It is said that there’s nothing so practical as good theory. It may also be said that there’s nothing so theoretically interesting as good practice 1 . This is particularly true of efforts to relate constructivism as a theory of learning to the practice of instruction. Our goal in this paper is to provide a clear link between the theoretical principles of constructivism, the practice of instructional design, and the practice of teaching. We will begin with a basic characterization of constructivism identifying what we believe to be the central principles in learning and understanding. We will then identify and elaborate on eight instructional principles for the design of a constructivist learning environment. Finally, we will examine what we consider to be one of the best exemplars of a constructivist learning environment -- Problem Based Learning as described by Barrows (1985, 1986, 1992).

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Problem Based Learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework

A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

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Education at a Glance

This article reports a meta-analysis of personality-academic performance relationships, based on the 5-factor model, in which cumulative sample sizes ranged to over 70,000. Most analyzed studies came from the tertiary level of education, but there were similar aggregate samples from secondary and tertiary education. There was a comparatively smaller sample derived from studies at the primary level. Academic performance was found to correlate significantly with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Where tested, correlations between Conscientiousness and academic performance were largely independent of intelligence. When secondary academic performance was controlled for, Conscientiousness added as much to the prediction of tertiary academic performance as did intelligence. Strong evidence was found for moderators of correlations. Academic level (primary, secondary, or tertiary), average age of participant, and the interaction between academic level and age significantly moderated correlations with academic performance. Possible explanations for these moderator effects are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.

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A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance.

This chapter reviews the motivation for the change to problem-based learning, its definition, and the educational objectives it can serve. It discusses changing an established curriculum to problem-based learning and asks whether problem-based learning is worth the trouble.

Problem‐based learning in medicine and beyond: A brief overview

This is the first handbook where the world’s foremost “experts on expertise” review our scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent. Methods are described for the study of experts’ knowledge and their performance of representative tasks from their domain of expertise. The development of expertise is also studied by retrospective interviews and the daily lives of experts are studied with diaries. In 15 major domains of expertise, the leading researchers summarize our knowledge of the structure and acquisition of expert skill and knowledge and discuss future prospects. General issues that cut across most domains are reviewed in chapters on various aspects of expertise, such as general and practical intelligence, differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, aging, knowledge management, and creativity.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

This empirical study investigates students' learning choices for mathematics and statistics in a blended learning environment, composed of both online and face-to-face learning components. The students (N = 730) were university freshmen with a strong diversity in prior schooling and a wide range of proficiency in quantitative subjects. In this context, we investigated the impact that individual differences in achievement emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, boredom, hopelessness) had on students' learning choices, in terms of the intensity of using the online learning mode versus the face-to-face mode. Unlike the general level of learning activities, which is only minimally influenced by achievement emotions, these emotions appear to have a moderately strong effect on a student's preference for online learning. Following this, we explored the antecedents of achievement emotions. Through the use of path-modeling, we conclude that while goal setting behavior only marginally impacts achievement emotions, effort views - a crucial component of the social-cognitive model of implicit theories of intelligence - have a substantial impact on achievement emotions.

How achievement emotions impact students' decisions for online learning, and what precedes those emotions

The role of cultural dimensions of international and Dutch students on academic and social integration and academic performance in the Netherlands

A structural equation model analyzing the relationship of student achievement motivations and personality factors in a range of academic subject-matter areas

Educational innovation in economics and business administration : the case of problem-based learning

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/77188512/50427.pdf

Dirk T. Tempelaar

Papers

How achievement emotions impact students' decisions for online learning, and what precedes those emotions

The role of cultural dimensions of international and Dutch students on academic and social integration and academic performance in the Netherlands

A structural equation model analyzing the relationship of student achievement motivations and personality factors in a range of academic subject-matter areas

Educational innovation in economics and business administration : the case of problem-based learning

Student profiling in a dispositional learning analytics application using formative assessment