“Constructivists argue that individuals consciously strive for meaning to make sense of their environment in terms of past experience and their present state” (Bates, 2019, Chpt 2.5.1).
As an English language tutor, I approach each session as a new opportunity to learn about the students, their past experiences, and their future goals. I truly love the one-on-one opportunities that I have with students and having the chance to focus in on their specific needs while helping to build their confidence is a great process to be a part of . I believe that a constructivist approach when working with adult multilingual learners is key to motivating and engaging students. The adult ESL learners that I support are extremely diverse, with an age range from 18 to 70 plus years. These students have a variety of reasons for attending English classes, but they all share the common goal of being able to communicate confidently and competently in their daily lives.
“For constructivists, learning is seen as essentially a social process, requiring communication between learner, teacher and others“(Bates, 2019, Chpt 2.5.1).
This social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) should be a key part of any English language classroom as learners build upon their knowledge and make connections with each other and with the world around them. In my tutoring role, I focus on building relationships with students, providing a calm and welcoming place where students feel comfortable practicing their skills, and guiding them towards learner autonomy. As Bates (2019) highlights, technology is not a replacement for this social process; however, it can be used to support it. In the website project for EDER 678, I am focusing on the use of digital tools to support individual needs of learners and promote an inclusive learning environment. Digital tools such as text-to-speech(TTS) or automatic speech recognition (ASR) can be used to promote Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the classroom and benefit all students. The UDL framework is also in line with the constructivist approach as it focuses on engaging and motivating diverse learners through multiple modes and tools (CAST, 2018). Here is a short video of my playing with the text-to-speech tool Read & Write.
” ‘Constructivist’ teachers place a strong emphasis on learners developing personal meaning through reflection, analysis and the gradual building of layers or depths of knowledge through conscious and ongoing mental processing” (Bates, 2019, Chpt. 2.5.2).
In terms of my own learning this term, I see a strong link with constructivist theory as well. I feel as though my own digital literacy journey is growing as we’re introduced to new tools and new ways of engaging online. As my classmates and I collaborate both asynchronously and synchronously, we bring our own unique skills and knowledge, which allows us to collectively learn and grow. Our blogs posts offer insight into the diverse educational communities that we are a part of, and each person’s representation and design of their blogs motivates me to continue to experiment with the digital tools. Learning how to use Twitter and create a TikTok video was both frustrating and rewarding, but as I gain more confidence in these skills, I can see myself becoming more comfortable and present in the resident mode of online engagement. Just as I hope to see my English language students become confident, engaged and independent learners, I realize I am also seeing this in myself on this learning journey!
References
Bates, A.W. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age – Third Edition. Vancouver, B.C.: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/
CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org
Vygotsky, Lev (1978). Mind in Society. London: Harvard University Press.
Comments
3 responses to “Embracing Individualism in English Language Learning Contexts”
Your professionalism in your writing makes mine look like it was written in crayon. I love your well constructed arguments within a self reflective context. Your blog accurately demonstrates your quotes that you use – “teachers place a strong emphasis on learners developing personal meaning through reflection, analysis and the gradual building of layers or depths of knowledge through conscious and ongoing mental processing”. You lead the way in your own reflection.
I can agree with the frustrating parts of the Digital Literacies that we are trying to incorporate and for me it has also been rewarding to see things come together in our activities. You can see it in your video that you made (which is totally righteous by the way) in how a simple implementation can be to impact and support your learners. You keep building the good stuff. In the context of the language learner, this tech helps them get to that place where they can reflect and make meaning of what you are teaching. I love it.
Shanna,
What a wonderful quote you added on the end there!
It really makes me think about my role as a teacher and a learner. I absolutely agree with you that my own digital literacy journey is growing as we go through these courses and engage with tools that are outside of our comfort zones. But without having been “forced” to interact with this resources, I know that my learning would have remained as shallow as when I first started teaching.
As an English teacher, the tool you have created your video on is so valuable. I can sense that there is a huge shift in our student demographics over the past few years- we are still seeing the repercussions of Covid, and the impact it had on learning fundamental skills. Knowing that there is a huge achievement gap between my students in the same grade makes it even more important that I am well versed in what technology has to provide.
While I am so grateful for these advancements in technology, do you ever feel like we are placing limitations on our kids?
For instance, our students are required to do Book Talks, which means they need to present on a book they have read in each term. However, I know students will lounge around, not do much, until the very last weekend before the due date, and find an audiobook on Youtube, which will play at 1.5x the speed, to get through a book that would have taken them a month to read. While I am so appreciative of assistive technology, I wonder how much we are playing into allowing our students to become lazy and unmotivated to acquire skills that are so essential to their growth.
Thanks for sharing!
Great work Shanna! I loved the video ! Your reflections give me great insight into your personal learning context AND you connected the ideas to your current professional contexts.
As highlighted by Stacy, there is constant debate about how assistive technologies are “cheating” regular students. Do you think UDL could be used to disband some of these critiques? Dr Roberts 🙂