CONSTRUCTIVISM IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM: ASSESSING STUDENTS' PERCEPTION OF CONSTRUCTIVISM

Distinct to today's society is rapid change, exemplified in the swift demands that confront professionals and working life. As this ripple to and challenges the educational set up to mold competent individuals, changes occur as the education paradigm shifts. One such change is Constructivism which asserts learning to be an active process where learners actively build on their experiences and knowledge. Students' perceptions of the classroom learning environment are significant and should be of interest to teachers. The study employed a Constructivist Learning Environment Survey which was responded by163 first-year college students. It was intended to assess how students perceive their Science class as taught using the Constructivist approach. It utilized the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software to analyze data. Findings revealed that students perceived their Science class as "often" taught using Constructivism. Likewise, of the five Constructivist dimensions identified and utilized for this study, four dimensions were regarded as "often" perceived by the students in their science class, the highest often perceived dimension being Student Negotiation. Contrastingly, the only dimension perceived "seldom" by the students and scored the lowest is Shared Control. Thus, it resulted that there is no relationship between the teacher's teaching experience and the teacher's use of constructivist practices