This study was action researches to establish constructivist perspectives for pre-service teachers. Both I and participants or pre-service teachers were under the same conditions in terms of place and time, so my improvement of instructions was direct...
This study was action researches to establish constructivist perspectives for pre-service teachers. Both I and participants or pre-service teachers were under the same conditions in terms of place and time, so my improvement of instructions was directly associated with them. For the researches, new lesson plans were made through constructivism-based instructions, and several action researches were conducted on the circular process of making plans, field applications, and self-reflections for one semester since September, 2007. The observation of the participants and in-depth interviews were held to study the significance of the constructivist approach to pre-service teachers' education. The attempt to examine the establishment of the constructivist perspectives included six different action researches.
In the first action research, I recognized the problems of traditional lecture-based instructions, thus prepared new lesson plans that can accept learners' opinions in the field in order to help them construct knowledge on their own.
In the second action research, I tried to put the learners' opinions into the lesson plans by paying attention to their various suggestions to stimulate them to play active role in the instructions. Their suggestions were various: field experiences with the children at various ages, practice-directed education that has no gap between theories and applications, and more opportunities to practice teaching children in the field.
In the third action research, the learners were encouraged to take part in the class as active ones. They were promoted to read the suggested text books in advance, share their understandings through discussions, and have inter-subjectivity in social context. They appeared to have difficulties adjusting to the new teaching approach as they were used to traditional one, and so did I.
In the fourth action research, I had to deal with difficulties of their little participation. They were not willing to accept their roles as active learners in the instructions, even when they should. The followings were done to resolve the problems: They came to learn the responsibility of leadership as active learners. They studied the sense of contribution to class participation to construct knowledge altogether. Some devices were created to facilitate the responsibility in the class. They also made great efforts in changing classroom arrangements to boost conversations and discussions among themselves. They consulted conversational manners and improved conversational techniques one another. Social exchange in a community, the feedback on self-reflective journals and interviews were made as well.
The fifth action research was to implement the constructivism-based instruction for the children as the way of practicing the perspectives in the field through new lesson plans with questions to stimulate their thinking. In the process of turning into constructivist pre-service teachers, the misconceptions of the instruction, the mistakes of classroom arrangements, and the problems of designing proper questions for children were widely found. Changing into the constructivist pre-service teachers is not easy.
The sixth action research was to study classroom arrangements as the place of children's dialogues and teacher's appropriate reaction, which was the part of solving problems generated through evaluation and criticism by co-learners.
This whole process had the pre-service teachers learn the importance of building right point of view toward children as the first step of early childhood education, and look for their identity as future teachers. They realized that acquiring constructivist views is as critical as practicing them in the field. That is, practicing the views in the field is another great challenge in the instructions.
I discovered that why the learners failed to take part in the constructivist instructions as active ones was due to overlooking the relationships between teachers and learners. That gave weight to the significance of relationships with learners, helping listen to their silence. Therefore, I tried to have them fully understood what constructivist instructions are, and why teaching methods are to be changed.
This study was to investigate the process of establishing constructivist perspectives for pre-service teachers, and then show what makes it hard, what can be changeable and what experience is for along with specific action processes. There were three major findings: Firstly, lesson plans should accept learners' opinions in the field since they are the starting points of instructions. Secondly, different teaching theories should be related to different teaching practices. Thirdly, instructions should understand the significance of relationships between teachers and learners. The implication of the study is that it emphasized the process of constructivist instructions that works with learners, which has long been overlooked due to effectiveness of education. It re-discovered the importance of relationships with learners for educational improvements as well.