Abstract
The purpose of this study was to comprehend how instructors in a private school system in Vietnam apprehended the constructivism theory and the obstacles they faced when putting it into practice when teaching English at elementary levels. A multiple case study design was utilized to collect qualitative data from four primary teachers from one campus of this school system, through semi-structured interviews and classroom observation. The findings indicated that the participating teachers did not have a proper understanding of this learning theory, which brought about the lack of self-reliance in their discussion and implementation of it. The challenges confronting them were concerned with time constraints, learners' levels, the English curriculum itself, and teachers' workload. It is necessary for the teachers to attend more workshops on not only the general constructivism learning theory but also the concrete, contextualized constructivist pedagogical practices in the language classroom.
Top1. Introduction
Constructivism, one of the most popular teaching and learning theories, is a way of constructing learners’ own understanding of the world based on their own experience as they live and grow (Bereiter, 1994). According to this theory, learners are encouraged to mobilize prior and present knowledge, together with their experiences during the learning time, to construct new personal knowledge, with the support of their teachers and/or peers (Pritchard & Woollard, 2004; Boghossian, 2006; Hyslop-Margison & Strobel, 2007; Yilmaz, 2008; Gunduz & Hursen, 2015; Olusegun, 2015). In light of this approach, students are made the center of the classroom while the teacher serves as a guide, moderator or facilitator that motivates and encourages them (Alanazi, 2016).
Despite its advantages, constructivism is difficult to apply in some educational contexts, especially when teachers are not adequately trained in its use. In fact, despite the fact that there has been a lot of research on teachers' belief and difficulties in language classrooms, the majority of these studies have focused on specific teaching strategies, such as communicative language teaching or task-based language teaching, rather than a comprehensive and general learning theory like constructivism (Fábián et all., 2011; Garton & Burns, 2011; Khorasgani & Khanehgir, 2017). The qualities and policies of each educational institution also influence how a certain teaching strategy or learning theory is applied (Lestari & Sulistyawati, 2019; Elmahida & Komaryah, 2021). Gaining insights into teachers’ perceptions of and challenges in implementing that method or theory in specific settings of a particular school (system) is a significant contribution to the literature.
The current study targets a private school system in Ho Chi Minh City, where a pathway primary English learning program was developed to integrate national program standards into the constructivism learning theory. One of the researchers was working for this school system, which enabled her to gain access to its curriculum and establish connection with quite a few colleagues there. The program emphasizes learners’ communicative competence in an interactive environment by means of dynamic activities such as role-play, storytelling, movies and experiments. In this environment, the four English skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) are integrated to build communicative competence through students’ interaction with their teachers and classmates. Constructivism in the context of this study was implemented in the English subject and the participants of this study were four English teachers at one campus of this school system. This case study was intended to discover the teachers’ perceptions of and difficulties in implementing the constructivism theory in teaching English to young learners (aged from seven to eleven). Specifically, the following questions related to research were put into consideration:
- 1.
How do English teachers in this school system perceive the constructivism learning theory in their teaching of English to young children?
- 2.
What challenges do they encounter when implementing this theory in teaching English to young children?
- 3.
What are their proposed solutions to the challenges encountered?
Key Terms in this Chapter
Constructivism: Constructivism is known as the theory that students actively construct knowledge rather than just take in the information passively.
Young Learners: Children are in the range of three to eleven or twelve years old.
Traditional Classroom: in traditional classrooms, teachers serve as role models, leading the classroom and giving and grading assignments to the students.
Constructivist Classroom: constructivist classrooms enable students to become active learners in class by constructing their own knowledge.
Case Study: A case study is described as an intensive, systematic investigation of an individual or group in which the researcher would like to take in-depth data on several variables.