Discussion:
How a Constructivist Approach Can Help Students Learn
Scenario: You have just taught a unit on African history for the first time in your high school world history class, and you are quite disappointed in the results of the unit test. Many students seemed unable to remember the basic facts necessary to answer the multiple-choice questions and hardly any were able to answer the general essay question about significant contributions made by different African civilizations. Yet you had provided your students with a list of the important people and events you wanted them to remember from the chapter, and in your lectures you had tried to emphasize elements of our current culture which originated in Africa. Since your students didn't seem to get much out of the unit, you wonder if you should just go back to teaching mainly European history next year, or if there is some way you could improve your teaching so that students would learn better in this area.
Question: Describe one strategy a constructivist would suggest to remedy this learning problem and explain how some aspect(s) of Vigotsky's constructivist theory would support this strategy as being useful. (Note: Feel free to say a brief word about your assumed constructivist cause if you need to in order to explain the reason for your strategy.)