Student Learning Methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Student Learning Methods - Essay ExampleLearner-centered education environments are founded on the principal that learning is an active process. Learning is an interaction between the learner and text, involving the activation of prior knowledge and relating new ideas to preexisting schemata. Based on this paradigm learner-centered environments engage the student both personally and intellectually and provide the best method for meeting the needs of all learners.In teacher-centered learning environments, the more traditional and widespread approach, the teacher is viewed as the focal headspring and leader of learning. The teacher is the authority, going the students in the passive role as receivers of knowledge, rather than active constructors of that knowledge. That knowledge is finite and discrete.In teacher-centered learning the lessons are instructionally driven, leaving the students unengaged intellectually and emotionally. These traditional methods include memorization, co mpleting worksheets, reading a text and answering predetermined questions - demonstrating knowledge of the right answer. In this form of learning there is limited activation of prior knowledge, and therefore students struggle to create personally significant meaning. This is because in teacher-centered learning the background, values and interests of the learner are nonexistent. The student is passively filled in with information, rather than engaged in his own learning process. Learning environments are controlled, make and with an emphasis on independent seatwork. Lessons, classwork and preparation are results-driven. This unresponsive and static approach also fails to meet the needs of special needs populations, because lesson goals and objectives are standardized, meaning students must adapt to the methods oftentimes with nigh students unable to engage the teachers attention to meet their needs.AssessmentOne of the most significant challenges in teacher-centered learning is i n assessment. Using traditional methods such as standardized tests rather than qualitative measures, teacher-centered learning places the emphasis on performance and repetition of facts. It leaves little room for students to construct their own meaning based on their own experiences, cultural background, values and interests. This causes a mismatch between goals and assessment. For this reason, many times students can appear to understand material in one format, insofar in another appear unsuccessful during assessments because of the focus on success rather than on learning.Characteristics of Learner-Centered EnvironmentsTheoretical BasisIn learner-centered environments the student becomes the actor in his own learning, and therefore the teacher becomes the facilitator to that learning by designing learningactivities which actively engage the learner. This is based on the theory that all know-ledge is organized in schemata - the underlying connections that allow new experiencesand information to be aligned with previous knowledge (Landry, 2002). Activities Engaging and AdaptiveAs the designer of lessons rather than an authority, and with the correspondence thatStudents exhibit various strengths and weaknesses in learning styles and modalities, theteachers role is to create activities which are varied and engage these differences, ratherthan repress