ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author encourages teachers to teach students to become independent, critical, and self-motivated learners. This is accomplished when teachers and students work together to construct an understanding of a particular content area. The author provides some insights as to why constructivist literacy instruction is not the norm and makes specific suggestions for actions to resist the status quo to create a constructivist classroom. Teachers are continually challenged to be accountable for the instruction they offer. This demand for accountability is oppressive; teachers’ curricula and practices are affected. Efforts to improve scores on standardized, norm-referenced tests also belie the assumptions of the test. These tests are based on assumptions of randomization; they are designed to represent the performance of students in comparison with a normal sample, and students’ performance is supposed to represent the bell-shaped curve.
