The
Basics of
Learner-Centered Instruction
On Nov. 20, 2001, Dr. Deb Ulmer reviewed with over 100 faculty at JSRCC the basics of a learner-centered philosophy of teaching. As a medical educator who works with nurses and physicians for their own education and the education of their patients, Dr. Ulmer has reflected on what makes teaching effectively result in learning.
Preview
Fundamentally, learner-centeredness focuses on
 | good relations between teacher and learner |
| being strategic about information transfer |
| a congruence between objectives in a course and the evaluation methods |
| giving primacy to what the learner needs rather than what the teacher
wants to teach |
Assumptions
In 1994, Heimlich and Norland asserted that adult educators [faculty] can improve their craft "by understanding how their beliefs and behaviors relate to teaching and learning."
A Basic Teaching Practice: Explore -- Reflect -- Apply
To explore various aspects of their teaching, faculty need to be reflective, such as by asking themselves questions like "Am I thinking one thing [about teaching] but doing another?" Reflection is necessary for information to become knowledge--for students as well as for faculty. Applying our realizations about teaching involves reconciling inconsistencies between our beliefs and our behaviors. For instance, application involves adjusting course content to the personality of each individual section of students. Some classes predominantly want to listen; others, on the whole, want to talk about their relevant experiences.
One goal of teaching, then, is to formulate your personal working definitions of these steps as you determine what constitutes instructional effectiveness.
Assembling Your Own Teaching Philosophy
Dr. Ulmer offered several prompts from commentators on teaching to prod us toward refining our own philosophies about teaching. For instance,
| "Teaching is guiding" (Newcomb, McCracken, and Warmbrod, 1986) so that students can "acquire new skills, knowledge," etc. |
| Learning is more like a process of deliberate decision-making [than passive reception of information]. |
| [The Ultimate Challenge] "If the learner doesn't learn, did the teacher teach?" This question seriously challenges the "coverage" philosophy, though Dr. Ulmer is sympathetic to faculty who are preparing their students to pass an externally mandated test or state board, as well as to faculty in required courses, which can be the worst for student motivation. But the question must still be raised--- |
| "How far must a teacher go to insure learning?" |
| If learning means changing perceptions, attitudes, values, and behaviors (Brown and Atkins, 1988), then teaching is a tough job--a "complex, intellectually demanding, socially challenging" task. |
Adults Vs. Children: Learning
Is learning the same process for adults and children? The work of Malcolm Knowles [and Piaget's developmental stages] suggest not. Knowles, [in his seminal work The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy] (1980), stresses that adults are more self-directed, have "a rich experience base, need to address real-life problems, and need to apply learning immediately."
Learning is, of course, influenced by a multitude of factors. While examining the list offered by Durkenwald and Merriam (1982), she suggested some implications for teaching.
| Factors Influencing Learning | Implications for Faculty |
| prior knowledge | Adult learners [including faculty who are learning to perfect their craft] need to talk about their relevant prior experiences. |
| intrinsic motivation | Adult learners often return to schooling because of some life crisis they are facing, e.g. a career change. |
| positive reinforcement by the teacher | [Though adults are more independent as learners, their effort and learning can be affected by what the teacher thinks of their performance.] |
| organized presentation of material | [This may seem like a "well, duh"; but how do you know if your students perceive the organization of information that you are presenting on any given day?] |
| repetition of concepts | [Educational psychologists have suggested that a new concept may need to be repeated 20 or more times for it to become automated. Many educators at all levels are perceiving the value of a web page for linking students to existing re-explanations and exercise materials or to teacher-made notes and practices intended to increase students' time on task for the most crucial concepts of a course.] |
| perceived meaningfulness of tasks and materials | Dr. Ulmer suggested at one point asking students how they go about linking course concepts to real life. [Many of us value the presence of older students in our day classes because their backlog of experience often lets them provide applications of concepts beyond the examples that we faculty can give.] |
| active participation by the learner | ["Give me a fish and I eat that day; teach me to fish..." Active learning is an important subset of learner-centered instruction and the topic of the next two workshops in the series on Jan. 21 and May 9, 2002. For an extremely helpful website that demonstrates some of the active learning methods in Mel Silberman's Active Learning: 101 Strategies for Teaching Any Class, visit the active learning website at Adams Teaching Excellence Center at Abilene Christian University. Several videos are included that can be played via Real Player 7 or later edition.] |
| the physical and emotional environment created by the teacher | In another context, Dr. Ulmer mentioned Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence. [Perhaps teachers draw from what Howard Gardner calls "interpersonal intelligence" when we make our choices about course and classroom management tasks. See notes on multiple intelligence at this website. For a comprehensive website on emotional intelligence, including a history of the term, visit Steve Hein's Emotional Intelligence Site.] |
Effective teaching, then, is "systematic, stimulating, and caring"; it changes permanently students' "judgment, reasoning," creativity, and more.
Motivation
Learners' motivation is also influenced by a multiplicity of factors, but without some sort of motivation, no learning occurs. Motivation mediates learning. Culture influences motivation, as does the "history of our lives," and our purpose.
What Is a "Motivating Learning Experience"?
A motivating learning experience depends on factors that faculty can control--their own expertise, empathy, enthusiasm, clarity, and cultural responsiveness.
Expertise becomes evident as faculty
|
make clear their answer to this question--"What are the benefits of this information?" |
|
select ways of conveying information that establishes a connection with students |
|
provide more than one good example to clarify concepts |
|
point out the limits and consequences of the information under study |
|
reveal that they know who their students are and how they bridge to the real world from class concepts |
Cultural responsiveness primarily means managing a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment. Part of the safety issue is dispelling the students' proclivity for suffering from the "impostor syndrome" as soon as possible. Each student may be wondering, "Am I the only person who doesn't belong here?" Cultural responsiveness also, of course, means relating course concepts to the larger society, its problems and patterns.
Teaching Strategies
The "worst" teaching method is the one that is used "all the time." Almost all of the following strategies are more work than lecturing and lead to evaluation methods that may be more work than the usual multiple-choice test--but they should yield more learning and richer assessment data.
| For conveying information | For prompting critical thinking | For psychomotor skills | For changing attitudes |
| lecture | case studies | repetitive practice? | role play |
| panel | games | spaced practice? | simulation |
| group discussion | critical incident | group discussion | |
| buzz group | debate | storytelling | |
| reaction panel | reflective practice | metaphor analysis | |
| screened speech | observation | structured practice | |
| symposium | quiet meeting | reflective practice |
Objectives
[Though many of us veteran faculty groaned inwardly at the basic review of objective writing,] Dr. Ulmer presented Bloom's cognitive taxonomy as a tool for changing students' behaviors. Admittedly, objectives in our courses change over the years as we perfect our goals and methods, but we should always be asking ourselves, "What's the real objective?"
|
Do I want students simply to be able to list some information, or do I want them to analyze and use the information in a new context? |
|
What will I be asking students to do as a test of whether they have mastered the objective? |
|
What level of performance do I expect from students for the objective? |
Q & A
Many of the questions from the faculty present related to classroom management issues. Dr. Ulmer put these in the context of changing students' cultural behavior. Part of the answer is showing students the "fit" between their needs for succeeding in the course and the campus and course resources available to them. Answers to questions posed varied as the students were perceived to be either "button pushers" or "mature" students, earnest and able but complicated lives, who generally took the initiative to communicate with the teacher.
Asked about distance learning, Dr. Ulmer noted [what has been borne out by research reported in Syllabus magazine more than once and the experience of most faculty who have taken courses online] that distance learning requires educators to work harder, especially if students expect individual feedback on virtually everything they submit. But distance learning is a necessary part of higher education.
Handouts
Dr. Ulmer handed out "The Norland/Heimlich Teaching Values Scale: College Teacher Version" in hopes that we would use our answers to assemble our own personal philosophy of teaching.
The other handout was an excerpt from The Teaching Professor (April
1993: 3-4) that includes the VARK, a very informal (13-item) questionnaire for
assisting us and our students in sorting out our preferred learning
styles. The questionnaire
and commentary on learning styles are
available online.
1999