From Teachers-Centered to Student-Centered: A Constructivist Evolution

Constructivism represents a shift in perspective about the nature of knowledge, learning, and teaching. According to constructivists, truth and knowledge are created by humans and so they do not exist outside of the human mind. According to von Glaserfeld (1984), “…students construct understanding.” They do not only reflect and mirror what they read or hear. Even in the lack of comprehensive knowledge, learners seek meaning and will hunt for patterns and order in the world’s occurrences. According to constructivism, a teacher must serve as a facilitator whose primary goal is to assist students in taking an active role in their education and creating links between new information, existing knowledge, and the learning processes. In order to assess constructivism’s potential and use it intelligently and successfully, educators must have a solid grasp of what it entails. Therefore, from a constructivist standpoint, the teacher’s major duty is to establish and preserve a cooperative problem-solving atmosphere in which students are free to build their own knowledge while the teacher serves as a facilitator and mentor. Assuming that people create information rather than acquire it from others, the constructivist paradigm encourages students to actively participate in their own learning process. From the constructivist viewpoint, the ways in which information is imagined and acquired, the kinds of knowledge, skills, and activities that are prioritized, the roles that teachers and learners play, and the methods by which objectives are set are all stated differently (Christie & Stone, 1999).