1. Would you like to have the key of the world of knowledge or give it to the students? Discuss with your partner.

2.  Would you like your student to view himself/herself or you want to describe it yourself?  Discuss with your partner what happens in each of the situations. Write in 2 lines.

3. Choose from the following  Previous knowledge reinforcement  Primary source of data  Single subject concept learning  Multiple perspectives  Step-by-step instruction  Authentic assessment  Knowledge construction  Memorization  syllabus directed goals  Exploration  Not allowing errors  Learner control  Problem solving  Teachers as coaches

4. What points have you put together? What is common among them? Compare it with the notes you have.

6. What did you find in the picture? Did you see more when you looked again? Discuss with your partner

7. Constructivism  "Constructivism" is a philosophical viewpoint on how the mind forms and modifies its understanding of reality  The premises of constructivism as an epistemology are:  Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.  Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.  Initial understanding is local, not global.  Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity.

8.  The constructivist perspective is clearly divergent from earlier views of education that presumed we could put or pour information directly into a student's head. Starting from constructivism, real learning can occur only when the learner is actively engaged in operating on, or mentally processing, incoming stimuli.  Furthermore, the interpretation of stimuli depends upon previously constructed learning. Nothing here should be taken to imply that the mental processing involved in learning is necessarily conscious. In fact, much, perhaps even most, of the learning we do is subconscious.  Thinking or learning about the process of learning, rather than the material being learned, is often called a meta-cognitive process.

9. You are planning to teach a topic in science. What are the areas that you will look into? Write your role in one column and student role in another column, in action verbs only. Mention the topic, level of students.

10. Go to slide7, see if your philosophy matches with constructivism.

11.  For pedagogic purposes, the tenets of constructivism can be rephrased as follows:  Students come into our classrooms with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning.  Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretation of observations.  Students are emotionally attached to their world-views and will not give up their world- views easily.  Challenging, revising, and restructuring one's world-view requires much effort.

12.  Constructivism is an epistemology, a theory of knowledge used to explain how we know what we know. A constructivist epistemology is useful to teachers if used as a referent; that is, as a way to make sense of what they see, think, and do.  Our research indicates that teachers' beliefs about how people learn (their personal epistemology), whether verbalized or not, often help them make sense of, and guide, their practice.  The epistemology that is dominant in most educational settings today is similar to objectivism.  That is to say, most teachers view knowledge as existing outside the bodies of cognizing beings, as being separate from knowing and knower.

13.  Discuss with your partner whether you can pour into the mind of the student?  Is it possible to bang into the student’s mind, all the information, by hitting it hard?  What do you conclude from slide 11, 12?  Write in 2 or 3 lines.