Constructivist approach in schools of west Bengal

Abstract

Education is the process of all-round development of the child. It helps children to develop their talents and innate potential. The function of education is to help students to make better use of their intellectual resources to learn profitably. Teaching and learning is an integral part of modern education. Learning is gaining new knowledge or modifying existing knowledge, skills and behaviours, or preferences and involves synthesizing different types of information and knowledge. Both teaching and learning are important in gaining new information and knowledge. Traditional education and traditional teaching methods are focused on the transmission of knowledge only, and sometimes students acquire incomplete knowledge. In the above limitations of these approaches, psychologists have introduced new techniques, i.e., the constructivist approach based on teaching and learning as the product of interaction between existing understanding and new knowledge. Constructivists view learning as an active process in which the learners actively construct their knowledge as they try to comprehend the real world. There are common approaches to teaching and learning, like the Dalton approach, Hebartian approach, Pragmatism approach, Behaviourism approach, etc., that are used in education. But most of these approaches are not appropriate for teaching students scientifically. The constructivist approach emerged as a scientific method and student-centeredness. newline