Learners replace or adapt their prior knowledge and understanding with deeper and levels of understanding. Hence, skilled teaching is active, providing learning environments, opportunities, interactions, tasks and instruction that promote deep learning. The theory of social constructivism assures that learning happens mainly through social interaction with others, such as the teacher or a learner’s colleagues. One influential social constructivist, Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), defined the zone of proximal development (ZPD). It is the area lying between what the learner can achieve with the teachers’ guidance and what they can achieve independently focusing primarily on activities.
Thus, active forms of learning encourage students to think and work more creatively to develop problem-solving strategies for confronting unknown or unfamiliar situations they may encounter in the workplace (Tenenbaum et al., 2001; Huggins et al., 2008). Experiential learning that is focussed on individual knowledge is in danger of neglecting the importance of social processes in making that
This gives them the depth to comprehend more sophisticated feelings and better express themselves to other people. To take account these small improvements in the individual, the intellectual tone of society is raised as a whole due to education. John Henry Newman points out that although a student cannot specialize in every subject or study available, a normal distribution of differencing individuals will pursue different fields and thus society benefits balance and diversity on the large scale because there will always be people with expertise on a matter available to share their insight. This ability to make well-informed decisions
In fact, education is about in-parting knowledge based on one’s belief, truth and justification with the purpose of surviving in this changing world. Highly educated people are well recognized and given high reputation in the society. Hence, teaching is a process of sharing information between the teacher and students in a positive, caring, changing and stress free environment where new knowledge must be constructed and tested through student – teacher interaction using different strategies so that children could master knowledge and skills of desired fields including values, ethics, and other social knowledge. To fulfil this purpose, teachers should be active, forward thinking, energetic, knowledgeable, sincere and punctual for changing one’s truth, belief and justification. To satisfy these educational needs, learning should be a fun mechanism for students in which they enjoy by responding, interacting, socializing, inventing, sharing, discovering and deciding about knowledge, skills, values, ethics and discipline by expressing a permanent change in behaviour.
Methods: Students and lecturers at five colleges were given the opportunity to study and teach using a more interactive method of teaching. The core elements of active learning are student activity and engagement in the learning process. Active learning is completely the opposite to the traditional lecture where students passively receive information from the teacher (2). Active learning included any activity, encouraging students to participate in learning approaches to engaging them with course material and enhancing critical thinking as they make applications beyond the classroom. Specifically, pupils were required to engage in a variety of in-class and out-of class exploratory writing assignments and pairs and other small group discussions interspersed among short lectures
Education is the key that unlocks the door to success and a life filled with great opportunities. Being well-educated gives an individual the ability to strive to become the president of the United States or even a CEO of one of the world’s biggest companies. Therefore, education isn’t a tool to take for granted because it expands one knowledge on the world we presently live in and it also, gives us the intelligence to make reasonable decisions in life as we mature. The power of education can escort an individual out of isolation, allowing them to use words to express their deepest thoughts and emotions. In addition, education is not only used to improve someone skills for their career path.
I learned that it is important to spend less time explaining through instruction and investing more time in experimental and error-tolerant modes of engagement. The notion that learning involves students as co-creators and collaborative problem-solvers is indeed an important one, and teachers and schools that work to capitalize on the generational characteristics of sharing, researching, evaluating, and collaborating with peers, are more likely to enact and inspire teaching and learning practices that emulate the forms of sharing and social engagement that are flourishing in the 21st century
Learning can employs effective multi-modal approaches that encourage open discussion, critical feedback, shared understandings, content and representations. Learning promotes continued professional learning, confidence and positive dispositions towards numeracy, opportunities for ‘risk taking’, reflection and discussion, adaptive reasoning and the development of a ‘feedback culture’ (Glenn Finger et al., 2015).We are now equipped to fight globally for the improvement of oneself and for the teachers to apply these for learners. It has also positive effect on performance especially for students with low levels of prior knowledge; they can engage and explore new tools for learning. Although, some students are not adequately prepared for entry-level. But it sets motivation for students, to face the computer environments where they can build and explore; it also develops knowledge and
guidance and assistance from adults, more skilled children, or more knowledgeable others. The relevance of Social constructivist and cognitive development learning theory to this study is that, Vygotsky incorporated the importance of social interactions and a co-constructed knowledge base to the theory of cognitive development. Therefore, cooperative learning instructions also enables social interaction among children and teachers which are one of the important ways children learn knowledge available. In addition, children use conversations in working with their peers in handling exercises, projects and problems. In this way, they exchange ideas and receive information, thereby generating understanding and developing knowledge.
The main aim of this chapter is to introduce the study and its structure. Educators feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when their students perform well and feel badly when they fail. According to James (2009) stated that "Learning" is an internal process that cannot be observed directly (p.45). The change occurs in an individual's ability to respond in a particular situation. In addition Willoughby, a freelance writer and former science and technology specialist (2010) postulated that no two student enter the classroom with identical abilities, experience and needs, their learning styles, language proficiency, background knowledge, readiness to learn may vary widely within a single class group.