Perspective! CONSTRUCTIVISM THEORY IN EDUCATION

AMANDA V. ESPINOZA

The Bloom’s Taxonomy is considered as the ladder of learning goals that aids in setting the aims or learning results for learning experience. It aims to deliver help to educators as they create teachings that nurtures cognitive skills. The main goal is to help schoolchildren to develop their higher order thinking skills that permit them to involve in critical, creative thinking that they can use in different areas in their lives.

Based on the aforesaid taxonomy, creating is the highest level of thinking and requires deepest learning and the greatest degree of cognitive processing. It involves producing or creating new or something that is original and it is closely associated and significantly related to constructivism as theory and philosophy in learning.

Constructivism is an existing concept in education which pictures that learners do not simply gain cognition and understanding through direct process of teaching or direct transfer of knowledge rather they formulate new understanding and body of knowledge through their experiences. They undergo the process of intergrating their prior knowledge to the new information to create something new.

Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner, John Dewey and many other philosphers had various philosophical positions relative to the acquisition of cognitive skills of individuals. They even presented different insights on constructivism wherein an individual learns through social interaction and cultural environment, through their personal experiences, through scaffolding learning and many other ways.

In constructivism, the prior knowledge and experiences of the learner are recognized. Learning takes place when learners are using their experiences to activate their cognition skills and add more to these or create something new out of these. For the Behaviorist school, they started to provide help to learners by understanding where the students are and what they have, from there, they were able to find strategies on how to enrich what the learners have.

Therefore, it is really good to note that learners acquire knowledge in different and many ways but educators need to ensure that these learned cognitive skills as constructivists can help them realize their worth as moving individuals, to serve and be of great help and positive influence to others.

-oOoThe author is Master Teacher I at Sto. Domingo Elementary School Lubao North District