Constructivism Essay

Constructivism is a fresh approach to learning for me that I find to be interesting. Grade school and throughout my college years, I have been taught new information through an alternate approach which is associationism. Constructivism has my attention because instead of me just being educated by one person at a time I will be educated by several people. Different people will be able to bring their talent, experiences, abilities, and view points to the table and this teaching style will teach not only the students but also the professor something as well. The professor can then go on to teach other students and other people these different ideas. It is helpful to hear things from another stand point. This can give you information through the minds' of others and can help you to understand and create different views that you may have otherwise not thought about.

Although constructivism is a fun and exciting approach to learning I must admit that this will be a challenge for me. I have grown accustom to listening to the teacher or professor lecture, memorizing the information, and then producing the information back out on a test. Once I have passed the exam I forget about the information because I have not talked about the material no farther than what was taught to me. I am not comfortable with speaking in front of the class as of yet, but on the first day of class I was pushed to do so. It was a scary feeling at first but I was able to communicate my ideas to the professor and my fellow classmates. With this being said I am not just learning about Psychology of Marriage in this course but I am also learning to be comfortable and articulating when speaking in front of groups of people.

Being taught through the constructivism approach will allow the students to apply the information to their own lives'. This teaching method is authentic and is taught through real world scenarios. Constructivism will be an effective teaching method because if someone can relate the material to their lives they will then discuss the information with others, apply the information to their everyday lives, and begin teaching others about this information. It has been proven that if you use the materials which you have learned, then you will better remember the information years later.

The professor mentioned when learning through constructivism that the knowledge is ongoing. I think this is important for the future because instead of limited the knowledge we learn in this course to only Psychology of Marriage, we can use what we learn in future careers or courses and add to the knowledge. It is always great to have a base or some kind of understanding of the material before adding the complex materials. Through this teaching the students will learn that learning is ongoing and to challenge their prior knowledge of the subject. This will help the students to become better thinkers because this will allow them to think outside of