Instructivism vs Constructivism

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Our classrooms are filled with Instructivism--the presentation of information for students to remember and process, but decades of Educational and Psychological research tell us that student minds are inherently made for learning without a teacher pouring ideas into their heads.

 

They don't need us to fill them with knowledge. 

The world will do that for them when they engage with it.

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From Jean Piaget to Seymour Papert, research and experience show that a Constructivist approach to education allows for deep learning and meaningful interaction with the world. 

 

From Media Consumers to Media Creators

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The educational value of our modern media technologies does not lie in their use.  Instructivism still sits students passively in front of a presentation, whether it is from a teacher a video on a projection screen.  Students are consuming knowledge.  With a Constructivist or Constructionist approach, students make media for others to consume.

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By creating media that is a public product, and starting with an open-ended assignment, students have a meaningful learning experience whose product exists in the real world.  It is rewarding, and it is a medium that we are better educated by making than by consuming.

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Why Film?

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When a student writes a paper on a topic, they are involved in the same process of research and knowledge-building that they would be in a film, except for one thing--revision. 

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Revision is the heart of creative and academic expression. Nobody's work is complete unless it has been revised two or three times, sometimes completely re-imagined. Have you ever sat down with a student to completely re-imagine their paper with them? I have been teaching for twenty years, and there is little more awkward than trying to get a teenager to look meaningfully at their own writing.

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With film, editing and revision are a natural and fun process that work! 

You can sit down with a student, or a group of students, watch their film in real time and talk about how it works, what works and doesn't work, and they respond and even have their own ideas for improvement.  Subtle matters of timing, imagery and tone are more tangible, you can suggest entirely new approaches, and give extensive revision notes.

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Students work harder to improve their films than other assignments, completing 80-90% of my suggestions, rather than the 10-30% or none that you might see from some students on their term papers.  This is true even if the suggestion is that they do not understand their topic deeply enough and need to open up their research again.  Perhaps it is because students are sophisticated consumers of visual media and can easily contrast their work with the rhythms of what they see on TV and online.

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