This volume is a sympathetic but analytical and critical view of social constructivist teaching, considering both its affordances (what it offers to students when implemented well in situations for which it is well suited) and its constraints (enabling conditions; situations in which these conditions are absent and other forms of teaching are more appropriate).
Contributors were asked to explain what social constructivist teaching means in the areas of teaching in which their scholarly work has concentrated, to describe the forms that such teaching takes and the rationale for using them, assess their strengths/areas of applicability and their weaknesses/areas of irrelevance or limited applicability, and talk about how the approaches would need to be adjusted from their usual forms in order to match the affordances and limitations of certain students, instructional situations, etc.
Contents
Learning and teaching for understanding : the key role of collaborative knowledge building / Gordon Wells Social constructivist teaching and the shaping of students' knowledge and thinking / Graham Nuthall A diversity of teaching and learning paths : teaching writing in situated activity / Carol Sue Englert and Kailonnie Dunsmore A highly interactive discourse structure / Alan H. Schoenfeld Methods, goals, beliefs, commitments, and manner in teaching : dialogue against a calculus backdrop / Daniel Chazan and Marty Schnepp Talking to understand science / Kathleen J. Roth Constructing ideas about history in the classroom : the influence of competing forces on pedagogical decision making / Bruce A. VanSledright and Jennifer Hauver James Westward expansion and the ten-year-old mind : teaching for historical understanding in a diverse classroom / Cynthia M. Okolo, Ralph P. Ferretti, and Charles D. MacArthur Discussion / Jere Brophy.