{"id":14025,"date":"2013-04-10t09:30:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-10t14:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=14025"},"modified":"2013-05-15t10:09:03","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15t15:09:03","slug":"learner-centered-teaching-at-vanderbilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2013\/04\/learner-centered-teaching-at-vanderbilt\/","title":{"rendered":"learner-centered teaching at vanderbilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

by nancy chick, cft assistant director
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

some of us at the cft recently read and discussed maryellen weimer\u2019s new edition of <\/span>learner-centered teaching: five key changes to practice<\/a> <\/em>(2013). \u00a0simply put, learner-centered teaching aims to create active, independent thinkers who understand the processes and value of learning and apply this understanding to new <\/strong><\/span>contexts<\/strong>. <\/span>weimer starts by pointing out that this is not the norm:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cwhat happens in the typical college classrooms? who\u2019s delivering the content? who\u2019s leading the discussions? who\u2019s previewing and reviewing the material? who offers the examples? who asks and answers most of the questions? who calls on the students? who solves the problems, provides the graphs, and constructs the matrices? in most classrooms, it\u2019s the teacher. when it comes to who\u2019s working the hardest most days, teachers win hands down. students are there, but too often education is being done unto them.\u201d (weimer, 2013, p. 60)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

this is the ubiquitous teacher-centered class. in contrast, the learner-centered class shifts more of this hard work to the students:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026students are engaged in learning tasks. they aren\u2019t just copying down teacher-provided examples, but generating their own. they aren\u2019t just recording what the teacher does as she works through a problem, they are working problems on their own or with other students. they are asking questions, summarizing content, generating hypotheses, proposing theories, offering critical analyses, and so on.\u201d (weimer 72)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

for those who envision this approach resulting in rampant misconceptions, anarchy, or silence, weimer clarifies that the shift is neither sudden nor complete<\/strong>:\u00a0 it\u2019s \u201cabout gradually doing them less, until the point is reached when doing them is the exception, not the rule\u201d (72). she recommends starting by thinking about the role of the teacher, and offers seven principles to guide those interested in making this transition:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. teachers let students do more learning tasks.<\/li>\n
  2. teachers do less telling so that students can do more discovering.<\/li>\n
  3. teachers do instructional design work more carefully.<\/li>\n
  4. faculty more explicitly model how experts learn.<\/li>\n
  5. faculty encourage students to learn from and with each other.<\/li>\n
  6. faculty and students work to create climates for learning.<\/li>\n
  7. faculty use evaluation to promote learning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    i recently saw one manifestation of learner-centered teaching action in one of the cft\u2019s teaching visits<\/a>.\u00a0 a handful of visitors sat quietly in the back of mark wollaeger\u2019s engl 116w: introduction to poetry<\/a>\u2019s class<\/strong>, one of two periods devoted to critical approaches to literature.\u00a0 most of the 75 minutes were focused on questions students generated while reading about four specific approaches: gender, reader-response, deconstruction, and cultural studies.\u00a0 on the syllabus for today, he\u2019d written, \u201cfor two of these four, come in with a typed question about the reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

    he started class by projecting an absent student\u2019s question on the screen and then asking students to contribute their questions as well.\u00a0 he wrote them on the board (or the gist of each), grouped by similarity. \u00a0they asked about the validity and utility of the different approaches, potential conflicts with the author\u2019s intentions, and how an interpretation might change by knowing the poet\u2019s sexuality.\u00a0 for the rest of the class, he guided the discussion to consider each of these significant questions about studying literature.\u00a0 the students who authored the questions explained why they asked the questions, referred to relevant passages in the text, and served as major voices in puzzling over the poetry.\u00a0 when they struggled or said something especially insightful, mark asked, \u201cwhat do the rest of you think about that?\u201d occasionally, he picked up on an idea and explored it himself. he called on some students, and others raised their hands.<\/p>\n

    \"\"it\u2019s easy to mistake this approach as teaching without a net, spontaneous and risky, requiring little preparation and depending completely on the quality of the students\u2019 questions for the quality of the discussion.<\/strong> however, in the discussion after class, i asked him how he\u2019d prepared for the day.\u00a0 he showed us his notes and his text, revealing a variety of topics and annotations.\u00a0 he explained that he\u2019d prepared the common issues that come up for these critical approaches and these poems, as well as some ideas he would add.\u00a0 it turns out that the students\u2019 questions hit enough of the topics that he didn\u2019t have to introduce any of them.<\/p>\n

    while mark facilitated the discussion, the content was largely determined by those students\u2019 questions on the board. \u00a0at the same time, though, he didn\u2019t disappear into their questions and comments; he nudged, encouraged, extrapolated, and extended.<\/p>\n

    these students were experiencing what it\u2019s like to be invited into the heart of the learning process. <\/strong>their curiosities, confusions, and connections were taken seriously. as the class ended, i huddled in the back with the other visitors, and we all whispered some variation on \u201ci wish i were still a student!\u201d<\/p>\n

    you may think that your students would struggle with developing sophisticated, discipline-appropriate questions about course material, so this strategy wouldn\u2019t work for your classes. but weimer emphasizes that learner-centered teaching isn\u2019t a collection of strategies; it\u2019s a fundamental way of re-thinking teaching\u2014with many different ways of being implemented<\/strong>. \u00a0her book offers dozens of possibilities across the disciplines. if you\u2019re curious about how you could bring some of these principles to your classes, call 322-7290 to talk to any of us assistant directors at the cft:<\/p>\n