Constructivist pedagogy and subject-centred learning: The subjectivist paradigm
ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation
EDRS No. ED452197. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Institute for the Study of Postsecondary Pedagogy (8th, Ellenville, NY, November 1998).
Introduces the subjectivist teaching/learning paradigm (STP), which uses students' social and cultural enculturation processes to structure affect-laden constructivist learning experiences focused in the subject area being taught. STP uses powerful learning experiences to promote two goals: enculturation into the subject area, and student empowerment. STP techniques for practical teaching mirror the effective processes of enculturation by which students learn the skills, understandings, and attitudes of their own sociocultural groups. STP lessons concentrate real life subjective experiences into a learning area. STP helps students learn to choose what to learn and how to learn it, offering them an increasing variety of learning experiences. It develops student empowerment by continually reinforcing successful self-directed learning through affect structuring, covert directives, and self-cueing coping strategies. Surface purposes begin with three affect structuring techniques (emotional anchor, motivator, and cognitive direction), which utilize the positive subject experiences of affect, self-selection, and motivation. Illustrates surface purposes within a workshop at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, in which students practiced expressing their disapproval of nuclear testing in the Pacific. Six workshop activities are described, highlighting their setting, surface purpose, and hidden pedagogic purpose.....