Constructivist teaching and teacher-centred teaching: a comparison of students' learning in a university course

A case study of an undergraduate Educational Psychology course that incorporated both constructivist and teacher-centred teaching was conducted. The learning processes and higher-level learning outcomes were examined through participant observation, interviews with students and analyses of student assignments. The lessons were audio recorded and transcribed, and a total of 68 interviews, each about 1.5 hours long, were conducted. In general, the constructivist teaching facilitated students' creation of their own knowledge, as they were allowed to think more over the problems together and generate original ideas. Students' performances in recalling, critiquing and generating with the knowledge gained in the constructivist teaching context were also better than those in the teacher-centred context. This could be explained by the deeper processing of the material, the activation of students' prior knowledge and the similarity between the situations of knowledge construction and knowledge application. The strengths and limitations of constructivist teaching are also discussed.