Answer

1.  Developmental Psychology

               Kamii’s constructivism theory is based on the precept that children should be exposed to learning in a natural setting to nurture their cognitive power. Children who learn through actual situations, phenomena, and experiments develop critical thinking skills that can help them inquire about why things occur in their state and develop an analogy towards in-depth understanding. The constructivism theory gives challenging concepts to children and is left to figure out the results on their own (Crain, 2014). However long it may take, children will develop methods to arrive at a solution, which could be right or wrong out of their initiative. This fulfils the major goal of Kamii’s constructivist ideology to ensure that as learners acquire knowledge from classroom instructions, they also derive meaning (Crain, 2014).

   Differences from Piagetian’s Theory

   Kamii’s constructivism theory commences with acknowledging the Piagetian premise that by constructing their knowledge, only then can children experience cognitive growth. This implies that for children to nurture mental growth, they must be exposed to situations that require them to understand things without help (Crain, 2014). However, Kamii develops this Piagetian ideology to establish that the commonly administered tests and worksheets not only hinder the children’s evaluation of situations and concepts but also make them worry about being wrong. Consequently, the children cannot fully explore the issues and gather individual in-depth understanding, instead of relying on recalling what has been taught. Kamii therefore, opines that teachers should offer meaningful and interesting experiences that are intriguing to children to the extent that they take personal initiatives to explore them (Crain, 2014). Once the teachers design appropriate activities, they can ask guiding questions that will stimulate the learners to think more about the subject. Therefore, the difference is that under Kamii’s constructivism theory, even the wrong answers from students should be respected because it gives the child confidence and autonomy to explore more and improve their cognitive ability.

   According to Crain (2014), Kamii’s constructivist theory also utilizes methods that learners can make sense of in learning. Instead of using the conventional algorithm methods approved by Piaget’s theory, that only implant meaningless theoretical view on the subject matter students should be allowed to develop unique methods to learn concepts. Instead of giving children learners answers to the concepts such as the law of gravity, the teacher should leave the children to explore with experiments, indulge their imaginations, and give their opinions on why light and heavy objects fall to the ground at the same time. This will enable them to develop the capacity to come up with original techniques to handle difficult problems both in the classroom setting and other aspects of life. This aspect makes Kamii’s approach useful for all areas of a child’s life which include their adherence to discipline (Crain, 2014).

   Case Example

   A scenario not illustrated in the book depicting a constructivist classroom is where the teacher colorfully illustrated learners’ dictionaries. Children designed serial postcards, storing imaginary holiday adventures and visual responses to poetry, and posted the decorations made across the classroom to show Pat’s classroom. Within the classroom, a group of learners’ works was articulately displayed in the entire learning environment. On the same note, learners were tasked with posting all these learning materials on the bulletin board space and explaining to their colleagues how such learning materials can help them solve their daily problems. Essentially, the above scenario depicts a constructivist classroom because the learning environment is organized so that children are immersed in experience within which they can participate in the action, meaning-making, invention, imagination, interaction, personal reflection, and hypothesizing (Crain, 2014).

Answer

Assessing Risk and Reward

The Nissan Motor Company is one of the leading automobile makers in the world. The Japanese carmaker has primarily enjoyed a successful run, allowing it to enter various regional and international markets such as the United States. However, the changing business environment was not favorable to the company in 2019. Notably, the cooperation recorded losses amounting to 7.8%. The experience pushed the management into making tough decisions, requiring almost all of its North American workforce to go for unpaid leaves.

In late 2019, the company announced that the decline in sales necessitated a two-day unpaid leave for the North American workers. The stated days for the vacation were January 2 and 3^rd    (Chicago Tribune, 2019).  Notably, this move was a crucial decision for the company because of its conflicting impacts. Whereas on the positive side, it could help the firm minimize expenses, it threatened to affect the public perception of the company regarding employee welfare.

The rewards for the decision involved cutting expenses by not paying the workers on leave, which eventually would translate into reduced expenses. Another reward was that the decision could allow the company to optimize performance by evaluating employee performances then developing new milestones. However, on the low side, the company risked affecting its public image and brand name, especially in the North American market. As per Chakravorti (2010), the way an organization treats its employees influences the firm’s public perception. Thus, Nissan risked eliciting a negative public perception. With a distorted public image, the company could fail to revive its declining sales.

I would have advised the management of Nissan to utilize the Predictive Analytic perspective in determining the right decision to take. Ideally, the approach tries to predict what might happen in the future if particular decisions or actions are undertaken at the moment (Traymbak & Aggarwal, 2019). Looking at the situation at Nissan, the company needed to develop a goal such as increasing sales. After that, they would have made decisions aimed at realizing the set goal. In this regard, the predicted outcome could give the management an overview of whether more risks existed or significant rewards could be realized.

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