Re: The concept of a true constructivist education, as envisioned by Piage
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31 Mar 2024, 05:00
OE
Analyze the question stem
This is an Inference question. It asks for a reasonable conclusion about students with which the author of the passage would likely agree.
Research
The author devotes the first half of the passage to a discussion of constructivist education and other people's opinions of it. Then with "However," the author begins to assert a strongly positive view of this type of education and proceeds to illustrate this view by contrasting the two types of students produced by the different modes of education. The last sentence describes the beneficiaries of a constructivist education.
Make a prediction
Base the prediction on the last sentence of the passage: these students do well at tasks that are unfamiliar or not well defined.
Evaluate the answer choices
(B) matches the prediction, essentially paraphrasing the comparison made in the last two sentences of the passage.
(A) gives a positive but ultimately unsupported view of these students. In fact, the passage says these students may have "wildly varying knowledge bases and skill sets," suggesting that they may actually not do well on assessments that test a broad base of knowledge. This view is put forward by other people but is never actually refuted by the author, who claims other, offsetting benefits of constructivist education.
(C) is also positive, but it is not supported by the passage. The author implies that these students will do well in higher education but says nothing about the working world.
(D) is based on a misreading of the description "unregulated melee of classroom activity." That melee does not suggest that these students do not know how to behave, but that the process of learning can look messy and disorganized.
(E) suffers from a similar misreading and misapplication of this section of the passage. Constant activity is not a necessary condition for all student learning; it is simply part of the constructivist method. The passage never states that these students "require" such "constant" activity.