Session 1 Article: The Desing Of Learning Environments

Brief notes:

Basically, there are 4 main types of learning environments:
1) Learner- centered
- refers to environments that pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting.
- learner -centered instructions also include a sensitivity to the cultural practices of students and the effect of those practices on classroom setting
- learner -centered envrionments include teachers who are aware that learners construct their own meanings, beginning with the beliefs, understandings and cultural practices they bring to the classroom.
- teachers respect and understand learners' prior experiences and understandings, which serve as a foundation to build new understandings

2) Knowledge - centered
- knowledge -centered evnrionments ensure that students become knowledgeable
- they complement learner- centered environment, by emphasising on the content, while taking care of the other aspects of the learner, eg: emotional, psychosocil, mental, cultural, etc
- this type of learning also focuses on the kinds of information and activities that help students develop an understanding of disciplines
- emphasises on sense-making - on helping students become metacognitive by experiencing new information to make sense and asking for clarifications when it doesn't
-'Progressive formalisation' - the concept that that students bring their own ideas & other forms of knowledge to school, and teachers help them to see how these idesa can be transformed and formalised through a gradual and structured process (learning), so that they acquire the concepts and procedures of a discipline
- usually, educators who ascribe to this environment ask important questions on what to teach, and how to foster an integrated understanding of a discipline

3) Assessment - centered
- the key principles of assessment are that they should provide opportunities for feedback and revision and what is assessed must be congruent with one's learning goals
- formative assessment: invloves the use of assessments as sources of information to improve teaching and learning
- summative assessment: invloves measuring what students have learned at the end of some set of learning activities, eg: teachers' comments on drafts of writing exercises

4) Community - centered
- emerged as a result of new developments in the science of learning, eg: online learning
- the term is used to refer to several apects of community, including the classroom, the school, the degree to which students and teachers feel connected to the larger community of homes, business, states , etc