Student Centered Learning
This learning goal aspires to create a consultative classroom culture with students, where the students have a say in what, how and why they are learning what they are learning (McCarthy, 2015).
Teaching strategies that facilitate student-centered learning include:
The Conceptual Change Model (CCM) facilitates student centered learning because students are challenged to shift and restructure their own interpretations of a concept. Eduators can facilitate this process, however it is ultimately up to the student to engage in this process to obtain deeper conceptual understandings.
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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) facilitates student-centered learning because it takes into account students’ perspectives and experiences to identify specific learning needs and to use appropriate strategies (Nieto 1996). CRP is collaborative and community-oriented.
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Concept maps provide students with the autonomy to creatively share their cognitive understandings. Concept maps are physical representations of a student’s novel ideas centered around a particular topic.
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The process of design thinking is inherently driven by student curiosity and voice. Learners work together to self- and peer-evaluate at each step, and students are free to pursue whatever their passions lead them towards. Student-generated innovation and empathy are at the core of design thinking.
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Inquiry can be highly student-centered as students are the collectors of data and create explanations based on what they observe. At higher levels of inquiry, students may be responsible for fully creating their entire experiment, which includes creating a question and the design (McCarthy, 2015).
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Students are at the heart of the project-based learning process. Teachers may guide students towards a type of project, however, the specific question, methods, and process are chosen by students and developed by the group in different ways over time. In this way, students have full ownership of their learning as well as the steps they take to get there.
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References
McCarthy, J. (2015, Spetember 9) Student-Centered Learning: It Starts with the Teacher. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-centered-learning-starts-with-teacher-john-mccarthy
Nieto, S. (1996). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Nieto, S. (1996). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.