Teaching development grants final and financial report: Infusing constructivist pedagogy in a core course to enhance teaching quality in the higher education classroom

The institute is heading for a university title and is now moving forward with the strategic goals in the pursuit of excellence in teaching, learning and scholarship. Enhancing teaching quality is also one key vision and mission of the Faculty. This proposal is prepared with the same vision. A number of studies have compared the effectiveness of various teaching methods and they have shown that active learning methods with constructivist approach are better than lectures in all aspects including the development of problem solving, or attitude and conceptual change (Ho, Watkins & Kelly 2001), or in motivation of learning, etc (McKeachie et al. 1990). Researches show that what seems to be missing in the teacher-centered classroom is “coherence, connection and depth of understanding” (Paul 1995, p.273) while deeper learning should involve active cognitive restructuring on the part of the student (Fosnot 2005). Constructivist approach is a proven research-based method to teaching and learning. By informal action researches taken by the applicant for a number of years, it is found that various student-centered strategies, constructive teaching approaches and authentic learning activities can enhance student learning motivation, level of task engagement, as well as positive change in the student teachers’ belief and conception of teaching. This project aims to: ●Refine the teaching of a core course, namely “Curriculum and Asssessment”, using various active learning methods with the constructivist approach; ●Evaluate the effectiveness of this revised course which will be taught by constructivist pedagogy; As a result, the project may contribute to enhance teaching and learning quality in the institute and thus could provide educators with alternatives to the lecture as a method of teaching in higher education.