Constructivism Case Study

In both approaches, the objectives were the same; the students were to gain an understanding of measurement and how it operates. In both approaches, instruments were used to determine how long an object was.
In the traditional approach students were explicitly told how long the whale was but the teacher wanted them to have an idea of just how long 100 feet actually was. In the constructive approach students were to figure out the length of the boat. Determining just how long it actually was came through comparisons to other real life objects that the students were familiar with. These same comparisons could have been made in the traditional approach, but they were not introduced. Another difference is that because the students in the traditional approach did not apply their information in another way, the internal processing of the information was limited. The students in the constructive approach could relate the lengths of several real world objects to the length of the boat helping them encode the information in more meaningful ways.
The students benefited from the constructive approach because they gained a deeper understanding of the concept. The retention of this information will most likely be easier to retrieve because it is attached to several prior schema's the children have in their lives. They had to draw from alternative resources which allowed for a large amount of creativity. The ability for the students to engage in this kind of thinking process will greatly benefit them the next time they are confronted with a challenge that seems impossible.
A significant drawback for this kind of instruction is that there is a lot of time involved. It took two days for the students in the constructive approach to accomplish what it took perhaps 20 minutes for those in the traditional approach to accomplish. This makes it difficult when the instructor must teach a significant amount of information in a limited amount of time.
Another drawback comes in the form of initial emotions experienced by the students and the teacher. It seemed difficult for the teacher to withhold information that she knew would be beneficial to the students. It also seemed very uncomfortable during those moments of silence when no one seemed to know how to handle the situation. The types of feelings can be huge stressors for students who are used to being provided with steps or a formula.
Looking at the benefits in comparison to the drawbacks, it seems that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in the long run. The students seemed to have learned more and in the future it is likely that ideas will be more forthcoming more quickly. As students gain experience with comparisons in their surroundings they will have more tools to draw upon in future endeavors.
The constructive approach provided opportunities for critical thinking because it forced students to analyze their approach and determine what was working effectively and what wasn't. Questions directed from the teacher guided their thinking to evaluate better ways of collecting and conveying information. When students realized that their body parts were all different lengths and that the receiver of their message would not be able to identify with an one person in the class, they had to figure out a way to meet the criteria of length and sending an understandable message. Critical thinking is the ability to process information in a new way without having all of the steps clearly defined. This is exactly what the students were able to do.
This specific constructivist activity would definitely be considered an authentic activity because it has real life applications. There are several times in my own life when I have had to measure something without having standard measuring tools available. Knowing that I could use other objects to create equal measurements was extremely helpful. After engaging in this learning process, it is likely that these students would be able to accomplish the same feat I did because of the comparative understanding that they were able to gain. The same could not be said of those students who were taught in the traditional manner.