Warrington Paper

Some of the advantages of teaching the procedures or giving the correct answers gives the students the opportunity to think for themselves. In Warrington's paper she presented the students with problems without telling them what to do or how to solve it. She simply asked them what it meant to them and according to Warrington she states that children construct knowledge based on what they already know. So after she presented a fraction the students went on constructing knowledge about what they thought it meant based on what they already knew and in many cases they concluded correctly. Another advantage of this is that it encourages social interaction. When socially interacting with others it helps to bring more insights and helps to construct better knowledge because more minds are better than one. The students were able to put their ideas together and then conclude on an answer.

One disadvantage that I can see from this is that the children need to learn somewhat of the procedure and like in Benny's case, he was left to construct knowledge on his own and he came up with the wrong procedures and answers. That is something to consider, although the students are left to construct knowledge independently, they also need guidance to make sure they construct the right knowledge. Another thing, Warrington states that it is the responsibility of the teacher to provide learning environments, but how can the teacher know what a learning environment is that would suit each student? I think that that is a difficult thing to determine.