Creating action schema based on conceptual knowledge

Much of constructivist pedagogy focuses on moving past direct instruction or “chalk and talk” to promote active construction of knowledge or teaching for understanding. In this article a group of teacherresearchers conducts two classroom investigations. The first is epistemological (structural) in nature, and the second is functional. In the first investigation, a student’s efforts to employ her conceptual knowledge to guide her actions is analyzed through the lens of a conceptual framework based upon the integration of creativity theory due to Koestler and learning theory due to Piaget. The second investigation focuses on the functional aspect of a teacher’s role in promoting the conceptual based solution activity observed in the first investigation. This functional effort employs visual concepts to direct student actions and is at first ineffective however, later with more transparent structure it is successful. These results suggest student efforts to create action schema and internalize structure through conceptual visuals will depend upon the cognitive gap (ZPD) between the concepts and the coordination involved with the associated actions.