As I mentioned a week ago, my teaching style best aligns with constructivism and sociocultural frameworks. I appreciated Dr. Bonk's thorough delve into the great men behind some of these theories (took me back to my undergrad intro to ed days!)
Listening to Dr. Wilson discuss cognitivism and constructivism, along with their specific differences and alignments, was a nice intro into this week. Something that really resonated with me was how we need to be designing "deep and peak learning experiences" for our students to derive meaning from them. And then once that experience we have hopefully nurtured and guided has become so deep, we move our students to a level of transformational learning. What a powerful term and way to view learning!
If you've been keeping up with my ramblings for the past few weeks, you know that I homeschool my children. Part of the reason for doing so was to give them these deep learning experiences, filled with maker spaces and active learning that engages them as individuals, collaborators and learners, as Wilson(2018) describes. What better way to do this than by inviting them to be part of their own learning and creating?! I'm not sure how long we will homeschool, but for now I'm taking advantage of every minute of it.
Finally, closing out, I think it's important to touch on Dr. Wilson's view that no theory is complete, whole, and perfect alone- "no single approach is complete and perfect" (2018, p. 64), but rather, as educators, we need to look to our students to see what they need from us and how we can best facilitate the information needed to be taught.
Wilson, B. G. (2018). Constructivism, for active authentic learning. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 60-67). New York, NY: Pearson Education.
This week was a refreshing change from last week. I appreciate you and Melissa being so willing to talk about the adventures of homeschooling and exploring different schooling options. It has opened my eyes and made me ponder what is best for my kids in the future, once they are school age. I completely echo your sentiments about Dr. Wilson’s view. We must do what is best for the students, not what is best for us as educators and designers.