Konstruktivistische Ansätze in der Erwachsenenbildung und Weiterbildung

Theoretical approaches in the field of further education and advanced vocational training have to face multifaceted demands: the analysis of knowledge aquisition and knowledge transfer and its instructional support as well as the revealment of the mechanisms which influence further education on an organisational level in companies. This article describes, that herefore especially moderate constructivistic approaches are useful. After an introduction to the philosophical tradition of these approaches and important characteristics of adult learning, two examples of constructivistic models are being described particularly: The theory of situated learning environments and career counseling. Concluding it is shown, that a moderate constructive perspective fulfils important criteria for the theoretic modelling of further education processes.Theoretische Ansätze in der Erwachsenen- und insbesondere in der beruflichen Weiterbildung müssen sich vielfältigen Ansprüchen stellen: der Analyse des Wissenserwerbs und Wissenstransfers und seiner instruktionalen Unterstützung ebenso wie der Aufdeckung der Mechanismen, die in den Betrieben auf organisatorischer Ebene die Weiterbildung beeinflussen. In diesem Beitrag wird die Auffassung vertreten, daß dafür insbesondere liberalisierte konstruktivistische Ansätze gut geeignet sind. Nach einer Einführung in die philosophische Tradition dieser Ansätze und wichtiger Merkmale des Lernens im Erwachsenenalter werden zwei Beispiele konstruktivistischer Modelle genauer beschrieben: die Theorie situierter Lernumgebungen und das career counseling. Abschließend wird gezeigt, daß eine liberalisierte konstruktivistische Perspektive wichtige Kriterien für die theoretische Modellierung von Weiterbildungsprozessen erfüllt

Teaching for understanding and/or teaching for the examination in high school physics

Literature on the related notions of 'teaching for understanding' and 'exemplary teaching' tends to be interpreted as prescribing certain classroom approaches. These are usually the strategies often identified with constructivist teaching, which involve a redefinition of the teacher's role: rather than being seen as a source of knowledge and control, the teacher is described as the facilitator of a largely student-directed search for understanding. More 'transmissive', teacher-centred approaches are held to lead to poor student understanding, low cognitive engagement and rote learning. This paper reports a case study of physics teaching in a government high school in Perth, Western Australia. This case study is part of a larger project spanning 5 years and eight case investigations in Perth schools. While the pedagogical style of the teacher studied could be labelled as 'transmissive', we tentatively assert that his practice exemplified high-quality physics teaching and led to high-quality understanding on the part of the students. The study suggests that prescriptions for quality teaching must be sensitive to issues of context and content, and that further study in a variety of school contexts is required to expand our understanding of what constitutes good teaching and learning in physics

Learning occupational practice in theâ absence of expert guidance: The agentic action of australian home care workers

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017. Many kinds of workers need to both work and learn in socially isolated circumstances (i.e. in the absence of others who can provide guidance and support). Such circumstances require particular kinds of agency and agentic action by these worker-learners, and they might be described as requiring particularly agentic personal epistemologies. These epistemologies are essential for workers such as home care workers (HCWs), who, after a perfunctory classroom training, are expected to work alone in clients’ homes providing a range of support, such as mobility and hygiene assistance. This chapter draws on a recent investigation into the work and learning of a small cohort of such HCWs and maps how they exercise agency in their work practice, work-related learning and development. These workers deployed, in different ways, their past personal experiences (e.g. work, life, education), the classroom training provided, opportunities to engage with other HCWs and support from other informed sources in learning the requirements for their role. Moreover, these workers exercised agentic action by “personalising” their scaffolding or learning supports. That is, they constructed, engaged with and subsequently relinquished scaffolding as personally necessitated, rather than relying on “experts” to decide how and when these forms of learning support should be enacted and withdrawn. What is important here is how these workers’ subjectivities are found to include actions and monitoring of performance, not just ideas and dispositions. Through an account of how this particular cohort exercised agentic action, some conclusions are drawn and recommendations made for the best ways of progressing the learning and development of such socially isolated workers