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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 9, Issue 1, Article 3
(June, 2008) |
Challenges encountered in implementing constructivist teaching in physics: A qualitative approach
Wheijen CHANG
Physics Teaching and Research Center
Feng-Chia University, Taiwan/CHINA
Email: wheijen@hotmail.com
Received 29 Feb., 2008
Revised 23 Jun., 2008
Contents
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Literature
- Design of the constructivist teaching
- Methodology
- Results
- 2. Interactive teaching: Facilitating conceptual comprehension vs. ineffectiveness
- 3. Interactive teaching: Encourages independence vs. lack of well-organized information
- 4. Interactive teaching: Cultivating a supportive atmosphere vs. classroom disorder
- 5. Real-life examples: cultivating reasoning vs. confusing answers
- 6. Real-life examples: promoting motivation vs. lowering course standards
- 7. Assessment: prefer vs. dislike the open-form assessment
- 8. Assessment: increasing the difficulty/workload vs. frustrating/overwhelming with the difficulty/workload
- 9. Conflicting views
- 10. Quantitative analysis of positive/negative ratio
- Conclusion and Implications
- Acknowledgements
- References
The development of constructivism has resulted in teaching modifications in the science classroom. While the majority of the literature has focused on the promising outcomes of the teaching reform, the present study reports various minor but persistent criticisms. This paper qualitatively analyzes skeptical students’ criticisms regarding the author’s teaching from 2000 to 2004, in her first year university physics classes in Taiwan. An open-ended questionnaire survey was administered seven times during the five-year study. In 2000 and 2001, investigations were conducted twice, during and post each academic year. Different groups of students filled in the survey in different years, giving a total of 618 students who participated in the study. The major concerns of these skeptical students include the increase of cognitive difficulty and learning responsibility, the effectiveness of the teaching performance, and the standards of the course. Many of the criticisms form an opposing opinion to the positive appraisal from their peers. Based on the findings, teaching practitioners might face challenge in grasping the optimal points between enhancing the majority of the students’ expectations and alleviating the skepticism of a minority of students.
Key words: Constructivist teaching, innovation, physics, challenge, qualitative analysis
