Constructivist Education in an Age of Accountability [Hardcover]

This book contrasts authentic approaches to education with classroom practices based primarily on standards external to the individuals who are supposed to learn. While other books tend to promote either a desperate scramble for meeting standards or determined resistance to neoliberal reforms, this book fills that gap in ways that will inspire practitioners, prospective teachers, and teacher educators. Mandates pay only lip service to constructivist and social constructivist principles while thwarting the value of both students and teachers actively creating understandings. Authors in this book assert the central importance of a range of constructivist approaches to teaching, learning, and thinking, inviting careful reflection on the goals and values of education.?

1. Teaching as if children matter ?

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2. The place for Deweys constructivism of intelligent action in the American meritocracy of Thorndike ? ?

3. The Confucian concept of learning ? ?

Section II: Engaged Learning for Understanding: STEM Education

4. Pedagogic doublethink: Scientific enquiry and the construction of personal knowledge under the English National Curriculum for science ??

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5. The practice turn in learning theory and in science education

6. How constructivism can boost success in STEM fields for women and minorities

Section III: Other Literacies