When I was growing up, I experienced the education models of two different countries, China and Canada. Although my understanding may be biased due to different grades, I still want to share some of my feelings. In my opinion, Chinese elementary, middle, and high school education combines behaviorism and cognitivism, while Canadian universities combine cognitivism and constructivism.
First of all, from the perspective of my time as a Chinese student, China Education believes that the prime time for students to lay a solid foundation for their studies is when they were in elementary school, and at this time, many teachers would emphasize behaviorism. For example, it is written in the article we read that when students receive a “2+4” stimulus and give a “6” response, many students need to quickly give the correct response after receiving the stimulus. For example, learning Chinese characters, memorizing words, etc. And when the self-awareness of primary school students is not very strong, many students think this memory method is boring.
Therefore, the learning gap between students is slowly opened from this time and may affect future learning.
When it comes to middle and high school, the teacher’s education method is more biased towards cognitivism. After the elementary school has a certain understanding of the basic knowledge, the education of the middle and high schools will tend to be more integrated with the psychological structure. Students need to have a stronger understanding and the ability to draw inferences from one another. For example, after you have learned to analyze a sample problem, the teacher can help you complete these similar sample problems whenever you re-add new variables. In this way, students’ divergent thinking can be exercised, and they can try to understand and analyze many difficult problems by themselves.
Canadian universities also include the cognitivism I mentioned above, and students’ flexible thinking can be fully utilized. Because the university does not simply spread some rote knowledge, but to let students better understand the principles and bring them into future work and life. At the same time, universities also include another kind: constructivism. When the students’ self-learning ability is the best in this time period, we can understand what kind of learning is most useful to us. Therefore, there are not many constraints in the university, and it is more necessary to arrange your time reasonably to complete the tasks assigned by the instructor.
In general, every student has experienced these three behaviors more or less in their life study: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Although they are three different educational behaviors, as long as the right type is selected, it is helpful whether it is the educational method for instructors or the learning method for students.
jiaqi0625
June 21, 2021 — 11:05 pm
I very much agree with what you said. I also completed primary school, junior high school and senior high school education in China. Our way of education combines behavior and cognitivism. I think it gives me a lot of learning pressure. There is no way to study in Canada. There are a lot of teamwork and lectures, which makes me not have too much divergent thinking. But I can’t say which way of learning is better, because China’s population is too large, but the number of universities is not large. If you want to compete for a good university, this kind of exam oriented education can be screened. I think there will be better solutions in the future!