2. A Constructivist Style of Education

The second element required for a learning classoom is a constructivist education perspective. As I understand it, Constructivism in education seeks to enable students to assemble new information from a number of sources and so 'construct' a system of understanding via repeated experimentation with novel concepts or ideas. Constructivism encourages learners to be more confident about processes of problem-solving and explorative rather than impatient. In Constructivism, the emphasis of education lies with inspiring and stimulating the students interest in learning, rather than simply having the student regurgitate a series of unintegrated curricula that lack ongoing meaning or relevance for a learner.

On one a site I found concerning constructivism in the classroom,
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/construct.html

I found the following:

"Bruner (see Kearsley, 1999) provides the following principles of constructivistic learning:
Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn (readiness).
Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the student (spiral organization).
Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given).
Advocates of a constructivistic approach suggest that educators first consider the knowledge and experiences students bring with them to the learning task. The school curriculum should then be built so that students can expand and develop this knowledge and experience by connecting them to new learning. Advocates of the behavioral approach, on the other hand, advocate first deciding what knowledge or skills students should acquire and then developing curriculum that will provide for their development."

Taken From: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/construct.html