Learner-Centered Classrooms, Problem-Based Learning, and the Construction of Understanding and Meaning by Students

To create an effective learning situation in the classroom, Combs (1976) says that three characteristics are needed:

The atmosphere should facilitate the exploration of meaning. Learners must feel safe and accepted. They need to understand both the risks and rewards of seeking new knowledge and understanding. The classroom must provide for involvement, interaction, and socialization, along with a business-like approach to getting the job done.
Learners must be given frequent opportunities to confront new information and experiences in the search for meaning. However, these opportunities need to be provided in ways that allow students to do more than just receive information. Students must be allowed to confront new challenges using their past experience without the dominance of a teacher/giver of information.
New meaning should be acquired through a process of personal discovery. The methods used to encourage such personal discovery must be highly individualized and adapted to the learner's own style and pace for learning.

Problem-based learning is the type of classroom organization needed to support a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Savoie and Hughes (1994), writing about a process that they used to design a problem-based learning experience for their students, describe the following actions for creating such a process:

Identify a problem suitable for the students.
Connect the problem with the context of the students' world so that it presents authentic opportunities.
Organize the subject matter around the problem, not the discipline.
Give students responsibility for defining their learning experience and planning to solve he problem.
Encourage collaboration by creating learning teams.
Expect all students to demonstrate the results of their learning through a product or performance.

In A Different Kind of Classroom (1992), Robert Marzano makes six assumptions about creating a learning-centered classroom:

Instruction must reflect the best of what we know about how learning occurs.
Learning involves a complex system of interactive processes that includes five types of thinking - the five dimensions of learning.
What we know about learning indicates that instruction focusing on large, interdisciplinary curricular themes is the most effective way to promote learning.
The K-12 curriculum should include explicit teaching of higher-level attitudes and perceptions and mental habits that facilitate learning.
A comprehensive approach to instruction includes at least two distinct types of instruction: teacher-directed and student-directed.
Assessment should focus on students' use of knowledge and complex reasoning rather than their recall of low-level information.

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