Correct Answer - Option 2 : Autocratic environment
Constructivism represents a view that emphasizes the active role of the learner in building, understanding and making sense of information. Constructivism represents an approach embedded with the central principle that learner can only make sense of new situations in terms of their existing understanding. The term constructivism more often emphasize “ the learner's contribution to the meaning and learning through both individual and social activity,”
Characteristics of the Constructivist Approach:
- The constructivist approach focuses on knowledge getting or knowledge construction process rather than the product of knowledge directly communicated to the learners as happens in traditional classroom teaching based on the behaviourist approach.
- It requires that the learners must take an active part in the knowledge getting process rather than being passive recipients of information or knowledge. The constructivism main concern thus lies in shedding light on the learner as a key figure in the learning process rather than in wresting the power from the teacher.
- As an active enquirer or discoverer of the knowledge, the students in the approach are required to make their own meaning and constructing their own knowledge while interacting within their classroom or social environment.
- The constructivist approach argues and demonstrates that a learner learns well when he is given opportunities to construct or discovering the knowledge by himself.
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The constructivist approach discourages the use of a teacher-centred or subject-centred approach in the process of teaching-learning. Rather, it tries to encourage all the methods and techniques that are learner-centred and encourages understanding and particularly the reflective level of teaching-learning. It lays heavy emphasis on independent learning or solving the problems on the part of the learner so that he may be able to construct or discover his own knowledge by his own efforts on an individual or group basis. That is why, it is not unusual that constructivism is associated with the methods and strategies like discovery learning, inquiry approach, co-operative and constructivist learning and methods or strategies involving discussion, conservation, brainstorming etc.
- The activities are interactive and student-centered and the environment is democratic.
Hence, we conclude that a autocratic environment is not a characteristics of constructivist teaching strategies.
