Co-construction: two ways

What does research say...

1. “Allowing students to have a sense of ownership and control over ‘what is learned, how it is learned and when it is learned’ has been shown to be a powerful motivating factor… Co-construction is at the heart of customized learning. Students and teachers work together.” Mason Durie, Students First – Secondary Futures
2. “Learners actively construct knowledge by confronting and solving problems. Each learner brings his or her own expertise and shares it with others at the same time as developing new expertise, and so the process of construction is an interactive one. Cultural and social meanings are expressed and constructed.” McNaughton (1995), Describing co-construction theory

One thing I noticed during my practicum is that students also carry knowledge from other subject areas. This means working together with other subject teachers. Team teaching some concepts with an art, business, English, or science teacher could provide students a great variety and an authentic experience. This could be effectively carried out by arranging students go into the other teacher’s classroom for a change of atmosphere or inviting the other teacher into the classroom or even tailoring the project content to the content being covered by subject-area teachers.

The school I am currently in is a decile 3 school and only ICT classrooms have computer access. Nevertheless, we are working together with social studies faculty to support them with ICT integrated activities. Students are so very engaged to design a PowerPoint presentation. They make use of the knowledge they gather from their social studies classroom and couple it with the design issues taught in an ICT class to produce a presentation for an Observatory about the Celestial bodies starting with the Solar System.