A Study on Constructivist Teaching Approach in Mathematics Class Room

Abstract

Constructivism is an epistemology, or a theory of Knowledge construction, a philosophy of learning, used to explain how people know what they know. Its promoters include Piaget, Vygotsky and later-day philosopher Glasersfeld. The constructivist philosophy has been adopted in teaching of mathematics by many enthusiastic teachers in many countries. Constructivist approach learning is an interaction between the learner and learning environment. During this interaction, prior knowledge is used as the basis to interpret and construct new understanding. In other words, learning occurs if a student can construct his/her knowledge and apply or generalize its meaning to new situations, the constructivist approach opens new opportunities for learners as well as challenges for the teachers trying to implement it. In a learner centred situation, the constructivist teacher becomes one of many resources a student may learn from, and not the primary source of information, the teacher act as a facilitator, co-learner, democratic leader and a diagnostician. Researches have established that constructivist teaching approach in mathematics have been much more successful than the traditional methods. In the present paper the author has identified some of the most important reasons for lack of success of constructivist strategy, especially in developing countries.