On Constructivist Teaching Strategy of Landscape Architecture Design
Liyuan Li, Yonggang Xu · 2016
Based on Constructivist Teaching Theory, the paper puts forward three teaching strategies in the course of Landscape Architecture Design.Firstly, problem-solving-oriented teaching is helpful for students to investigate and research.Secondly, repositioning of teacher's role in class is good for students to construct their own knowledge and teacher should play as a guide and coordinator in the process.Thirdly, cooperative learning is contributive for students to display their initiative and thus develop their unique creativity.At the end of the paper, potential difficulties are also pointed out in teaching practice, such as students' inertia in study, negative impact of rigid mental set, and teacher' s insufficient understanding of constructivist teaching methods. Constructivism and Constructivist Teaching IdeasConstructivism is a sub-branch of cognitive psychology, which is a result of the rising of Piaget's developmental stage theory and Vygotsky's Cognitive Developmental Theory, both of which are against behaviorist psychology.Piaget believed that one's childhood plays a vital and active role in a person's development.To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience.He also believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, and then adjust their ideas accordingly instead of accepting all the knowledge they receive without selection.[1]The major theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition.Vygotsky believed that every function in the child's cultural development appears first on the social level and later on the individual level, which applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts.All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.Vygotsky also held that the potential for cognitive development depends upon the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD): a level of development attained when children engage in social behavior.Full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction.The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.[2] Constructivist learning theory holds that all knowledge is constructed from a base of prior knowledge.Children are not a blank slate and knowledge cannot be imparted without the child making sense of it according to his or her current conceptions.Therefore, children learn best when they are allowed to construct a personal understanding based on experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.Constructive teaching is based on constructivist learning theory and mainly be demonstrated from two perspectives.First, learning is a process of cognitive construction in which learners, with different backgrounds, from various angles and through their distinct information processing, shape their individual cognitive structure.That is to say, learners are actively involved in a process of constructing meaning and knowledge as opposed to passively receiving information.Learners are the makers of meaning and knowledge.Constructivists believe that learning is not a process of knowledge transmission from teacher to student but a process in which a learner actively construct his own knowledge structure.Instead of being a passive knowledge receiver, learners, with the help of the teachers and others, are actively involved in the construction of personal knowledge structure which 6th International Conference on Management, Education, Information and Control (MEICI 2016)