Learner-Centered Learning Principles

Learner-centered psychological principles provide a framework for developing and incorporating

the components of new designs for schooling. These principles emphasize the active and reflective
nature of learning and learners. From this perspective, educational practice will be most likely to
improve when the educational system is redesigned with the primary focus on the learner.

They focus on psychological factors that are primarily internal to and under the control of the
learner rather than conditioned habits or physiological factors. However, the principles also attempt to
acknowledge external environment or contextual factors that interact with these internal factors. The
principles are intended to deal holistically with learners in the context of real-world learning situations

The 14 principles are divided into those referring to:

– Cognitive and Metacognitive – Motivational and Affective – Developmental and Social –

Individual Difference

Cognitive and Metacognitive Factors

1. Nature of the learning process.

The learning of complex subject matter is most effective when it is an intentional process of
constructing meaning from information and experience.
 Learning in schools emphasizes the use of intentional processes that students can use to
construct meaning from information, experiences, and their own thoughts and beliefs.
 Successful learners are active, goal-directed, self-regulating, and assume personal responsibility
for contributing to their own learning.

2. Goals of the learning process.

The successful learner, over time and with support and instructional guidance, can create meaningful,
coherent representations of knowledge.
 The strategic nature of learning requires students to be goal directed.
 To construct useful representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and learning
strategies necessary for continued learning success across the life span, students must generate
and pursue personally relevant goals.
 Initially, students' short-term goals and learning may be sketchy in an area, but over time their
understanding can be refined by filling gaps, resolving inconsistencies, and deepening their
understanding of the subject matter so that they can reach longer-term goals.
 Educators can assist learners in creating meaningful learning goals that are consistent with both
personal and educational aspirations and interests.

3. Construction of knowledge.
The successful learner can link new information with existing knowledge in meaningful ways.
 Knowledge widens and deepens as students continue to build links between new information
and experiences and their existing knowledge base.
 How these links are made or develop may vary in different subject areas, and among students
with varying talents, interests, and abilities.
 However, unless new knowledge becomes integrated with the learner's prior knowledge and
understanding, this new knowledge remains isolated, cannot be used most effectively in new
tasks, and does not transfer readily to new situations.
 Educators can assist learners in acquiring and integrating knowledge by concept mapping and
thematic organization or categorizing.

4. Strategic thinking.
The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and reasoning strategies to achieve
complex learning goals.
  Successful learners use strategic thinking in their approach to learning, reasoning, problem
solving, and concept learning.
 They understand and can use a variety of strategies to help them reach learning and
performance goals, and to apply their knowledge in novel situations.
 They also continue to expand their repertoire of strategies by reflecting on the methods they
use to see which work well for them, by receiving guided instruction and feedback, and by
observing or interacting with appropriate models.

5. Thinking about thinking.

Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring mental operations facilitate creative and critical
thinking.
 Successful learners can reflect on how they think and learn, set reasonable learning or
performance goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies or methods, and monitor
their progress toward these goals.
 Successful learners know what to do if a problem occurs or if they are not making sufficient or
timely progress toward a goal. They can generate alternative methods to reach their goal.

6. Context of learning.
Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture, technology, and instructional
practices.
 Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers have major interactive role with both the learner
and the learning environment.
 Cultural or group influences on students can impact many educationally relevant variables, such
as motivation, orientation toward learning, and ways of thinking.
 Technologies and instructional practices must be appropriate for learners' level of prior
knowledge, cognitive abilities, and their learning and thinking strategies.
 The classroom environment, particularly the degree to which it is nurturing or not, can also have
significant impacts on student learning.

Motivational and Affective Factors

7. Motivational and Emotional influences on learning.

What and how much is learned is influenced by the motivation. Motivation to learn, in turn, is
influenced by the individual's emotional states, beliefs, interests and goals, and habits of thinking.
 The rich internal world of thoughts, beliefs, goals, and expectations for success or failure can
enhance or interfere the learner's quality of thinking and information processing.
 Students' beliefs about themselves as learners and the nature of learning have a marked
influence on motivation.
 Motivational and emotional factors also influence both the quality of thinking and information
processing as well as an individual's motivation to learn.
 Positive emotions, such as curiosity, generally enhance motivation and facilitate learning and
performance. Mild anxiety can also enhance learning and performance by focusing the learner's
attention on a particular task.
 However, intense negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, panic, rage, insecurity) and related thoughts
(e.g., worrying about competence, ruminating about failure, fearing punishment, ridicule, or
stigmatizing labels) generally detract from motivation, interfere with learning, and contribute to
low performance.
8. Intrinsic motivation to learn.
The learner's creativity, higher order thinking, and natural curiosity all contribute to motivation to
learn. Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty and difficulty, relevant to personal
interests, and providing for personal choice and control.
 Curiosity, flexible and insightful thinking, and creativity are major indicators of the learners'
intrinsic motivation to learn, which is in large part a function of meeting basic needs to be
competent and to exercise personal control.
 Intrinsic motivation is facilitated on tasks that learners perceive as interesting and personally
relevant and meaningful, appropriate in complexity and difficulty to the learners' abilities, and
on which they believe they can succeed.
 Intrinsic motivation is also facilitated on tasks that are comparable to real-world situations and
meet needs for choice and control.

9. Effects of motivation on effort.

Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner effort and guided practice.
Without learners' motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is unlikely without coercion.
 Effort is another major indicator of motivation to learn.
 The acquisition of complex knowledge and skills demands the investment of considerable
learner energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over time.
 Educators need to be concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies that enhance learner
effort and commitment to learning and to achieving high standards of comprehension and
understanding.
 Effective strategies include purposeful learning activities, guided by practices that enhance
positive emotions and intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods that increase learners'
perceptions that a task is interesting and personally relevant.

Developmental and Social Factors

10. Developmental influences on learning.

As individuals develop, there are different opportunities and constraints for learning. Learning is most
effective when differential development within and across physical, intellectual, emotional, and social
domains is taken into account.
 Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level and is
presented in an enjoyable and interesting way.
 Because individual development varies across intellectual, social, emotional, and physical
domains, achievement in different instructional domains may also vary. Overemphasis on one
type of developmental readiness may preclude learners from demonstrating that they are more
capable in other areas of performance.
 The cognitive, emotional, and social development of individual learners and how they interpret
life experiences are affected by prior schooling, home, culture, and community factors.
 Awareness and understanding of developmental differences among children with and without
emotional, physical, or intellectual disabilities, can facilitate the creation of optimal learning
contexts.

11. Social influences on learning.

Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal relations, and communication with others.
 Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an opportunity to interact and to collaborate
with others on instructional tasks.
 Learning settings that allow for social interactions, and that respect diversity, encourage flexible
thinking and social competence.
 In interactive and collaborative instructional contexts, individuals have an opportunity for
perspective taking and reflective thinking that may lead to higher levels of cognitive, social, and
moral development, as well as self-esteem.
  Quality personal relationships that provide stability, trust, and caring can increase learners'
sense of belonging, self-respect and self-acceptance, and provide a positive climate for learning.
 Family influences, positive interpersonal support and instruction in self-motivation strategies
can offset factors that interfere with optimal learning such as negative beliefs about
competence in a particular subject, high levels of test anxiety, negative sex role expectations,
and undue pressure to perform well.
 Positive learning climates can also help to establish the context for healthier levels of thinking,
feeling, and behaving.
 Such contexts help learners feel safe to share ideas, actively participate in the learning process,
and create a learning community.

Individual Differences Factors

12. Individual differences in learning.

Learners have different strategies, approaches, and capabilities for learning that are a function of
prior experience and heredity.
 Individuals are born with and develop their own capabilities and talents.
 Through learning and social acculturation, they have acquired their own preferences for how
they like to learn and the pace at which they learn.
 Educators need to help students examine their learning preferences and expand or modify
them, if necessary.
 Educators need to be sensitive to individual differences, in general.
 They also need to attend to learner perceptions of the degree to which these differences are
accepted and adapted to by varying instructional methods and materials.

13. Learning and diversity.

Learning is most effective when differences in learners' linguistic, cultural, and social backgrounds are
taken into account.
 The same basic principles of learning, motivation, and effective instruction apply to all learners.
 Language, ethnicity, race, beliefs, and socioeconomic status all can influence learning.
 Careful attention to these factors in the instructional setting enhances the possibilities for
designing and implementing appropriate learning environments.
 When learners perceive that their individual differences in abilities, backgrounds, cultures, and
experiences are valued, respected, and accommodated in learning tasks and contexts, levels of
motivation and achievement are enhanced.

14. Standards and assessment.

Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner as well as learning
progress -- including diagnostic, process, and outcome assessment -- are integral parts of the learning
process.
 Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at all stages of the
learning process.
 Effective learning takes place when learners feel challenged to work towards appropriately high
goals; therefore, appraisal of the learner's cognitive strengths and weaknesses, as well as
current knowledge and skills, is important for the selection of instructional materials of an
optimal degree of difficulty.
 Ongoing assessment of the learner's understanding of the curricular material can provide
valuable feedback to both learners and teachers about progress toward the learning goals.
 Standardized assessment of learner progress and outcomes assessment provides one type of
information about achievement levels both within and across individuals that can inform various
types of programmatic decisions.