Learner-Centered Lesson Planning and Instruction

1. Learner-Centered Lesson Planning and Instruction Arlends Chris Tuesday, November 26th, 2013 Faculty of Psychology, Tarumanagara University

2. Learner-Centered Lesson Planning and Instruction • Learner-Centered Principles • Some Learner-Centered Instructional Strategies • Evaluating Learner-Centered Strategies • Technology and Education • The Technology Revolution and the Internet • Standards for Technology-Literate Students • Teaching, Learning, and Technology

3. LEARNER-CENTERED PRINCIPLES • LC lesson planning & instruction move the focus away from the teacher and toward the student (McCombs, 2010; Mtka & Gates, 2010).

5. The principles emphasize the active, reflective nature of learning and learners. • According to the work group, education will benefit when the primary focus is on the learner. • The 14 learner-centered principles, 4 main sets of factors: • Cognitive & metacognitive • Motivational & emotional • Development & social • Individual differences

6. Cognitive and Metacognitive Factors • Nature of the learning process. • The learning of complex subject matter is most effective when it is an intentional process of constructing meaning from information and experience. • Goals of the learning process. • The successful learner, over time and with support and instructional guidance, can create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge.

7. Construction of knowledge. • The successful learner can link new information with existing knowledge in meaningful ways. • Strategic thinking. • The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and reasoning strategies to achieve complex learning goals.

8. Thinking about thinking. • Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring mental operations facilitate creative and critical thinking. • Context of learning. • Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture, technology, and instructional practices.

9. Motivational and Affective Factors • Motivational and emotional influences on learning. • What and how much is learned is influenced by the motivation. Motivation to learn, in turn, is influenced by the individual's emotional states, beliefs, interests and goals, and habits of thinking. • Intrinsic motivation to learn. • The learner's creativity, higher order thinking, and natural curiosity all contribute to motivation to learn. Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty and difficulty, relevant to personal interests, and providing for personal choice and control.

10. Effects of motivation on effort. • Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner effort and guided practice. Without learners' motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is unlikely without coercion.

11. Developmental and Social Factors • Developmental influences on learning. • As individuals develop, there are different opportunities and constraints for learning. Learning is most effective when differential development within and across physical, intellectual, emotional, and social domains is taken into account. • Social influences on learning. • Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal relations, and communication with others.

12. Individual Differences Factors • Individual differences in learning. • Learners have different strategies, approaches, and capabilities for learning that are a function of prior experience and heredity. • Learning and diversity. • Learning is most effective when differences in learners' linguistic, cultural, and social backgrounds are taken into account.

13. Standards and assessment. • Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner as well as learning progress -- including diagnostic, process, and outcome assessment -- are integral parts of the learning process.

14. SOME LEARNER-CENTERED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES • Theories of Piaget & Vygotsky • Constructivist aspects of thinking • Social Constructivist aspects of thinking • Problem-Based Learning • Essential Questions • Discovery Learning

15. Problem-Based Learning • Emphasizes real-life problem solving. • Authentic problems • Everyday life. • Small-group efforts to identified problems/issues  wish to explore, locate the necessary material & resources • Teachers act as a guides.

16. Essential Questions • Questions that reflect the heart of the curriculum, the most things that students should explore and learn. • “What flies?” • “How & why do things fly in nature?” • “How does flight affect humans?” • “What is the future of flight?” • Essential questions like these perplex students, cause them to think and provoke their curiosity. (Lattimer, 2009)

17. Discovery Learning • Students construct an understanding on their own. • DL >< Direct-instruction approach. • Students have to figure out things for themselves. • To be effective as a systematic instruction approach – guided discovery learning.

18. Evaluating Learner-Centered Strategies • The LC model of planning & instruction has many positive features. (Help teacher develop strategies that benefit student learning) • Critics of LCI that it gives too much attention to the process of learning and not enough to academic content. (Hirsch, 1996). • Area with many ill-defined problems, such as the social science & humanities, learner-centered instruction can be effective. • In well-structured knowledge domain such as math & science, teacher-centered structure work better. (Feng, 1996)

19. Critics also say that LCL is less effective at the beginning level of instruction in a field because students do not have the knowledge to make decisions about what & how they should learn. • Research on the choice and sequencing of learning activities in the classroom indicated that the use of constructivist and direct instruction approaches are often more effective than when either approach is used alone. (Darling-Hammond & others, 2005)

20. Q&A Session

21. Technology and Education

22. Technology plays important roles in planning and instruction. • Three important ways that technology affects curriculum planning are: • As a learning goal for students to develop certain technology competencies; • As a resources for curriculum planning through the extensive materials that are available on the internet; • As tools that improve students’ ability to learn through techniques such as simulation and visualization in science and text analysis in literature, as well as software that encourages reflection and provides models of good performances (Darling-Hammond & others, 2005).

23. The Technology Revolution & The Internet • The Internet is a system of computer networks that operates world-wide. • Computer-mediated communication. • Up-to-date information than textbooks. • Nearly 100 % of public schools in the United States are now connected to the Internet. • Indonesia???

24. Introduction of the World Wide Web (the Web) • The Web is a system for browsing internet sites. • It presents the user with documents, called Web pages, full of link to other documents or information systems. • Multimedia (images, video, animation, sound….) • Search engines: Google and Yahoo!

25. Some effective ways that the internet can be used in classrooms: • Navigating and integrating knowledge. • Collaborative learning. • Computer-mediated communication (CMC) • Improving teachers’ knowledge and understanding. • Graphics and Presentation

26. Standards for Technology-Literate Students • The International Society for Technology in Education has developed the following six standards for students (ISTE, 2007) and teachers (ISTE, 2007). • Creativity & innovation. • Communication & collaboration. • Research & information fluency. • Critical thinking, problem solving & decision making. • Digital citizenship. • Technology operations & concepts.

27. Teaching, Learning & Technology • A special concern is how technology can be used to improve teaching and learning. • Gap beetween the technology knowledge and skills most student learn in school and the technology knowledge and skills they need in the 21th century workplace.

28. Martha Stone Wiske and her colleagues (2005) recently described how to more effectively use technology to teach for understanding by considering: • The topic that are worth understanding, • What students should understand about such topic, • How student develop and demonstrate understanding, • How student and teacher assess understanding, and • How students and teachers learn together.

29. Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) • Pedagogical Knowledge • Technological Knowledge

30. References • Santrock