Blog Post Prompt: Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behavioralist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.
Many teachers develop their instructional style intuitively, based on how they themselves learned and how they believe people learn. In order to gain more instructional tools, it is useful to reflect upon the ways in which people learn and make connections with one’s own teaching style. In EDCI 335’s course reading, Learning Theories (2025), three major theories of learning are described: behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism.
| Behaviourism | Teaching based on behaviourist theories focus on helping students change their behaviour based on what they are taught. For example, a behaviourist would consider a student to be successful at learning 3 x 8 if the student can consistently respond to the question with 24. |
| Cognitivism | Cognitivist teaching is concerned less with what students can observably do and more concerned with students’ thinking processes. A teacher using cognitivist strategies strives to help students develop skills for problem solving, reasoning, language, and mathematical thinking. For example, knowing that 3 x 8 is 3 groups of 8 or 8 groups of 3, and being able use that idea to solve problems is more important than simply knowing the result, 24. |
| Constructivism | Constructivism considers that learners make their own meaning from personal experience and reasoning. A teacher using a constructivist lens attempts to create authentic situations, similar to those in which the learners will apply the new knowledge, and guides learners to construct meaning and check themselves for accuracy, as in an apprenticeship. |
Where Do I Fit?
When I consider my own current instructional style, I think I lean towards cognitivism. I like to present students with novel problems which allow them to show me their current understanding of concepts and the lines of reasoning they use as they attempt to solve them. As well, part of my explicit instruction is to point out similarities between the strategies they have used to solve problems with new strategies that can be useful. As a Math teacher, I feel that helping students be aware of ways of visualizing concepts and applying this understanding in their reasoning and problem solving is an important part of my job. Additionally, I include in my lesson planning plenty of time for practice with immediate feedback to help students effectively assimilate new concepts and processes.
Although cognitivism is a large part of my teaching, I also feel that behaviourist and constructivist lenses play an important role in my instructional design. As more students arrive in my high school classes not knowing facts such as multiplication tables, I have begun to incorporate behaviourist strategies like asking for fact recall during instruction and reviewing periodically so that less information is forgotten.
I have also heard from many people who say that they struggled with learning Math because the problems were so different from how they might apply it outside of the classroom. I try to construct authentic problems for my students to help them make those connections. As well, to allow students to create more personal meaning to their learning, I encourage them to work together on the problems and identify things they learn during the process, and I create opportunities for them to apply concepts and strategies in creative ways. I coach them in learning to validate their own solutions and make judgements about the quality of their solutions.
Overall, I feel that it is important not to subscribe to a single theory of learning, but to use the lens most appropriate to designing for what we hope our students will learn. In the BC Curriculum, we want our mathematics students not only to be able to calculate using established algorithms, but also to develop their reasoning, demonstrate understanding, make personal decisions, and reflect upon connections. Teaching each of these Curricular Competencies needs a distinct approach and requires us as teachers to be well versed in all three of the major theories of learning.
References
Learning theories. EDCI 335. (2025). https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/learning-theories/
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2018). Chapter 11 Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism. In Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology West, R. E. (Ed.). EdTech Books.
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