The Pedagogics

Learning Centered Pedagogy

Learning Centered:


http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/dol02/1992marzano_chapter1.html

http://www.aishe.org/readings/2005-1/oneill-mcmahon-Tues_19th_Oct_SCL.html


The first approach is based on “learning centered” or student centered design. This idea places the control of learning itself in the hands of the student, where the teacher provides the basic overview of the lesson and acts as an additional resource to promote active education in the classroom. According to this approach, learning is characterized not only by greater autonomy for the student, but also emphasizes active involvement, with creation, communication and participation playing key roles, also it changes the role of the teacher, where the distinction between teacher and student blends together shifting into a new dimensional reality. This education shift can be reflected in how the digital age affects literacy, discovery based learning and a bias towards action.

Literacy today involves not only text, but also visual image and screen literacy. The ability to "read" multimedia texts and to feel comfortable with new, multiple-media genres is decidedly nontrivial. However, this new literacy, beyond text and image, is one of information navigation. This entails the ability for students to be their own personal reference librarian; to know how to navigate through confusing, complex information spaces, and web pages and feel comfortable doing so.

The next aspect of this approach concerns learning. In the past we experienced formal learning in an authority-based, lecture-oriented school. Now, with the insurmountable information available through the web, we find a "new" kind of learning that's discovery based. Students are constantly discovering new things as they browse through the emergent digital "libraries." Indeed, web surfing fuses learning and entertainment, creating "infotainment." But discovery-based learning, even when combined with this notion of navigation, is a very subtle change, until we add a third shift to consider, one that pertains to forms of reasoning.

The final dimension has to do with a bias toward action. In today’s society it interesting to watch how new systems get absorbed. With the web, this absorption, or learning process, by young people has been quite different from the process in times past. Today's students get on the web and link, lurk, and watch how other people are doing things, then try it themselves. This tendency toward "action" brings us back into the same loop in which navigation, discovery, and judgment all come into play in situ. Once we fold action into the other dimensions, we necessarily shift our focus toward learning in situ with and from each other. Learning becomes situated in action; it becomes as much social as cognitive, it is concrete rather than abstract, and it becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration. As such, the web becomes not only an informational and social resource but also a learning medium where understandings are socially constructed and shared. In that medium, learning becomes a part of action and knowledge creation.

Within the classroom, the web can significantly augment the knowledge dynamics created by proximity. The Web helps build a rich fabric that combines the small efforts of the many with the large efforts of the few. By enriching the diversity of available information and expertise, it enables the culture and sensibilities of a region to evolve. It increases the intellectual density of cross-linkages. It allows anyone to lurk and learn. Indeed its message is that learning can and should be happening everywhere-a learning ecology. All together, a new, self-catalytic system starts to emerge, reinforcing and extending the core competencies of a region.

posted by The Pedagogics @ 8:57 PM