And just as each student’s past knowledge and experiences are different, so too is the interpretation, understanding, and meaning of the new information that each ultimately constructs. Here, knowledge is not passively received rather, it is actively built up or constructed by students as they connect their past knowledge and experiences with new information (Santrock, 2004). Constructivism is an educational philosophy consistent with this view. From this perspective, teaching is the process of creating situations whereby students are able to interact with the material to be learned in order to construct knowledge. From this perspective standardized tests are considered to be an apt measure of students’ learning. While there are specific instances when this approach is useful, I find little research support for this as a general approach to teaching and learning. Academic achievement is seen as students’ ability to demonstrate, replicate, or retransmit this designated body of knowledge back to the teacher or to some other measuring agency or entity. A teacher’s job from this perspective is to supply students with a designated body of knowledge in a predetermined order. This is a teacher-centered approach in which the teacher is the dispenser of knowledge, the arbitrator of truth, and the final evaluator of learning. From this perspective, teaching is the act of transmitting knowledge from Point A (teacher’s head) to Point B (students’ heads). Good teaching starts with an operational definition of teaching. There are three common views of what constitutes teaching: teaching as transmission, teaching as transaction, and teaching as transformation (Miller, 1996).
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