CONSTRUCTIVIST

TEACHING
Interactive, Collaborative, Integrative and Inquiry-based
 Constructivist teaching is based on the belief that
learning occurs when learners are actively involved
in the process of meaning and knowledge
construction as opposed to passively receiving
information.

Features of Constructivist
Teaching
 Authentic activities and real-word environments
 Multiple perspectives
 Wholistic, integrative
 Self-directed learners
 Meaningful Learners

Characteristics of Constructivist
Teaching
INTERACTIVE
TEACHING
 Learning is an active process.
 Learning is also a social process.
 Every student can serve as a resource person.

Why do we promote interactive

teaching?
Teacher:
 must ask specific, non-intimidating feedback questions
and HOTS questions.
 must make the focus of interaction clear.
 must create the climate favorable for genuine interaction.
 must do less talk so the students talk more.

Teacher’s Tasks in Interactive

Teaching-Learning
COLLABORATIVE
TEACHING
 Collaboration goes beyond interaction. When
students collaborate for learning, they do not just
interact, they work together and help one another for a
common goal. This is peer-to-peer learning.
In collaborative learning each one is his
“brother’s/sister’s keeper”. It takes on many forms: 1)
twinning or partnering or forming dyad; 2) triad; 3)
tetrad (the musical quartet); 4) small group (beyond four
but less than ten).

Collaborative Learning
Teacher must:
 Begin with the conviction that every student can share something in
the attainment of a goal.
 Structure tasks in such a way that the group goal cannot be realized
without the members collaborating.
 Make the goal clear to all.
 Ensure that guidelines on procedures are clear especially on how their
performance is assessed.
 Must make clear that at the end of the activity, they have to reflect
together.
Teacher’s Tasks in Collaborative
Teaching
INTEGRATIVE
TEACHING
 Integrate comes from the Latin word “integer”
which means to make whole. Integrative teaching and
learning means putting together separate disciplines
to make whole. This affirms the “boundarylessness” of
disciplines. There are no demarcation lines among
disciplines taught.

Interdisciplinary Teaching
 Integrative teaching is also transdisciplinary. This
means connecting lifeless subject matter to life itself.
When the subject matter gets connected to real life, it
becomes alive and interesting.
How can teachers connect subject matter to life?
 Depart from teaching content for test purposes only.
 Reach the application phase of lesson development.

Transdisciplinary Teaching
 In the 3-level teaching approach, you teach as planned,
either deductively or inductively, but cap your teaching with
value level teaching. Connect your cognitive or skill lesson
with value teaching. In fact, it is only when you give your
lesson an affective or value dimension that your lesson
becomes meaningful because that is when we connect cold
subject matter with warm-blooded people.
The three-level teaching is teaching information for
formation and transformation.

Three-level Teaching
 If integrative teaching is making things whole, it also
means putting together the multiple intelligences (MI) of
the learner as identified by Howard Gardner. It is also
considering varied learning styles (LS). This does not
mean, however, that you will be overwhelmed with 9
different ways of teaching content at one time by making
use of a variety of teaching activities to cater to these MIs
and LSs.

Multiple Intelligences-based and

Learning Styles-based Teaching
 To do integrative teaching, a teacher needs a broad background
for him/her to see readily the entry points for interdisciplinary
integration.
 To do integrative teaching by transdisciplinary and 3-level
teaching mode, a teacher must be able to connect subject matter
to values and to life as a whole.
 To be able to integrate MI and LS, the teacher must be familiar
with MIs and LSs and must have a reservoir of teaching activities
to be able to cater to students with diverse MIs and LSs.
Teacher’s Tasks in Integrative
Teaching
INQUIRY-BASED
TEACHING
 This is teaching that is focused on inquiry or
question. But effective inquiry is more than simply
answering questions or getting the right answer. It
espouses investigation, exploration, search, quest,
research, pursuit and study. It is enhanced by
involvement with a community of learners, each
learning from the other in social interaction.

Inquiry-based teaching
 In a knowledge economy, knowing has shifted from being able to
remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it. The
capital is intellectual-knowledge. Therefore, students must be taught to
nurture inquiring attitudes necessary to continue the generation and
examination of knowledge throughout their lives. The skills and the
ability to continue learning should be the most important outcomes of
teaching and learning.
Besides, with knowledge explosion it is impossible to teach all the
information we want to each students. Teach them instead how to look
for and evaluate information.

Why do we encourage inquiry based

teaching and learning?
 Effective problem-solvers know how to ask questions to fill
in the gaps between what they know and what they don’t know.
Effective questioners are inclined to ask a range of questions:
 What evidence do you have?
 How do you know that it’s true?
 How reliable is this data source?

They also posed questions about alternative point of view:

 From whose viewpoint are we seeing, reading or hearing?
 From what angle, what perspective, are we viewing this situation?
 Effective questioners pose questions that make casual
connections and relationships:
 How are these (people, events or situations) related to each
other?
 What produced this connection?

Sometimes, we pose hypothetical problems

characterized by “if” questions:
 What do you think would happen if……?
 If that is true, then what might happen if.....?
 Inquirers recognize discrepancies and phenomena in their
environment, and they probe into their causes:
 Why do cats purr?
 How high can birds fly?
 Why does the hair on my head grow so fast, while the hair on my arms
and legs grow slowly?
 What would happen if we put a saltwater fish in a freshwater
aquarium?
 What are some alternative solutions to international conflicts, other
than wars?
Source: Arthur L. Costa,
Describing the Habits of Mind
 When using inquiry-based lessons, teachers are
responsible for:
 Starting the inquiry process;
 Promoting student dialog;
 Transitioning between small groups and classroom
discussions;
 Intervening with clear misconceptions or develop student’s
understanding of content material; and
 Modeling scientific procedures and attitudes

Teacher’s Tasks in Inquiry-Based

Teaching-Learning
 Some specific learning process that people engage in during inquiry-learning
include:
 Creating questions of their own
 Obtaining supporting evidence to answer the question(s)
 Explaining the evidence collected
 Connecting the explanation to the knowledge obtained from the investigative process

Inquiry-based learning covers a range of activities to learning and teaching,

including:
 Field work
 Case studies
 Investigations
 Individual and group projects
 Research projects
Inquiry-Based Learning Activities