300 Word Learning Theory Statement

The ICT integrated curriculum project featured above finds its basis in learning

theory. In particular, it draws upon the theory of social constructivism, and uses Blooms

taxonomy and the SAMR model to effectively integrate ICT into the lesson.

A lesson based in social constructivism is primarily a student led, inquiry-based

lesson (Walker & Shore, 2015), that is highly social and with appropriate scaffolding

provided by a teacher (Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, n.d.). The above

lesson is completely inquiry-based. Students are free to develop their own inquiry

questions, collect, present and discuss the resulting data. Furthermore, the students work in

groups while the teacher monitors progress and provides support and instruction when

needed. The result is a lesson which is underlined by social constructivism.

ICT has been integrated throughout the project using Blooms taxonomy and the

SAMR model to ensure it is effective. Blooms taxonomy describes a range of cognitive

behaviour from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking, which requires more

cognitive processing and deeper learning (Adams, 2015). SAMR describes four ways to

integrate ICT into a lesson, categorising these ways from lower to higher (Schrock, 2018). In

this particular project, the ICT serves to redesign the way the project is carried out and

understood, one of the transformative uses of ICT (Schrock, 2018). The project also utilises

higher-order thinking from Blooms, specifically in applying technology to survey students

and obtain data, evaluating data in discussions and creating a graph to represent data. Both

Blooms taxonomy and the SAMR model were used to assist in creating a project which

effectively integrated ICT to assist learning and promoted higher-order thinking.

References
Adams, N. E. (2015). Blooms taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives. Journal of the

Medical Library Association, 103(3), 152-153. doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.103.3.010

Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. (n.d.) What teachers should know about

social constructivism. Retrieved from

http://kb.edu.hku.hk/theory_social_constructivism.html

Schrock, K. (2018). SAMR and Blooms. Retrieved from

http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html

Walker, C. L., & Shore, B, M. (2015). Understanding classroom roles in inquiry education:

Linking role theory and social constructivism to the concept of role diversification.

Sage Open, 5(4), 1-13. doi: 10.1177/2158244015607584