What can teachers do? II

There are two main elements in one classroom. One is the teacher. Another one is students.
The last blog I have discussed that teacher should have a sense of accepting all kinds of ideas form students and do not too much limited students. Although the teacher is an essential element in the classroom, students also can be one determining factor.
Here is the same example but form another aspect, which is the classroom of my English teacher. In that classroom, I can see not only the teacher is not good at constructivism, but also the students. Students seemed to be used to the pattern that “just follow the direction”. They were not able to construe their own idea. During the discussion, students preferred to chat or try to find out which answer the teacher like. It seems that they were trained to learn for the exam but not to gain knowledge.
Therefore the teachers not only need to change but also the students. For the teachers, they need to lead students to open their mind and be active to join the discussion, share their own idea. There is one usually phenomenon. Those students who are trained to pass the standardized exam ( such as Gaokao in China, which is a strictly standardized exam to enter the university), cannot join the discussion in the university. They just learn as what they do in high school. That would stop them from getting a higher academic level.
Here I give one aspect teacher can do to adjust students to the constructivism classroom, which is the environment. Students would cope with the environment they are in. That means if they are in a constructivism environment, such as teacher would lead them to explore, or they have the peer who uses the constructivism in the study, students would be a better constructivism learner (Gijbels, Watering. Duchy, Bosscha,2006). As for teacher already change their own value to give the right to the students, they can create an active learning environment. One of the useful methods is to offer students reciprocal teaching. This kind of way need teachers to provide students with what they want gradually and meet their demand depends on what the single one need. The benefit is that students can be actinide by both teachers and the environment they are in. The research shows that reciprocal teaching can lead the whole class to a better level by changing parts of the students first, and let those students lead other students to improve. (Woolfolk, Winne, Perry, 2015)

Reference: 

Gijbels，D, Watering. G, Duchy. F, Bosscha, P，.（2006) .New Learning Environments and Constructivism: The Students’ Perspective. Instructional Science, 34, 213-226.

Woolfolk. A, Winne. P, Perry. N, ( 2015), Educational Psychology, ( sixth canadian edition), Pearson Toronto, Toronto.