EDU 531

FACILITATING LEARNER-CENTERED EDUCATION

COMPREHENSIVE HANDOUTS FOR THE FIRST PERIOD

Learner-Centered (Student-Centered)
⮚ views learners as active agents
⮚ learners participate actively in the learning process

The 14 principles are divided into those referring to:

a. Cognitive and metacognitive
b. Motivational and affective
c. Developmental and social
d. Individual difference factors

A. Cognitive and metacognitive

Cognitive
⮚ attention, perception, executive function, and reasoning.
Metacognitive
⮚ thinking about one's thinking

COGNITIVE AND METACOGNITIVE FACTORS

1. Nature of Learning Process
⮚ Learning should be intentional.
⮚ Learners should assume personal responsibility for own learning.

2. Goals of the Learning Process

⮚ Students should have relevant goals.
⮚ Students state what they want to learn during your learning process.
⮚ SMART(specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-relevant)

3. Construction of Knowledge
⮚ Linking new information and experience to existing knowledge.

4. Strategic Thinking
⮚ Learners use strategic thinking in their approach to learning.
⮚ Learners reflect on the methods.

5. Thinking about thinking

⮚ Students reflect on how they think and learn.
⮚ Meta cognitionMetacognition

6. Context of Learning
Learning can be influenced by culture, technology, instructional practices.

MOTIVATIONAL AND AFFECTIVE FACTORS

Affective factors are emotional factors which influence learning.

7. Motivational and emotional influences on learning

⮚ Motivation is the force that energizes and directs behaviour.
⮚ Students interest towards a goal.
⮚ Student motivation and feeling has to do with student's desire to participate in the learning
process.

8. Intrinsic motivation to learn

⮚ Intrinsic motivation (deeper, within you) refers to an individual's personal interests,
satisfaction, and enjoyment.
⮚ Internal factors that affects learning.
Extrinsic motivation
⮚ Rewards (such as money, grades)

9. Effects of motivation on effort

⮚ When students are motivated they will be more positive and energetic in the classroom and
toward their learning.

DEVELOPMENTAL AND SOCIAL FACTOR

10. Developmental influences on learning

⮚ The development of an individual influences how they learn.
⮚ This could be the ways in which they are raised, the environment, or genetics

11. Social influences on learning

⮚ Creating a language environment and an experience environment which stimulate the mind to grow, and by systematically
rewarding a child for learning.
 ⮚ Learning occurs just with the “thought” of a social interaction.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES FACTOR

12. Individual differences in learning

⮚ Learners learn differently based on their gender, ethnicity, learning styles, previous knowledge and experience with
content, strategies, and technology.

13. Learning and diversity

⮚ Inclusive learning environment.
⮚ Learners with different background, gender, races, ethnicity.

14. Standards and assessment

⮚ It tells students what performance is required and allows you to gain a sense of how your students are doing overall,
based on their achievement of the standards.

Alexander and Murphy gave a summary of the 14 principles and distilled them into five
areas:

1. The Knowledge base

⮚ How we organize and represent new information, and how we filter new experiences, and even what
we determine to be important or relevant.

2. Strategic processing and control

⮚ Students are involved in their own learning.
⮚ Regulate their thought, develop their skills

3. Motivation and affect

⮚ Learning is influenced by motivation and emotions.

4. Development and Individual Differences

⮚ Individual differences factors: heredity and Environment
⮚ Some development are faster than the others.

5. Situation or context
⮚ the set of conditions where learners build knowledge
⮚ is where the learning takes place.

Metacognition
◆ Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes.
◆ Thinking about thinking

Metacognitive Knowledge
◆ Knowledge of one's strengths and weaknesses as a learner and how to make the most of these.

Declarative Knowledge (personal knowledge) -- facts and information about a topic.

Procedural Knowledge (task knowledge) -- HOW to do something - ride a bike, for

example.

Conditional Knowledge (strategy knowledge) --- knowing when and why to use
declarative
and procedural knowledge.

Metacognitive Regulation and Control

During the planning phase
⮚ Learners think about the learning goal the teacher has set.
„What am I being asked to do?‟
„Which strategies will I use?‟
„Are there any strategies that I have used before that might be
useful?‟

During the monitoring phase

⮚ Learners implement their plan and monitor the progress they are making towards their learning goal.
“Is the strategy that I am using working?‟
„Do I need to try something different?‟

During the evaluation phase

 ⮚ Students determine how successful the strategy they used was in helping them to achieve their
learning goal.

How well did I do?‟

„What didn‟t go well?‟ „What could I do differently next time?‟
„What went well?‟ „What other types of problem can I use this strategy for?‟

Metacognitive Instruction
⮚ Planning how to approach a learning task, using appropriate skills and strategies to solve a problem, monitoring
one's own comprehension of text

Metacognitive Strategies
⮚ Techniques to help students develop an awareness of their thinking processes as they learn.

Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory

Cognitive Learning
ex: Reflect on their learning

Assimilation
❖ interpret new information within the framework of existing knowledge.
❖ Fitting of new ideas into existing knowledge.

Adaptation
❖ Adaptation is the ability to adjust to new information and experiences.

Accommodition
❖ changing or altering existing knowledge in order to cope with things that don't fit those existing
frameworks.
❖ new schemas may developed.

Organization defines how experiences are related to each other.

Equilibrium: meaning there are no conflicting schemas.

✧ New information fit well, "new situation" is in balance with the existing schema.

The Four Stage of Cognitive Development

1. The Sensorimotor Stage (Ages: Birth to 2 Years)

⮚ Child learns through their senses.
⮚ Object permanence is the awareness that an object continues to exist even when it is not in view.

2. The Preoperational Stage (Ages: 2 to 7 Years) Symbolic Thought

⮚ using symbols, as evidenced by the increase in playing and pretending
⮚ Imitation: Children can now mimic another person’s actions, even if the individual they are modeling is no
longer in front of them.
⮚ Symbolic play: Children begin assigning characteristics or symbols to objects. For example, they may pretend
a stick is a sword.
⮚ inventing an imaginary friend
⮚ Egocentrism: they cannot take on another person's perspective.
⮚ Irreversibility: once done it cannot be changed

3. The Concrete Operational Stage (Ages: 7 to 11 Years) Logical Thought

⮚ Children in this stage think about tangible (concrete) objects and specific instances rather than abstract
concepts.
⮚ Conservation: is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance
changes.
⮚ Classification: ability to classify objects – put them together based on their color, shape, etc.
⮚ Seriation: (logical order) involves mentally arranging objects or situations along a quantifiable dimension, such
as height, weight, size, color, shape, or type.
⮚ Reversibility: Reversibility refers to the understanding that numbers or objects can be changed or manipulated
and then returned back to their original state.
⮚ Decentration: refers to the ability to simultaneously consider multiple aspects of a situation or problem. Child
becomes capable of considering more than one aspect of an object or situation at a time.

4. The Formal Operational Stage (Ages: 12 and Up) Abstract Reasoning

⮚ able to understand abstract principles and to think abstractly and solve complex problems.
⮚ Hypothetic-deductive reasoning is the ability to think scientifically through generating predictions, or
hypotheses, about the world to answer questions.

Sociocultural Development Theory of Cognitive Development

Role of Social Interaction in Language Development

⮚ Social interaction plays an important role in the learning process
Three concepts of Sociocultural development theory:
⮚ (i) culture is significant in learning,
 ⮚ (ii) language is the root of culture, and
⮚ (iii) individuals learn and develop within their role in the community.
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD) - the space between what a learner can do without assistance and what a
learner can do with adult guidance.

The "More Knowledgeable Other"

⮚ is someone who has a higher level of knowledge than the learner (teacher, parent, instructor, peers)

Scaffolding
⮚ Guidance of MKO during the learning process
⮚ providing support to learners to help them reach higher levels of understanding.
⮚ Activities, instructions, tools, and resources that are used to aid in this learning process

Three stages of speech development:

Stage 1 – Social or External Speech
⮚ child uses speech to control the behavior of others (ex:crying,shouting and laughter)
⮚ Verbalization

Stage 2 – Egocentric Speech

⮚ They said things out loud in an attempt to guide their own behavior. (ex: counting out loud)

Stage 3 – Inner Speech

⮚ This type of speech allows us to direct our thinking and behavior. (ex:counting in our head’s)
⮚ This phase allows the person to do all other higher order cognitive activities.

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