A Constructivist Pedagogy For Career And Technology Education

14 Pages 3523 Words

In this article, I explored tenets of constructivism that could be directly applied to the Career and Technology Education Standards for Career and Technology Education Teachers. This article provides a proposed constructivist pedagogy for the Vocational Technology studies. Though I do not consider myself to be a strict- constructivist teacher, when I compared my educational philosophy to this proposed pedagogy, I realized how much the study of constructivist theory and practice had influenced my beliefs and methods of instruction. As a future Technology Education educator, I applied these constructivist principles to my own teaching style and methods.


A Constructivist Pedagogy for Career and Technology Education

The National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium states: “career studies should be taught in manners that are consistent with a constructivist view of learning” (NASDCTEC, 1999, p. 7). While this may sound good in theory, one underlying problem exists: the lack of a clearly defined, agreed-upon constructivist pedagogy. This article will (1) explore the definition and variations of constructivist theory, (2) present a pedagogy for constructivist teachers of career and technology studies, and (3) compare and relate those pedagogies to the existing standards for powerful career and technology studies as defined by the NASDCTEC.

Defining Constructivism

“Constructivism is a topic on the conference programs of virtually all prominent national educational organizations and has been widely described and analyzed in professional journals” (Brooks, 1999). Constructivist theory has been presented in a variety of contexts, and institutions of higher education are implementing constructivist teacher education programs nationwide (Brooks, 1999). So, what exactly is constructivism? The answer is not clear, and depending upon different researchers, authors, or theorists,...