Summing up the Constructivism Debate.

According to constructivism way of learning, people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. So knowledge is created not acquired that way we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know.  

In the classroom, to promote constructivist it means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing.

I n that video of Sugata Miltra, he says   it is not making learning happen but letting learning to happen. The teacher should rise a question and let the learners adventure.

With this, does learning take place in a school?

Yes it does but strongly learning does not take place in a school setting only. People learn wherever they are. In that video if students designed their schools, you really see those students curious about their world; they are creating the knowledge not just acquiring it. It is not trying to move every human being  to pass through the same gate. You can learn wherever you are. In the 21^st Century learners should steer their own learning.

In most schools lessons are teacher- centered not students- centred, and this affects real learning. So it is high time schools were sensitized about what really causes authentic learning. Because the systems now in schools looks only at the IQ not the unique intelligence.  

So we can only say learning is taking place in a school when teaching is organised in such a way that it puts the learners at the steering which is constructivism.

Some of the pros of constructivism are; 

1. By grounding learning activities in an authentic, real-world context, constructivism stimulates and engages students. Students in constructivist classrooms learn to question things and to apply their natural curiosity to the world.
2. Education works best when it concentrates on thinking and understanding, rather than on rote memorization. Constructivism concentrates on learning how to think and understand.

       However constructivism has some disadvantages and some of them are;

1. Social constructivism leads to "group think." Here I feel  the collaborative aspects of constructivist classrooms tend to produce a "tyranny of the majority," in which a few students' voices or interpretations dominate the group's conclusions, and dissenting students are forced to conform to the emerging consensus..

2. I also think that various kinds of instruction -- in particular Project Follow Through   are time consuming and may lead to students lagging behind.