The transition from cognitivism to constructivism in foreign language teaching: comparative analysis

Abstract

This article offers to get acquainted with some basic theories of learning and their possible use in the educational process. Cognitivism regards the student as the processor of a computer that processes information. As the dominant paradigm, cognitivism replaced behaviorism in the 60s. Cognitivism focuses on internal mental activity. Mental processes, such as thinking, memory, knowledge, problem solving, must be understood. Knowledge is seen as a diagram or symbolic mental constructs. Learning is a change in the student’s pattern. Constructivism, as a paradigm, or worldview, argues that learning is an active constructive process. A student is a designer / creator of information. Constructivism describes learning as an active contextual process of constructing knowledge, rather than its acquisition. Knowledge is constructed on the basis of personal experience and environmental hypotheses. Students constantly test these hypotheses through social negotiation. Each has its own interpretation and design of the process of acquiring knowledge. Cognitivism and constructivism suggest that students should be active in determining how they acquire critical thinking ability. The teacher cannot “see” the thinking process, but can use approaches such as instructing the student to prepare a sound plan of action before proceeding with the patient care. The cognitive theory of learning is a learner / student-oriented model in which a learner uses internal thought processes to discover new ways to use past knowledge and new knowledge to provide patient care. When something that was learned in the past does not correspond to the current situation, the student experiences “cognitive dissonance” and must solve this problem before continuing his studies. On the basis of how well teachers understand what processes occur in students during training, they develop / select appropriate effective teaching technologies.