’s Digital Resource Centre has also been great, allowing children to find all sorts of media that they can use in their presentations. The school administration also relies heavily on the Intranet and VicOne. The roll is now marked electronically, agendas and minutes for meetings are posted, DEET documents can be quickly searched, notices can be quickly e-mailed to all staff. What excites Sue most about the Intranet is how the children will use it. Now the children are publishing their stories on the local network as simple text pages.

© Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2006

ICT As the Intranet is only accessible to the staff and students logging on at school (staff can log on from home) she does not have to worry about publishing names and faces. Sue cannot wait to investigate the potential of the new digital camera, the video capture card and the new scanner. She thinks the children will be doing some exciting multimedia publishing soon.

Staff bulletin Sue checks the staff bulletin, published on the Intranet each morning by the principal’s office. She has yard duty at lunchtime and a fund raising meeting after school, Grade 2Y are going on an excursion to the zoo. The technology has helped to reduce the number of face to face meetings Sue has to attend but it has done nothing about bloody yard duty! A child, Kate, wanders over to Sue with a question about MicroWorlds. Her Logo MicroWorlds procedure has a bug and she cannot find it. Sue moves to the back of the room. Sue is also stumped but Jason, another student, spots it straight away Kate has typed a capital “O” instead of a zero. Great work Jason. Jason smiles.

The morning progresses For the next half-hour, Sue prepares for the 9.00am onslaught. Chalkboard, worksheets, reading material, check computers, coffee. As the bell rings some of the children line up outside, those who have been cribbing some extra computer time, seem oblivious. Sue soon settles all the children into their seats and deals with the usual administrivia - lunch orders, mark roll (on the laptop), collect the lamington money, morning talk. Instruction starts with a class lesson on the apostrophe. Sue has noticed that the children do not understand when to use an apostrophe to show possession. How many times has she done this? She uses some examples from the children’s work to make her point. When the children write in their diaries this morning Sue wants them to include a sentence or two to show that they understand. As the children finish their diaries, they move off to tackle a series of activities related to the topic. The focus question this week is What was it like to be a convict on the First Fleet? Most of this week’s activities are geared to help the students answer this question. One group is working on Postcards from Port Jackson; this is not a computer-based activity. The students are


Resource 3 drafting their postcards and will later use quills and some newly acquired calligraphy skills to complete the final products. The First Fleet database is running on one of the computers and on the large screen TV. The children are using the database to investigate the crimes of the First Fleeters. The children have hypothesised that the First Fleeters were a rotten bunch of evil criminals. They are gathering evidence to prove their hypothesis. A group of about seven students looks at the large screen TV and asks what is meant by Theft of Apparel. A search for Murderers scores zero hits - this is significant. On the other computers, students are working on MicroWorlds projects. One pair of students has a map of the world displayed. When you click on the start button, a turtle dressed up as a sailing ship sails from England and heads for South America. As it reaches South America, a text box pops up explaining why the First Fleet stopped in Rio De Janeiro. Eventually the whole First Fleet journey will be traced out and documented. Another group of students is working with Sue. They are reading a book titled Excuse me Captain Cook (Salmon) and discussing who really discovered Australia. Later Sue will tap into the Explorers database and on the large screen television show the children maps that clearly demonstrate the progressive discovery of the Australian coastline by Europeans. She will also explore a new CDROM, Lore of the Land, to investigate the discovery and exploration of Australia from an aboriginal perspective. These activities will go on until morning recess. Sue will have great difficulty getting the children out of the classroom so she can have a cup of tea. The children are tremendously self reliant, disciplined and motivated. They work well together in groups and seem very focused. This is no accident. Sue has spent considerable time honing affective skills and making sure the children know what is expected of them. The curriculum in this room is integrated but not always. The children are drilled in number facts. Traditional chalk and talk lessons are taken when appropriate. The emphasis however is mostly on creative problem solving. Sue does not have a problem with outcome based curriculum documents and her methods. She works hard to make sure activities are linked to learning outcomes across all the Key Learning Areas (KLA).


ICT Sue knows she must try to cater for individual differences and different learning styles. She also knows that it is very important to challenge the children intellectually and creatively. This is not always easy but the technology helps. Bloom (1956a, 1956b) and Gardner (1993) also help. When Sue designs activities for a topic she uses a grid which crossreferences Bloom’s taxonomy with Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (Romeo, 1998a, 1998b). Some of the activities are computer based, but many are not. Using the grid is good way to balance the use of the technology and integrate it across the curriculum. She does not always get it right and she does not always fill a cell with an activity but she is getting better at it. Planning with colleagues certainly helps. Sue hates yard duty, but she loves her job. It is her responsibility to create and manage the teaching and learning environment in this classroom. It is a creative and intellectually challenging task but it is exciting and rewarding. It is also incredibly complex. Sue deserves to be called a professional.

Constructivism, constructionism and ‘engaged learning’ It is popular to label Sue Shaw’s teaching as constructivist, sometimes constructionist. The two terms are often confused and not well understood by some teachers. According to Henry (1996) constructivism is underpinned by the writings of Kant, Piaget, Dewey Bruner (TIP) and others (Henry, 1996). Constructivist theories view knowledge as abstract symbolic representations in the head of individuals (CSCL). Knowledge exists in the minds of people only and is constructed from within in interrelation with the world. The meanings or interpretations people give to things depends on their knowledge. Therefore the individual through perception and action must reconstruct knowledge, which can never be certain. This requires time and energy. Within the constructivist paradigm there are different views and interpretations, an important distinction is made between cognitive oriented constructivist theories and socially oriented constructivist theories. Cognitive oriented constructivist theories emphasize the exploration and discovery on the part of each learner as explaining the learning process. In this view knowledge is still very much a symbolic, mental representation in the mind of the individual.


Resource 3 Socially oriented constructivist theories stress the collaboratory efforts of groups of learners as sources of learning (CSCL). Constructionism, underpinned by the writings of Papert, Harel, Resnick and others (see Harel and Papert, 1991) is a theory of learning, which asserts constructivist theories. Constructionists, like constructivists, believe that learners make their ideas by constructing their own knowledge structures. However, they add: the notion that this kind of knowledge building is particularly effective in a context where learners are actively engaged in constructing something (such as sandcastles or computer programs) in a social context to which they can attach personal meaning. (Sinclair, 1998) If constructivist theory is accepted then what impact does this have on teaching practice and classroom organization? According to the paper ‘What is constructivism?’: ... constructivist teaching emphasizes learning and not teaching, encourages and accepts learner autonomy and initiative sees learners as creatures of will and purpose, thinks of learning as a process, encourages learner inquiry, acknowledges the critical role of experience in learning, nurtures learners natural curiosity, takes the learner’s mental model into account, emphasizes performance and understanding when assessing learning, makes extensive use of cognitive terminology such as predict, create and analyze, considers how the student learns, encourages learners to engage in dialogue with other students and the teacher, supports co-operative learning, involves learners in real world situations, emphasizes the context in which learning takes place, considers the beliefs and attitudes of the learner, provides learners the opportunity to construct new knowledge and understanding from authentic experience. The ‘engaged learning’ movement is an attempt to turn constructivist theory and what we know about good teaching and learning into practice. Engaged learning is a strategy which supports students in constructing knowledge in meaningful ways by allowing them to establish their own learning goals, explore appropriate resources and work together in groups to research real life issues which are meaningful to them, multidisciplinary in nature, and in which teachers serve as guides, coaches, facilitators and co-learners.


ICT A significant component of the ‘engaged learning’ push in the US is the use of technology as a tool for learning, communication, and collaboration. Many examples of ‘engaged learning’ projects, teaching strategies and units of work can be found at various web sites. (See for example the Handbook of engaged learning projects.) At these sites you can also find checklists and indicators that can help teachers decide whether engaged learning is happening in their classrooms. The rhetoric of ‘engaged learning’ is constructivist. For example: Engaged learners become energized by learning ... Engaged learners are collaborative ... In engaged learning, tasks are authentic, challenging, and multidisciplinary ... engages the learner with the resources and learning context to construct new knowledge and skills ... They are knowledgebuilding learning communities ... Collaborative work that is learningcentered often involves small groups or teams of two or more students within or across classrooms ... Teachers are facilitators, guides, and co-learners ... Students who engage in learning are explorers ...

Conclusion So how should we describe what is happening in Sue’s classroom? Is constructivist teaching appropriate? Is engaged learning a better description? I think it is fair to say that Sue’s teaching embodies many of the constructivist principles described above and by most indicators her students are engaged learners who use ICT for learning, communication, and collaboration. Describing it as constructivist tends to embroil the practitioner in the complex web of academic debate; describing it as engaged seems to me to be more appropriate, but perhaps there is a case for modifying and building what the Americans have started to suit the Australian context. For example, in primary schools integrated curriculum is more in vogue than multidisciplinary curriculum and while agreeing that at times teachers should be facilitators, guides, and colearners, there are also times when they are lecturers, disciplinarians, and managers of the teaching and learning environment.

Resource 3 Teaching and learning descriptors Perhaps an appropriate list of descriptors for Sue’s classroom could be:

• active involvement and a balance between process

and content; • development of high level thinking skills, self esteem and self awareness, motivation and commitment to learning; e • ncouraging risk taking, learning from errors, and taking responsibility for one’s learning; f • ostering co-operative learning, self evaluation and self correction; r • elating new knowledge to old; • using a variety of teaching methods, presentations and materials, and design of interesting and challenging activities, which stimulate intellectually and creatively; a • llowing students time for reflection on content and learning; r • ecognizing that a lot of unintended learning occurs and that children learn a lot from each other; d • eveloping shared ownership - encourages motivation and builds commitment to learning; d • eveloping authentic purpose - developing a purpose, a meaning for classroom activity; e • ngendering a positive view of learning; • catering for a variety of learning styles and individual differences; • the learning of global skills, which are applicable to a range of subject areas and life experiences; and • the use of technology for learning, communication, and collaboration.

Resources Software Explorers Database First Fleet Database Lore of the Land MicroWorlds MS FrontPage



ICT References Bloom, B. (Ed.), 1956a, Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals - Volume 1, Longmans, London. Bloom, B. (Ed.), 1956b, Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals - Volume 2, Longmans, London. Gardner, H., 1993, Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice, Basic Books, New York. Handbook of engaged learning projects, 1997, www-ed.fnal. gov/help/cover.html, accessed February 2000. Harel, I., & Papert, S. (Eds.), 1991, Constructionism: Research reports and essays, 1985-1990, Epistemology & Learning Research Group, The Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA. Henry, G.,1996, Constructivism and educational practice, Australian Journal of Education, v.40 n.1 p.19-45. National Advisory Committee on Computers in Schools, 1983, Teaching, learning and computers: Report of NACCS, Commonwealth Schools Commission, Woden ACT. National Advisory Committee on Computers in Schools, 1985, Teaching, learning and computers in primary schools: A report prepared by NACCS, Commonwealth Schools Commission, Canberra. New times demand new ways of learning, No date, NCREL North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, www. ncrel.org/sdrs/edtalk/newtimes.htm, accessed February 2000. Romeo, G., 1998a, Developing an instructional strategy for the integration of the computer into the primary curriculum, Educational Theory and Practice (ETP), v.20 n.2. Romeo, G., 1998b, Computers across the curriculum: Developing an instructional strategy. Paper presented at the 15th Australian Computers in Education Conference, Adelaide. Salmon, Excuse me Captain Cook. Sinclair, Nathalie, 1998, Constructionism, www.cecm.sfu.ca/~loki/Papers/ IPS/node8.html, accessed February 2000


Resource 3 Smith, R., 1994, Technologies for enhanced learning, Directorate of School Education, Melbourne. What is constructivism? Learning styles and CAE, http:// hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/ lindavr/lindapg1.htm, accessed February 2000.

Web sites Constructivism: www.stager.org/omaet/alternatereading.html Constructionism: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/ constructivism.html Engaged Learning (enGauge): www.ncrel.org/engauge/ The ‘Theory into Practice’ Database: http://tip.psychology.org

Contact Dr Geoff Romeo, Senior Lecturer in Education, Monash University email: [email protected] Geoff Romeo is President of Information and Communication Technologies in Education Victoria (ICT in Education Victoria. (Editors’ Notes: Teachers interested in considering Howard Gardner’s ideas about his Theory of Multiple Intelligences might read other references listed in the two articles in the last issue March 2001 of this journal ICT in Education - by Susan Ferres and Nina Netherway and Kathy Lynch and Helen Warnod. Teachers interested in considering further ideas about Constructionism might read the following references.) Harel, I., & Papert, S. (Eds.), 1990, Constructionist learning, The Media Laboratory MIT, Cambridge MA. Kafai, Y., & Resnick, M. (Eds.), 1994, Constructionism in practice: Rethinking the roles of technology in learning, MIT, Cambridge MA. Papert, S., 1993, The childrens’ machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer, Basic Books, New York.
