Innovations in Education and Teaching International Vol. 43, No. 3, August 2006, pp.

279290

Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching: a comparison of students learning in a university course
Ka-Ming Yuen and Kit-Tai Hau*
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
KTHAU@CUHK.EDU.HK HauKit-Tai 0 300000August 2006 43 Taylor and in Education 2006 & Francis Original Article 1470-3297 Francis Ltd and Innovations(print)/1470-3300 (online) 10.1080/14703290600750861Training International RIIE_A_175049.sgm

A case study of an undergraduate Educational Psychology course that incorporated both constructivist and teacher-centred teaching was conducted. The learning processes and higher-level learning outcomes were examined through participant observation, interviews with students and analyses of student assignments. The lessons were audio recorded and transcribed, and a total of 68 interviews, each about 1.5 hours long, were conducted. In general, the constructivist teaching facilitated students creation of their own knowledge, as they were allowed to think more over the problems together and generate original ideas. Students performances in recalling, critiquing and generating with the knowledge gained in the constructivist teaching context were also better than those in the teacher-centred context. This could be explained by the deeper processing of the material, the activation of students prior knowledge and the similarity between the situations of knowledge construction and knowledge application. The strengths and limitations of constructivist teaching are also discussed.

Introduction It is generally believed that student-centred teaching allows students to take on more responsibility for deciding what and how to learn so that they can play an active role in their learning, thereby achieving higher-level learning outcomes, such as knowledge application and creation. Siding with the student-centred camp, constructivist teaching is an alternative to the conventional teacher-centred teaching method. However, the amount of empirical research on applying constructivism to university teaching is limited; little is really known about how constructivism could practically make a difference in university teaching. To study this problem, a case study involving a university course incorporating both constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching was conducted. By comparing the teaching and learning of teacher-centred teaching and constructivist teaching, the value of constructivist teaching to university education was examined.
* Corresponding author. Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong. Email: KTHAU@CUHK.EDU.HK ISSN 14703297 (print)/ISSN 14703300 (online)/06/03027912 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14703290600750861

280 K. M. Yuen and K. T. Hau Constructivist teaching There are general features of its philosophy and psychology that make constructivism distinctive in comparison with the conventional teacher-centred approach. The difference between these two methods can be understood in respect of their epistemological assumptions and approaches to teaching. The epistemological assumption of teacher-centred teaching is empiricist. Knowledge is obtained by observing the world, which is structured in terms of entities, properties and relationships (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992). As the essential properties of objects in the structured world are relatively unchanging, knowledge is stable and can be passed on from one person to another (Jonassen, 1991, 1992). The explicit goal of teacher-centred teaching is to transfer the knowledge across efficiently. Teachers teach when they tell students what they know and students learn when they remember the knowledge told. Constructivism holds a relativist epistemological assumption and argues whether there could be universal truth. This is based on the assumption that meaning is imposed on the world by human beings, rather than existing in the world independently of us (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992). There are many meanings or perspectives for any event or observation, so everyone seems to have constructed their own body of knowledge and there could hardly be a stable body of knowledge that exists independently. So constructivist teaching is characterized by students active participation in class when they construct knowledge. The focus shifts from teacher transferring knowledge to students constructing knowledge by themselves, that is, from teacher-centred to student-centred. According to Brooks and Brooks (1993), constructivist teaching could be defined as the teaching that applies the following guiding principles: (1) posing problems of emerging relevance to students; (2) structuring concepts from whole to part; (3) valuing students points of view and addressing students suppositions; and (4) assessing student learning in context. Constructivist teaching begins with problems that are authentic and relevant to students. When approaching the solutions of the problems, students use their initiative to build up their knowledge with the help of the teachers guidance and students collaboration. Students are then assessed with authentic tasks. The conventional teacher-centred approach to teaching is not constructivist teaching because students points of view and suppositions are often neglected, which is against the third principle listed above. A number of empirical studies of constructivist teaching at the university level have been conducted (Viiri, 1996; Lord, 1997, 1999; Christianson & Fisher, 1999; Tynjl, 1999). These studies compared the learning outcomes between teacher-centred teaching (mainly lecturing) and constructivist teaching. Classes that used the teacher-centred approach were considered as control groups, while constructivist teaching was the experimental group. All these studies reported significant differences, with constructivist teaching having the edge over teachercentred teaching, in the cognitive learning outcomes assessed. Their studies pointed to a similar conclusion that constructivist teaching resulted in better remembering and understanding than the teacher-centred teaching. However, most of these studies also failed to examine the essential quality of constructivist teaching. The focus of these studies was how the students performed in the assessments, but the learning processes of how students built up knowledge during the teaching were not addressed. Little was known about what the students actually did. In the light of constructivism, learning

Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching 281 should be assessed as a process rather than as a product (Jonassen, 1991). Also, the learning outcomes assessed in those studies were limited to remembering and understanding. In terms of the revised version of Blooms taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), higher-level learning outcomes such as evaluating and creating were not assessed. So there were two areas that the present study attempted to further investigate: (1) the learning process that conceptually linked the teaching and the learning outcomes; and (2) the comparison of the learning outcomes between teacher-centred teaching and constructivist teaching at different levels. Method The case study method was adopted to investigate comprehensively all the necessary facts, details and problems of the learning process. A course on Educational Psychology at a university in Hong Kong incorporating both constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching was studied. There were 74 students and most of them were first-year students majoring in Education. The course lasted for four months and the assignment was due a month after the end of the last lesson. The teaching throughout the course was usually constructivist, which was in line with the four principles of constructivist teaching suggested by Brooks and Brooks (1993), as mentioned above. However, there were other times that the teaching was teacher-centred. When the content of a particular topic was delivered solely by the teacher and students points of view were not solicited, the teaching time spent on the topic was not considered constructivist but teachercentred. On this basis, the time spent on each particular topic was recorded and classified either as constructivist teaching or teacher-centred teaching. Data collection Participant observation and interviews The researcher attended every lesson of the course, took notes of what the teacher and the students did in class, and audio recorded the lessons. The participants were individually interviewed, taped, and questioned about their learning and knowledge of the course material, either face-to-face or on the telephone. The individual interviews varied from 60 to 90 minutes in length. A total of 68 interviews were conducted. Throughout the study 17 students were interviewed, one of whom participated only in the final round of the interviews. Documents Students assignments were only collected from those who participated in the final interviews. The assignments were used for the assessment of the use of knowledge. Documents, including handouts, reading, email, the quiz paper and students notes were collected for reference. Data analysis Student learning was assessed at two levels: (1) students knowledge gain after each lesson; and (2) retention and use of the relevant knowledge after the course had finished.

282 K. M. Yuen and K. T. Hau To monitor how each students knowledge about the course material was built up, changes were identified by comparing their answers to the questions about the subject matter covered in each lesson in the pre-class interviews, the related material covered in the lesson, and the corresponding answers collected in the post-class interviews. Similar forms of knowledge change were categorized and their relations to the classroom processes were analysed. The revised version of Blooms taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) was used as a framework for assessing the retention and use of knowledge gained in the course. The first category, remember, specifically recalling, which reflects the retention of knowledge, was assessed through the first part of the final interview conducted two weeks after the students had handed in their assignments. The participants answers to the questions about the subject matter were transcribed and marked with references to the actual material presented in the lessons. A mark was given when a point that had been mentioned in the lesson was recalled. The fifth and the sixth categories, namely evaluate and create, which are associated with the use of knowledge, were assessed through the course assignment. When comparing the learning outcomes, data were quantified for the sake of comparison, but it was not the intention of the present study to imply that the comparisons were statistically significant. The statistical significance of the differences was not tested. Instead, the present study attempted to explain qualitatively the relations between student learning and the classroom processes.

Results Changes in participants knowledge Three types of changes in participants knowledge were identified: (1) no relevant knowledge gained; (2) relevant knowledge gained with no prior knowledge; and (3) relevant knowledge constructed and integrated into prior knowledge. As can be seen from Table 1, each of these changes was found in both constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching (S1S16 denote the students involved in the study). Original points that were neither discussed in front of the whole class nor covered in the teaching materials, such as handouts and reading, were found only under the constructivist teaching. In the same teaching context, different participants might undergo different types of knowledge change. For example, when teaching the material about Questions 5 and 6, the results showed that participants underwent different types of knowledge change. Type 1 indicated that the there was no change in the participants knowledge after the teaching. The participants post-class answers showed that they did not understand or remember the material and hence failed to construct relevant knowledge. In some cases, the participants had prior knowledge and their knowledge did not change after the lesson, because they already knew what was being taught in class. In respect of Type 2, relevant knowledge about the subject matter was successfully constructed after the teaching, although the participants did not have prior knowledge about the questions. Type 2 took place more often with the teacher-centred teaching than with the constructivist teaching. This was because the subject matter taught with the teacher-centred teaching, such as cognitive information processing and metacognition, could be less familiar to

Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching 283

Table 1. Distribution of the types of knowledge change in different contexts Participants Question Constructivist teaching 3 4 5 7 8 9 17 18 19 20 22 Teacher-centred teaching 1 2 6 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 21 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16

3 2 3 2 2 1 2 3 3o 3 3o 3 3 3o 3 3 3 3o 3o 3 3o 3 3o 3o 3 3

3o 3 3o 3

3o

3o

3 3

2 2 1 3 2 2

2 2

2 3 1 1 2 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 2

3 1 1 1 1 1

1 = Type 1: no relevant knowledge gained; 2 = Type 2: relevant knowledge gained with no prior knowledge; 3 = Type 3: relevant knowledge constructed and integrated into prior knowledge; 3o = Type 3 with original point(s).

students in comparison with the subject matter taught with the constructivist teaching, such as role-play and group work. Type 3 refers to the situation in which a participant had had some prior knowledge, and after the teaching, new relevant knowledge was constructed and integrated into that participants prior knowledge. This was evidenced in the post-class answers, when similar points appeared in the pre-class answers along with some other new points. The example in Table 2 shows how new knowledge, or new points, was constructed after the teaching. The post-class answer was an integration of the pre-class answer during points mentioned and the teaching (underlined text in Table 2) as well as original points (framed text in Table 2). It was shown in the example that the participant herself thought up the first original point, and the second original point was conceived through group effort. The evidence of original points was the only major difference of the two teaching approaches concerning knowledge change. There was no original point found in the teacher-centred

284 K. M. Yuen and K. T. Hau

Table 2. An example of Type 3 with original points

Q22: What are the difficulties of group work? S10s answer (pre-class) compromising of different opinions may be difficult. Quite often there is conflict of opinions For primary (students), the teacher needs to follow closely, but in Hong Kong its difficult (because there are usually 40 students in a class). You need to give students guidance continuously, and you need to follow their progress. But if you think about a class that has so many students, even when there are 10 teams, its difficult to manage. And its hard to guide them. You need to guide them well so that students can do it successfully Teaching The professor held an open discussion. The following points were mentioned by the students: some students may dominate students may not be able to cooperate seating arrangement grouping noise off-task students pay no attention to the teacher when discussing it is difficult for the teacher to monitor the whole class group grading is not fair not enough time S10s answer (post-class) First, conflict of opinions, the same point. Besides, someone said one could dominate (in a group). People who know more will speak more, but I think this is not a problem, because people who know (what to do) will guide people who dont know (which is a benefit). Classroom management would be difficult. For example, too noisy. I had the experience of a class (I attended) being too noisy to have discussion. And its difficult to control if the students are not doing what you want them to do. Besides, there is still one thing, the teacher will find it difficult to monitor. This is important because there is one teacher but many students. Which group can you follow? You give some time to this group, some time to that group. At the end, cant follow every group well There is another thing, we discussed, which is time-consuming. The (discussion) time is too long.

[underlined text: similar poits; framed text; original points.], underline [underlined text], frame [framed text]

teaching, as all information was presented to the whole class by the teacher, and students were not given the chance to contribute their own thoughts (see Figure 1). On the other hand, during constructivist teaching, plenty of time was given for students to create ideas when solving the problems of the learning situation. Some of these ideas might not be brought up to the whole class and became original points. The constructivist teaching model allowed a creative process to take place during the interaction between the different parties via the learning situation designed by the teacher (see Figure 1). Students could generate and share their own knowledge. As every participant would interact differently with the learning situation during the process, different participants would have different original points in their post-class answers. They would form different groups and sometimes they would discuss different questions, and so the original points they gained from the learning situation could be different. The constructivist classroom process facilitated different understandings of the learning situation. Original points were not found in Type 2, although relevant knowledge was also successfully constructed. Prior knowledge seemed to be required in the creative process of original points.
Figure 1. The classroom processes of Type 3

Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching 285

Professor Participant Professor Information Classmates Learning situation Information

The teacher-centred teaching model

Classmates The constructivist teaching model

Participant

Figure 1.

The classroom processes of Type 3

When the participants knew nothing and had no experience about the subject matter, conceivably, they could hardly create original points. The learning outcomes Learning could take place anytime outside class, and what the participants did outside class could have an important effect on the learning outcomes. It would be erroneous to define a causal relationship between the classroom processes and the learning outcomes without looking into the outside-class learning. So the outside-class learning of the participants was first examined. The seven participants of the final interviews adopted a similar approach to studying. Most of them reported that in addition to attending the lessons they usually spent less than 30 minutes on this course each week. They usually read the notes or the reading and checked their email. Some of them reported that they spent two to three hours on the course in the first few weeks because they did not have to do any assignments when the term had just started. Later on they spent less and less time on this course because they had assignments to do. In fact, most other participants accounts indicated that they adopted this kind of ad hoc approach to their studies. The participants basically concentrated on meeting the deadlines of the other assignments. When a course did not have regular assignments, students effort would be spent somewhere else. The amount of outside-class learning the participants did seemed to be minimal. Nevertheless, their outside-class learning had to be considered together with the classroom processes or the in-class learning when assessing the learning outcomes. Recalling In order to assess recall, nine questions were asked in the final interview (see Appendix 1). There were four questions about the subject matter taught with constructivist teaching and the full marks were 33. The other five questions were about the subject matter taught with

286 K. M. Yuen and K. T. Hau teacher-centred teaching and the full marks were 28. The participants recalled an average of 38% of the full marks of constructivist teaching, and 43% of the full marks of teacher-centred teaching. The average of teacher-centred teaching was higher than the average of constructivist teaching. This could be explained by Questions 1 and 2, which were the questions that the participants could recall the most relevant material. These two questions were about topics covered in the first few weeks when most participants had done more preparation and revision outside class, especially Question 1, which was about the topic of the second lesson. In fact, the results of Question 1 accounted for the better performance in the teacher-centred teaching. If questions about the topics of the first four weeks were omitted, including Questions 1 and 2, the average of teacher-centred teaching drops. The new average of constructivist teaching was 36%, which was slightly lower than the original average. However, the new average of teachercentred teaching was 30%, which was much lower than the original. The new average of constructivist teaching was then higher than the new average of teacher-centred teaching. When the outside-class learning diminished after the first four weeks, students performance indicated that recalling of the material learned with the constructivist teaching was better than the teacher-centred teaching. Constructivist teaching could facilitate more elaborative processing of material, as the participants were often asked to think about and discuss the material in class. This elaborative processing of the information could help remembering (Anderson, 2000). For instance, Questions 5 to 8 were all covered in the ninth lesson. The material about Questions 5 and 6, which was taught with teacher-centred teaching, took up 11 minutes of the lesson time. The instructor lectured and the students listened. The material about Questions 7 and 8 was taught with constructivist teaching and took up 55 minutes. The students formed groups to have discussion and the instructor summed up their ideas. Not surprisingly, the participants would have more elaborative processing of the material about Questions 7 and 8 than Questions 5 and 6, which could in turn help them remember. In addition, during the constructivist classroom process, students were usually asked to use their prior knowledge to answer questions and new knowledge was then introduced. The encoding of new information would be enhanced when the relevant schemata that the students had were activated during the learning process (Bruning et al., 1999). For example, when teaching the material about Question 9, students were first asked to recall their experiences about motivation and, meanwhile, new knowledge (strategies for enhancing motivation) was presented. As relevant knowledge was usually activated in the constructivist teaching, the participants could remember the material better. In contrast, prior knowledge was usually not activated during the teacher-centred teaching, since the topics were directly introduced to the participants. For example, the material about Question 6 (metacognition) was presented to the students without asking students to recall any relevant experience. Critiquing and generating The second part of the assessment of learning outcomes focused on the use of knowledge, that is, the fifth and the sixth categories of the taxonomy, evaluate and create (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The course assignment required students to: (1) evaluate the positive and

Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching 287 negative features of a lesson on tape, and (2) suggest possible solutions to the problems they identified. Three pieces of work were collected from the participants who participated in the final interviews. These three assignments were graded about average. The videotaped lessons they had chosen for their assignments were different from one another. All of their assignments were done in groups. The participants reported a similar way of doing the assignment. They first met several times to watch and discuss the videotaped lesson. They then divided the assignment into different parts and worked alone before combining them for submission. When they were doing the assignment, they sometimes referred to the course materials, such as the textbook and their notes. Unlike recalling, there was no model answer for the assessment. Their assignments were assessed in terms of the quality. The critiquing (comments) and the generating (suggestions) were separated into two different parts in the participants assignments, and the contents in the different parts were analysed separately. In each part, statements about the same argument were first grouped together and then classified into: (1) points about the material taught with constructivist teaching, and (2) points about the material taught with teacher-centred teaching. These points were then marked either as quality points or deficient points. Quality points were defined as comments or suggestions that were straightforward and well reasoned (see Table 3). Deficient points were defined as comments or suggestions that were neither straightforward nor well reasoned (see Table 3). As shown in the examples, quality points were clear, direct and reasonable, but deficient points were either illogical or short of proper reasoning. The results showed that in respect of both critiquing and generating, the percentage of quality points about the material taught with constructivist teaching was higher than that of teachercentred teaching. In other words, the percentage of deficient points about the material taught with constructivist teaching was lower than that of teacher-centred teaching. About 80% of the points the participants made about the material taught with constructivist teaching were quality points, and 20% was deficient; whereas with teacher-centred teaching, about 60% of the points were quality points and 40% was deficient. Critiquing and generating required transfer of the knowledge learned from the course to the assignment, a new situation. Essentially, this transfer depended on the degree of similarity between the situation where knowledge is constructed and the situation where the knowledge is applied (Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901, as cited in Anderson, 2000). The transfer is more likely to be positive or successful when the two situations are similar, and vice versa. In fact, most of the learning situations of the constructivist teaching involved students in evaluating teaching practice and thinking about suggestions for improvement. The similarity between these learning

Table 3. Quality points

Excerpts from participants assignments Deficient points correcting the answers of the game and the students writing down the correct answers help students to put the information into long term memory.

the story in the role play is related to students daily encounters All these help to increase the relevance of the task or the language to students daily lives. Students are more motivated to learn if they find the materials relevant to their daily lives.

288 K. M. Yuen and K. T. Hau situations and the tasks students had to do in the assignment might facilitate the transfer of the knowledge learned. On the other hand, the task students had to do during teacher-centred teaching was mainly listening to the instructors lecture, which did not have any similarity with the tasks in the assignment. Discussion In this case study, it could be seen that the constructivist teaching had advantages over the conventional teacher-centred teaching in certain aspects. The results showed not only the use of the knowledge gained in the constructivist teaching was better in respect of critiquing and generating, but also the retention of the knowledge. Knowledge change was observed in both teaching contexts, but the constructivist teaching allowed time for students to think and construct knowledge collaboratively, while the teachercentred approach was simply a direct transmission of knowledge from the teacher to students. The constructivist teaching facilitated a creative knowledge construction process, as original points were only found with it. Also, the constructivist teaching allowed a deeper processing of the knowledge and activated the participants prior knowledge; the similarity between the situation of learning with the constructivist teaching and the situation of using the knowledge in the assignment might help facilitate the transfer of knowledge, which fostered the use and creation of knowledge. The constructivist teaching was more appealing compared with the teachercentred teaching. However, constructivist teaching sacrifices the breadth of coverage within a limited time of teaching. According to the findings, the constructivist teaching usually required extra time in comparison to the teacher-centred teaching. This issue has also been raised in some previous studies (Lord, 1997; Tynjl, 1999). There is a worry that students would learn less with constructivist teaching. There is no doubt that with the teacher-centred approach more material could be covered in a shorter time, but students might not necessarily remember everything taught. It was shown that the participants had a better retention of the material covered in the constructivist teaching than in the teacher-centred teaching because they were involved in a deeper processing of the material in class. Constructivist teaching might trade off the breadth of coverage against the depth of the processing of knowledge. Without doubt, each of the many different approaches to teaching and learning may have their advantages and disadvantages. Teachers have to be aware of the ends they are heading for so as to choose the right means. The many different approaches to teaching should not be regarded as mutually exclusive. The practice of teaching can always be eclectic. Notes on contributors Ka-Ming Yuen was a postgraduate of Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests are constructivism, teaching and learning in higher education, and language education. Kit-Tai Hau is professor and chair of the department of Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interest includes self-concept, achievement motivation and structural equation modelling.

Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching 289 References

Anderson, J. R. (2000) Cognitive psychology and its implications (5th edn) (New York, Worth). Anderson, L. W. & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds) (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Blooms taxonomy of educational objectives (New York, Addison Wesley Longman). Bloom, B. S., Englehart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H. & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives. Handbook I: cognitive domain (New York, David McKay). Brooks, J. G. & Brooks, M. G. (1993) In search of understanding: the case for constructivist classrooms (Alexandria, VA, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). Bruning, R. H., Schraw, G. J. & Ronning, R. R. (1999) Cognitive psychology and instruction (3rd edn) (Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall). Christianson, R. G. & Fisher, K. M. (1999) Comparison of student learning about diffusion and osmosis in constructivist and traditional classrooms, International Journal of Science Education, 21, 687698. Duffy, T. M. & Jonassen, D. H. (1992) Constructivism: new implications for instructional technology, in: T. M. Duffy & D. H. Jonassen (Eds) Constructivism and the technology of instruction: a conversation (Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 116. Jonassen, D. H. (1991) Evaluating constructivistic learning, Educational Technology, 31(9), 2833. Jonassen, D. H. (1992) Evaluating constructivistic learning, in: T. M. Duffy & D. H. Jonassen (Eds) Constructivism and the technology of instruction: a conversation (Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 137148. Lord, T. R. (1997) A comparison between traditional and constructivist teaching in college biology, Innovative Higher Education, 21, 197216. Lord, T. R. (1999) A comparison between traditional and constructivist teaching in environmental science, Journal of Environmental Education, 30, 2227. Tynjl, R. (1999) Towards expert knowledge? A comparison between a constructivist and a traditional learning environment in the university, International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 357442. Viiri, J. (1996) Teaching the force concept: a constructivist teaching experiment in engineering education, European Journal of Engineering Education, 21, 5563.

290 K. M. Yuen and K. T. Hau Appendix 1. Examples of questions for the assessment of recalling
Lesson 2 4 9 Question no. 1 2 5 6 7 8 9
= constructivist; T = teacher-centred.

Teaching contexta T C T T C C C

Question What is cognitive information processing? What is discovery learning? What is ZPD? What is internalization? What are the benefits of group work? What are the difficulties of group work and the solutions? How can students be motivated?

10
aC