From Preconceptions To Constructivism--Primary Review And Analysis Of Constructivistic Learning Theory

Nowadays, It's more and more important to the human development in the 21st century for people with high quality of science & culture. Broader investigations by experts on education, physics and instruction showed: physics instructional efficiency is low all over the world. The end of 1970s, the educational circles appeared the upsurge of study on preconceptions, the end of 1980s constructivistic learning theory , which gave rise to deeply influence on physics learning and teaching. Especially constructivistic learning theory, which can successfully interpreted phenomena of preconceptions, American contemporary educational psychologist R.Slavin remarked: this was a revolution among the contemporary educational psychology. Chinese educational experts also said so. Under the background, to study on how students to learn physics conceptions, is beneficial to ameliorating physics teaching and ideas liberating.This thesis primarily adopts the literature methods, method of comparison, theories-analyzed method, and lends support of method of introspection. Firstly, it introduces what are preconceptions and what characteristics preconceptions possess, secondly, introduces all kinds of constructivism (radical constructivism, social constructivism, social constructionism, information-processing constructivism, cybernetic systems, sociocultural approaches to mediated action), and thirdly, introduces the difference from traditional learning theory: the viewpoints of construction, learning, knowledge, student, teacher, truth, meaning and understanding. Among them, there are a lot of novel viewpoints, which are helpful for us to liberate ideas and to ameliorate learning and teaching. For example, on viewpoint of construction, they think that to construct is a way to understanding the world, tocognize or learn is a process of active constructing; on cognitive purpose, think the purpose of cognition is to help to organizing and adapting ourselves to the experiential world, but not to go to discover the actuality from the essential meaning; on viewpoint of knowledge, put forth ill-structured knowledge and well-structured knowledge, situated knowledge and non-situated knowledge, explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, knowledge is a network structure rather than layered structure, knowledge is difference from information etc.; on viewpoint of learning, think innate characteristic of human learning is constructed, social, participated; on view of truth, emphasize that there is not absolute truth, only relative best construction, the standard on truth is viability; on viewpoint of understanding, emphasize the real understanding is to believe its rationality and usefulness, and like to apply it among the actuality; on viewpoint of student, emphasize the students are ones who possess their own cognitive structures, beliefs, personal psychological characteristic, we should pay attention to their originally possessed knowledge, experience, and beliefs etc.. These thought are very helpful for us to study the traditional learning theory. This thesis thinks constructivistic learning theory can successfully interpret phenomena of preconceptions (all kinds of sources: everyday experience, daily language, intuitions, teachers and teaching-materials, old conceptions, mathematics-physics transfers, improper analogy and other sources; characteristics: universality, spontaneity, characteristic of pertinacity, characteristic of concealment, characteristic of repeat, complexity of hierarchy, characteristic of negative transfers). This show constructivistic learning theory about learning-study is higher level than phenomena of preconceptions This thesis thinks that the factors that affect students' knowledge constructing included: learning environment, students' preexisting knowledge and experience, beliefs, cognitive strategies, metacognitive ability, ability to transfer, capacity of memory, emotion and attitude, motivation, cognitive style, volition etc. Every factor changes with change of principal body in non-linear mode.Fin...