Question

Practice Using What You Have? Learned: Applying Constructivist Perspectives

Mr.? Swope's high school biology students are learning to use a dichotomous key to identify fish. As you observe his? teaching, think about his applications of constructivist principles.

Using what you know about constructivist? principles, explain why you think Mr. Swope asks students to work in groups as they learn to use the dichotomous key.

Answer 1

the constructivist approach is the one in which there is use of didactic approaches where there would be use of programmed instruction as well as behaviorism, in which people learn as they construct knowledge and not only acquire it. this knowledge would be on the basis of the hypotheses coming from the environment. a dichotomous key is the one in which the users determine the identity of certain items present in the natural world in the form of mammals or reptiles or rocks or fishes. in this case, the item is a fish and the children are trying to identify the fish. if the teacher would directly tell the students about the identification of the fish, the next time they would have to identify an organism, it would become fairly difficult to figure it out. in this case, the children are working in groups, which would lead to generation of ideas coming deom different people of the groups. there would be suggestion of hypothesis, with a reasoned rejection and involvement of critical thinking that would allow the children to figure out the correct identification of the fish on their own.