Oct 8, 2007

Although we've been discussing learner-centered theories in our prior reading, these papers seemed to really emphasize the idea that the students need to take responsibility of their learning. I found it interesting that this whole time I've been thinking that the main principle behind learner-centered environments was teachers focusing more on the learners rather than the content (not that this isn't also true). In "Don't Lose Sight of the Students" they deem that "the most important changes must be made by the students, not schools". Of coarse this still means that teachers need to facilitate these changes - teach strategic processing skills, increase motivation, consider prior knowledge, ect. but it also means that the learners really need to take an active role in their learning. It's not just the responsibility of the teacher.
The principles seem fairly straight forward and I'm beginning to make sense out of all them, but the most difficult concept for me is how to apply all of these ideas. I have some ideas for some of them, but it's frustrating to not know exactly how to incorporate the ideas effectively into the classroom. I anticipate I'll have learners with misconceptions that have been ingrained into them and how will I attempt to change these? How much time do I spend trying to do this before giving up? I can try to get my learners to use metacognitive thinking but like Alexander and Murphy report "The leading question has now become one of when, where, and for whom certain types of strategies are more effective for learning." So, how do I know? I plan on trying to make my classes fun and discover what my learners interests but this still won't completely solve the motivation issue. I like how they listed some approaches (cooperative learning, reciprocal teaching, cognitive apprenticeship, anchored instruction) for ways to help with the situation/context/community issue and plan on looking into them to see which ones I may use as teaching tools in the future.
Principle 10 says that "individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level...." which makes sense. However, how do I accomplish this when I have a classroom of learners at different developmental levels? I guess this would depend on how many learners and the circumstances. I know studying the framework is just the starting point and suppose to help me start thinking about the various ideas and challenges - which it of coarse does but it's frustrating when their are no clear cut answers.