Introduction

Imagine a classroom where you sit in your desk and watch the teacher talk at the
front of the room while you space out thinking about what you want for lunch for an
hour. No talking, moving, or learning a thing. Sound familiar? Its similar to a lot of my
educational experience. My position on education focuses on how my educational
experience could have been improved as well as on the few positive learning experiences
and inspirations. I am inspired by practitioners of Constructivism particularly Jerome
Bruner and Lev Vygotsky, as well as John Dewey, Albert Bandura, Viola Spolin, and my
fellow instructors at The Second City. I approach this paper with experience working
with children in an active and lively theatre setting at The Second City. I see myself as a
practitioner of creating constructivist opportunities and giving students positive and
active experiences reaching multiple intelligences in a student-centered classroom.
Article One: What Education Is
I believe that the goal of education is to create autonomous learners and help them
acquire lifelong learning skills. Learners need to be able to use what they already know
and be guided into what they are trying to learn through scaffolding. Scaffolding, support
provided to a learner from an expert such as a
parent or teacher, is meant to give just enough
guidance for the learner to accomplish a goal, which
can manifest in a variety of ways. For example,
when toddlers begin to walk, parents might hold
their hands helping them get their balance. The
parent guides the toddler until they eventually get

their balance on their own not needing the parents support. In elementary school students
begin the process of reading comprehension. Teachers can use scaffolding to guide a
learners comprehension by asking them specific questions, using graphic organizers, and
implementing cooperative learning. High school students that are learning to drive a car
can through the guidance of an expert be provided with videos or pictures to model the
various driving procedures until these procedures become second nature to the learner.
The goal of scaffolding in these situations is to give the learner just enough support so
they eventually can perform the task on their own.
If the goal of education is to create autonomous learners, it is imperative that
education promote personal discovery. Learning is too often following an expert up at the
front of the room telling you what you need to learn. Students become too dependent on
other people providing them with the information they need. Learners should not be
provided with the answer but rather the materials to discover the solution themselves. As
Jerome Bruner once said, learning is figuring out how to use what you already know in
order to go beyond what you already think (Nunan, 1992). Students use what they
already know to explore questions, use manipulatives, and interact with their
environment in order to discover solutions. Personal discovery also helps a learners
develop their natural interests, habits, and views ultimately leading learners on a path of
self-discovery.
If education is about learning through personal discovery, it is imperative that
learners communicate their discoveries in order to learn from the experiences of their
peers. The way one student solves a problem may be a different way from how another
student solves a problem. Peer-learning provides opportunities to learn other approaches

that may be more efficient. There is a saying that great

minds think alike. I believe that great minds think
differently and communicate their innovative ideas in
order to learn from the experiences of their peers. It is
also extremely practical for the real world since people
frequently learn from the experiences of others.
If the goal of education is to create autonomous
learners, then it is important that education keeps up with
current day technology. Learners need to be given the
tools that can deepen their understanding of meaning and
increase their efficiency while developing real world skills. For example, although some
do not have access, think how learning would be different if students did not know how
to use a computer. Those learners would be at a big disadvantage since computers
provide numerous amounts of time-efficient, educational support as well as real world
skills. According to National Public Radio, more than two-thirds of working Americans
use computers at their jobs. This statistic shows that jobs require learners to be
knowledgeable about current day technology such as computers to be successful.
Therefore, in order for learners to be successful in the real world their education needs to
keep up and with our technological society.
Article Two: What the School Is
Like the innovative educator Lisa Nielsen (2013) once said, If school life is not
empowering students with the tools they need to change their world then were not doing
our jobs and that needs to change. I believe school is a learning environment that should

be full of concentrated real-life experiences in order to prepare learners for the real world.
It is important that school is an environment that resembles real life so learners are able to
build appropriate knowledge, skills, interests and behaviors before entering the real
world. Like the real world, school should give learners a variety of opportunities in order
for students to discover their interests. It is important that learners are exposed to a
variety of subjects, clubs, activities, and people in order to grow and explore their
personal interests.
If school is a learning environment modeling the real world, it needs to create a
safe and supportive environment where students can learn from failure. As J.K. Rowling
once said, it is impossible to live without failing at something. In the real world we do
not have teachers to tell us what is right and wrong. We construct our own knowledge
from the world around us. Therefore, failure is a big part of learning in the real world.
For example, you may have a terrible job interview and did not get the job. However, it
is important to pinpoint what and why it went terribly and what can be improved for the
future in order to learn from failure. Thus, school needs to be a safe space where students
understand that it is acceptable to fail as long as they can learn from the experience. This
can be extremely hard to do if school is an environment merely about grades. If school is
merely about getting an A rather than the learning experience, students will be more
interested in getting a grade and less likely to take risks and explore concepts.
If school is a representation of the real
world, then teachers need to serve as models for
appropriate behavior. Albert Banduras Social
Learning Theory states that behavior is learned

from the environment. Children observe and imitate behaviors around them. Thus, it is
critical that teachers promote positive behaviors such as being caring, considerate, hard
working, accountable, and assertive individuals in a variety of situations. If teachers
embody positive behaviors, learners will imitate these behaviors ultimately making them
more successful in the real world.
Article Three: The Subject Matter of Education
I believe the subject matter of education needs to resemble real world contexts.
Students are more invested in material that is applicable to their everyday life. If
problems are realistic, students are more likely to use their previous knowledge to help
relate concepts in order to make sense of the problem. Therefore, students will be better
able to make sense and apply concepts to their everyday life.
I believe that the subject matter of education needs to take into consideration the
interests of the students. It is important to respect the previous experiences, knowledge,
and interests of each student in order to keep students engaged. The information will also
be more valuable to the student if it involves what they are interested in, and they are
more likely to retain the information and apply it to
their everyday life.
Subject matter should be presented in a
different ways so students get a variety of
experiences. Like Howard Gardner states, there are
different intelligences such as visual, spatial, bodilykinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal,
linguistic, and logical intelligences. Since people are

intelligent in a variety of ways, it is important that instruction caters to a variety of

intelligences in order to maximize conceptual understanding.
Article Four: Nature of the Method
I believe that the method of instruction should be organized in a way that
promotes meaningful learning. Jerome Bruners
Three Modes of Representation promotes
meaningful learning through the progression of
three distinct modes: enactive, iconic, and symbolic.
The enactive mode involves encoding
action-based information and storing it in our
memory as learning begins with an experience.
This mode involves hands-on learning so that
learners begin the process with some type of action
such as touching, feeling, or manipulating some concrete object. In math class students
frequently utilize manipulatives such as coins, blocks, cubes, etc. to help solve a problem.
For example, take the following problem: Jenny had twelve slices of pizza. She wanted
to give equal shares between her and two other friends Bob and Rob. How many slices
would each person have? Students could use 12 triangular blocks to represent the slices
of pizza and split them up into three groups to show the solution. Students made sense of
the problem first using concrete materials.
Once students have made sense of the problem through their concrete experience,
they can progress to the iconic mode, which is a more pictorial stage. This mode involves
using images or visuals to represent the concrete situation that was performed in the

enactive mode. For the same math problem, students could use drawings of pizza or a
diagram to show how many slices each person would get. Since students already
concretely understand the problem, they are learning to represent the same problem
pictorially.
Learners now can progress to the symbolic mode, which is frequently referred to
as the abstract mode. Information is now stored in the form of a symbol or code. This
symbolic form has the ability to be manipulated because it is more abstract opposed to
actions and images of the first two modes. The use of words and symbols allows a learner
to organize knowledge by relating concepts together. For example, using the same math
problem, we could represent that problem using symbols J, B, and R for each person in
an equation which could be represented as J+B+R=12. We could then see how many
slices each person would have by dividing 12 by 3. These symbols have meaning
because learners have concretely and pictorially experienced the problem. Thus, learners
are using symbolic representations but are able to better understand these representations
because of their previous experience. These symbols become meaningful and not just
random meaningless variables. It is too often that learners dont make sense of problems
because of unclear abstract representations. Thus, it is important that teachers organize
instruction to generate meaningful learning such as in Bruners Three Modes of
Representation.
I believe that instruction should be based on the interests of the students.
Instruction should offer choices for students, which ultimately empowers them as the
learner. Students are more likely to be engaged with the material if instruction is based
on their choice. Also, students need be active in their educational choices to discover

their personal interests. In addition making a choice is a real world action. Having
students make appropriate choices prepares them for making appropriate choices in the
real world.
In addition instruction needs to give students the time to learn from each other.
Students need the ability to communicate their own knowledge as well as learn from the
experiences of their peers such as with the think-pair-share strategy. This strategy not
only gets students communicating content but also promotes real life skills such as
teamwork, using effective communication, and applying appropriate jargon that are
desired in the real world.
Conclusion
Now imagine a classroom where you get a choice in your education, where
you are engaged in a variety of activities, where you converse with your peers to
discover solutions and expand your thinking, where you have the access to various
real life tools, where you feel supported and encouraged by the people around you,
and where you feel prepared for the real world. This is not the learning
environment I grew up with but one that I appreciate and strive to promote with
strategies and theories from proponents of Constructivism, John Dewey, and Albert
Bandura in My Pedagogic Creed.

Bibliography

Biehler, Robert. Psychology applied to teaching. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

PBS. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html
Learning Theory in Education. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html
Scaffolding. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zoneof-Proximal-Development.html
About.com Psychology. Retrieved November 4, 2013, from
http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/a/sociallearning.htm
Nunan, David. Collaborative language learning and teaching. Cambridge [England:
Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print.
Nielsen, Lisa . "Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator." Lisa Nielsen. N.p., n.d. Web. 4
Nov. 2013. <http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/12/break-politicalbandates-boycott.html>.