W poszukiwaniu rozumowania matematycznego najmłodszych uczniów – doniesienie z badań wdrożeniowych

Mathematical reasoning is a crucial competence for the construction of useful knowledge. The text presents selected results of the study of students of the third grade of an elementary school in the field of text task solving. The conducted educational experiment showed the potential of solving non-standard tasks for developing the reasoning of mathematically weaker students. Contact with tasks that require independent mathematizing allowed to reduce the number of students with the lowest results in the post test. The ways of understanding the role of drawing in exploring mathematical relations described in the task were analysed.

Opening tasks, opening minds – a rediscovery of the open-ended approach

Open-ended tasks are designed such that they may have more than one correct solution or may be solved in more than one way. Although such tasks constitute an irreplaceable tool for prompting young learners to be actively and creatively involved in mathematical discourse, their implementation poses a challenge. Primary school students in Poland are usually offered algorithmic and rote teaching methods and are thus very often deprived of important elements of successful mathematics learning. The ubiquitous teacher-centred approach dedicates little time to any contribution from learners. The aim of this design research was to implement a change in early childhood mathematics education. The change comprised students creating and/or solving open-ended tasks in groups, thus promoting dialogic teaching. The results confirmed that students who are challenged with openended tasks through dialogic teaching not only genuinely engage in their activities, develop a better number sense and flexibility of thinking, but also help each other gain a deeper understanding of new concepts. Captured in this research were the synergistic images of the beauty of children’s reasoning and the beauty of mathematics as an open subject – an incentive for others to begin their journey with freedom of speech for young mathematicians.

Pulsujące metafory dydaktyki w kleszczach języka. O lingwistycznych blokadach konstruktywistycznej zmiany w kształceniu

The content of the article includes analyses of the linguistic plane of the reception of constructivist didactics, carried out in order to seek a partial answer to the question: why does the paradigmatic change in the area of school education in Poland, which has been intensively postulated by scientific circles over the last thirty years, not materialise in the space of contemporary educational practices in their institutional settings? In particular, the subject of analyses refers to the dominant – “instructive” – linguistic level of general didactics, with regard to such concepts as: education, learning, knowledge. The purpose of the linguistic analyses was to show how the existing constellations of didactic metaphors have hindered the conceptualisation and reception of ideas coming from constructivist positions.

Konstruktywizm edukacyjny – niejednoznaczność, kontrowersje, dylematy

This article is a voice in the discussion on the reasons why the polemics on the essence and status of constructivism and on its significance for educational practices continues. The multiplicity of theoretical references, the ambiguity of evidence on educational outcomes, and the divergence of assessments of the effects of using constructivism in organizing learning processes have their various causes. This text undertakes to identify those reasons whose roots lie in the nature of pedagogical science and in the related peculiarities of the relationship between academic theory and teaching practice.

Interdyscyplinarny paradygmat "Childhood Studies" w perspektywie konstrukcjonizmu

The author situates her deliberations within the area of the interdisciplinary research paradigm known as Childhood Studies. The subject of her interest is the application of the ideas of constructionism, the adoption of which played a vital role in the emergence of Childhood Studies as a separate field of studies. At the time of shaping and consolidation of the new paradigm, constructionism turned out to be the primary metatheory within it. The objective of the following article is to demonstrate the values and weaknesses of the entanglement of Childhood Studies in this theoretical perspective.

Freinet and Montessori in practice. A comparative analysis of the meanings attributed to the process of learning by early education teachers – research report

The article presented is a qualitative analysis of the early education Freinet and Montessori teachers in relation to their educational practices in the scope of educational constructivism. Understanding constructivism as a metaphor describing process of learning, the authors outline similarities and differences in the conceptions attributed to the processes of learning between the two researched groups of teachers. The results of the analysis show the opposite “direction” of the thematizations. Freinet teachers concentrate on the techniques and then – in their narratives – outline the values related to education whereas Montessori teachers’ narratives are oriented at values and only illustrated with some technological examples. The outcomes of the analysis can be formulated in a form of provisional synthesis: The realization of constructivism in education is not connected so much with so called “active learning techniques” but rather with values, individual and shared axio-educational orientations and the quality of relations between various subjects involved in education. Such a hypothesis leads to the questioning of the tendency according to which teachers’ education should be practical. On the contrary, we claim that such a conception on teachers’ education might be an obstacle to the wide implementation of constructivism in educational practices.

Ewaluacje konstruktywistyczne. Implikacje dla wczesnej edukacji

The aim of this paper is to analyze the possibilities of using evaluation models – developed within the constructivist paradigm – in early education. The author’s field of interest included responsive evaluation, dialogic evaluation, deliberative democratic evaluation, participatory evaluation, empowerment evaluation and stakeholder-based evaluation. Responsive and dialogical evaluation have been found to be particularly useful in early education. The scope of in-depth analyzes is aimed to present the specificity of responsive dialogical evaluations compared to other constructivist models and their distinctiveness from neoliberal evaluations and those subordinated to the gold standard ideology. The content of the second part of the paper is devoted to analyze the problems of designing, planning and conducting programs implemented in early education.

Społeczne podstawy poznania i rozwoju – konstruktywizm społeczno-kulturowy Lwa S. Wygotskiego. Nowe odczytania, rekonstrukcje, tropy epistemologiczno-metodologiczne

The original concept, theory-method of Lev S. Vygotsky, the innovative nature of his views allows to adopt new theoretical and methodological tools to describe the process of development and learning of a child, reconstruct what is happening in the classroom and in the students’ minds. For many years the interest in Vygotsky’s concept has been experiencing a renaissance all over the world, also in Poland. The cognitively sophisticated concept has original terminology. Unfortunately, in the discourses, frequent borrowings and loose usage of terms have been observed, as well as the reproduction of Vygotsky’s words without discovering the meaning or giving them a deeper meaning. As a consequence, this brings the risk of distortion of the idea and the apparent change of school culture, its opening to a new quality (socio-cultural constructivism). In this article I share my reflection on: research and Research and Development (R&D) activities based on the theory-method of L.S. Vygotsky, applying his ideas to pedagogical research, and educational implications for changing everyday teaching practice.

Konstruktywistyczna edukacja do konstruktywistycznego nauczania. Redefinicja relacji teorii i praktyki w akademickim kształceniu nauczycieli

In this article, I discuss adult learning models and their implications in the field of academic didactics addressed to teacher candidates, which seem adequate to thinking about teaching (learning) in school inspired by constructivist-interpretative paradigms (Klus-Stańska 2018). Referring to David Guile’s (2005b) typology of approaches to professional education, which takes into account the criterion of the adopted theories of learning (a monological approach based on cognitivism, a dialogical/participatory approach, rooted in the model of cognition situated in context, and a trialogical approach corresponding to the theory of activity along with social constructivism), I compare the implications of the differentiated re/defining of the theory and practice relations in the programmes of the pedagogical component of studies constructed in accordance with the identified approaches.

Konstruktywistyczna dydaktyka w edukacji matematycznej

Didactics as science is a sub-discipline of paradigmatically pluralistic pedagogy. Its key categories, concepts, and relations between them are subject to changes in meaning. Constructivist mathematical education has to offer tools for a different understanding of educational phenomena. The text shows examples of significant transformations of didactic knowledge. The necessity to reconstruct how mathematical knowledge functions concerning students and teachers also implies requirement for changes in methodological assumptions. It becomes necessary to undertake qualitative research approaches to deepen the understanding of what is happening in lessons.