GLCC Guiding Principles

The Great Lakes Constructivist Consortium advocates for learner centered environments that are
experiential, equitable, and ecological. The GLCC focuses its research, action, and dissemination on
the following 4 goal areas:

Democratic Learning Environments:

Staff and students participate in creating and maintaining democratic learning structures that encourage
the inclusion of all voices and provide opportunities for shared leadership and collaborative inquiry.
Constructivist learning organizations build communities grounded in trust and equity since the
constructivist learning approach encourages learners (staff and students) to take learning risks and tolerate
ambiguity.
Constructivist community members are proficient with socio-cultural influences that can have an impact
on educationally relevant variables, such as motivation, orientation towards learning, and ways of
thinking.

Assessment Practices:

As meaning makers, humans seek to organize and generalize across experiences in a representational
form. Therefore, constructivist-learning environments engage in sharing reflections and active listening
as the driving force of learning.
The school’s goals apply to each and every student, while the means to these goals will vary as students
themselves vary.
Educational staffs within constructivist learning contexts act in multiple functions (teacher-counselor-
manager) and maintain a sense of commitment to the entire interdependent learning community not just
his/her class(es) or subject area
Orientation Procedures:

New knowledge is linked to and integrated with the learner's prior experiences, knowledge and
understanding. The learners, rather than the teacher, are responsible for defending, proving, justifying,
and communicating their ideas to the classroom community and the community at large.
The adults in constructivist learning communities are knowledgeable about child/adolescent development
and learning theories because all people learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental
level and is accessible in an enjoyable and interesting way.
Constructivist community members know that curiosity; creativity, flexibility and insightful thinking are
major indicators of the learners' level of engagement. A constructivist environment intentionally seeks to
measure learner engagement in these areas.

Community Partnerships:

Students and staff are aware of and utilize to the fullest extent the available learning resources of the
internal and external (local and global) communities.
Service-learning opportunities are made available to all learners because service to one’s community is
essential to the development of the whole person.
School community members are able to effectively analyze the needs and opportunities in the community
and make contributions to solving problems, creating possibilities, and celebrating accomplishments.