Initiating Constructivist Learning Strategies through Computer Generated Concept Mapping

摘要

We have all felt movement of the tide in education toward resurrecting the concept of constructivism in the hope of increasing meaningful learning for our students. The question of why it has met with so little success in the past has to be pondered, and we have to ask what it is that has to be done if such a worthwhile concept is to prevail in the future. One speculation as to why constructed learning has not met with success in the past is that it may have been over sold as unstructured discovery learning. Discovery learning may be an ideal, but too often the approach is just too impractical. Perhaps we need to bring educators into discovery-learning constructivist practices more gradually. This paper deals with one attempt to do so by introducing constructivist learning strategies more gradually through a guided discovery approach that employs computer-generated concept mapping.