Schwartz et al. - 2009 - Constructivism in an age of non-constructivist assessments

referenceArchiveUUID: "6ebd749a-193a-493b-ad15-3c621b12eada"
fullTitle: "Constructivism in an age of non-constructivist assessments"
authors: ["Daniel L. Schwartz","Robb Lindgren","Sarah Lewis"]

Another response to Kirschner et al. - 2006 - Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work, published a few years later. The main claim of this paper is that the reason the evidence for/against Constructivism is so equivocal is that it’s often being evaluated through non-constructivist lenses. And this matters because we actually (often) care about constructivist outcomes—that is, how well a learning activity sets up a student to subsequently learn from novel situations—rather than just recall or application of acquired knowledge/skill.

They review several experiments which include preparedness for learning measures—that is, the test itself includes a learning opportunity. In these experiments, students who had Inquiry-based learning opportunities before direct instruction were more able to apply new knowledge from a worked example to a distant transfer problem.

{preparedness for learning} measure: {assessment of how well students can learn from new material, i.e. during the test} ☉

{sequestered problem solving} measure: {traditional measure of how well a student can perform a task on a test, without being able to learn anything new during the test} ☉

Q. “Preparedness for learning” measures are presented in contrast to…?
A. “Sequestered problem solving” measures. ☉

Q. Give an example of a “preparedness for learning” assessment design.
A. During a test, give students a worked example and a straightforward problem where they can practice applying it. Later in the test, include a distant transfer question which makes use of the method from the worked example. ☉