The TASC approach draws its ideas from the Social Constructionist perspective to education.
The Social Constructionist epistemology promotes the passage from a “teacher-as-expert classroom” to a “student-centred classroom”, which considers that knowledge in the minds of students is created collaboratively.
In a student-centred classroom the role of the teacher is to guide the student to the discovery of new information, which can then be directed toward the next phase of learning. Though teachers are still considered as the ones who have more knowledge than the student, their role is not just to stand and deliver, but to present and give ideas.
Social Constructionism can be seen as a source of other theoretical perspectives, which are all inspired, in some ways, by it and have contributed to its enrichment: postmodernism, complex systems approach, poststructuralism, narrative perspective, solution-focused approach.
Although Social Constructionism and the other perspectives connected to it have been used to some extent in the field of education and school, they have been poorly applied to the dimension of classroom climate. Nonetheless, we at TASC firmly believe that classroom climate is an important element affecting the quality of teaching and learning process at school. Classroom climate is created by all classroom events that include mutual relationships between students, between students and teachers, students’ personal development, and the systematic characteristics of the classroom. It influences the students’ overall success, their personal development, their learning motivation, and their self-image, as well as the quality of the teacher’s work within the classroom environment.
The TASC approach emphasises that by giving importance to multiple points of view, by deconstructing their role of power within the classroom, by paying attention to language and how it is used in the classroom, by seeing the classroom as an ever evolving and complex system, by giving space to everyone’s narratives, teachers can effectively facilitate the development of a more positive and inclusive classroom climate which, in turn, can positively affect the quality of the teaching and learning processes.
