LEARNER CENTERED PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

• Learner-centered psychological principles

  • Cognitive and metacognitive factors
  • Motivational and affective factors
  • Developmental and social factors
  • Individual difference factors influencing learners and learning factors
• Learning in schools

  Emphasizes the use of intentional processes that learners can use to construct meaning from information, experiences, and their own thoughts and beliefs
• Successful learners

  • Active, goal-directed, self-regulating, and assume personal responsibility for contributing to their own learning
• Goals of the learning process

  The strategic nature of learning requires learners to be goal directed
• Learners' goals

  To construct useful representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and learning strategies necessary for continued learning success across the life span
• Learning of complex subject matter

  Most effective when it is an internal process of constructing meaning from information and experience
• Successful learner

  Over time and with support and instructional guidance, can create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge
• Educators' role


  Can assist learners in creating meaningful learning goals that are consistent with both personal and educational aspirations and interests
• Construction of knowledge


  Knowledge widens and deepens as learners continue to build links between new information and experiences and their existing knowledge base
• Nature of knowledge links

  Can take a variety of forms, such as adding to, modifying, or reorganizing existing knowledge or skills
• Unless new knowledge becomes integrated with the learner's prior knowledge and understanding, this new knowledge remains isolated, cannot be used most effectively in new tasks, and does not transfer readily to new situations
• Educators' role

  Can assist learners in acquiring and integrating knowledge by strategies such as concept mapping and thematic organization or categorizing
• Successful learners

  • Use strategic thinking in their approach to learning, reasoning, problem solving, and concept learning
• Successful learners

  Understand and can use a variety of strategies to help them reach learning and performance goals, and to apply their knowledge in novel situations
• Successful learners

  Continue to expand their repertoire of strategies by reflecting on the methods they use to see which work well for them, by receiving guided instruction and feedback, and by observing or interacting with appropriate models
• Educators' role

  Can enhance learning outcomes by assisting learners in developing, applying, and assessing their strategic learning skills
• Successful learners


  • Can reflect on how they think and learn, set reasonable learning or performance goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies or methods, and monitor their progress toward these goals
• Successful learners

  Can generate alternative methods to reach their goal (or reassess the appropriateness and utility of the goal)
• Instructional methods


  That focus on helping learners develop higher order (metacognitive) strategies can enhance student learning and personal responsibility for learning
• Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers have a major interactive role with both the learner and the learning environment
• Cultural or group influences on learners


  Can impact many educationally relevant variables, such as motivation, orientation toward learning, and ways of thinking
• Technologies and instructional practices

  Must be appropriate for learners' level of prior knowledge, cognitive abilities, and their learning and thinking strategies
• Classroom environment


  The degree to which it is nurturing or not can have significant impacts on student learning
• Learners' beliefs about themselves as learners and the nature of learning

  Have a marked influence on motivation
• Positive emotions


  Generally enhance motivation and facilitate learning and performance
• Mild anxiety


  Can also enhance learning and performance by focusing the learner's attention on a particular task
• Intense negative emotions

  Generally detract from motivation, interfere with learning, and contribute to low performance
• Intrinsic motivation to learn

  Curiosity, flexible and insightful thinking, and creativity are major indicators
• Intrinsic motivation


  Is facilitated on tasks that learners perceive as interesting and personally relevant and meaningful, appropriate in complexity and difficulty to the learners' abilities, and on which they believe they can succeed
• Intrinsic motivation


  Is also facilitated on tasks that are comparable to real-world situations and meet needs for choice and control
• Educators' role


  Can encourage and support learners' natural curiosity and motivation to learn by attending to individual differences in learners' perceptions of optimal novelty and difficulty, relevance, and personal choice and control
• Effort


  Another major indicator of motivation to learn
• Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills


  Demands the investment of considerable learner energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over time
• Educators' role

  Need to be concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies that enhance learner effort and commitment to learning and to achieving high standards of comprehension and understanding
• Effective strategies


  Include purposeful learning activities, guided by practices that enhance positive emotions and intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods that increase learners' perceptions that a task is interesting and personally relevant
• Individual development


  Varies across intellectual, social, emotional, and physical domains, so achievement in different instructional domains may also vary
• Cognitive, emotional, and social development


  Are affected by prior schooling, home, culture, and community factors
• Early and continuing parental involvement in schooling, and the quality of language interactions and two-way communications between adults and children

  Can influence these developmental areas
• Awareness and understanding of developmental differences among children with and without emotional, physical, or intellectual disabilities

  Can facilitate the creation of optimal learning contexts
• Social influences on learning


  Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an opportunity to interact and to collaborate with others on instructional tasks