Curriculum and
“Learner Centered Ideology”
Seminar Leaders: Davinder and Iren
“Anyone?”
The Best Teacher Ever!
Introduction
● Curriculum: Although it is a slow movement, it is changing over time to
cater for the changing needs in research, practice, society, enhanced scientific
methods and technology.
● Learner Centered Ideology: We are aiming for the students to take
initiative and leadership roles in the direction of their learning. Ideally we want
to incorporate their social experiences and have them build on these. They bring
in their own experiences where necessary and make understanding of their
learning by relating it to their previous knowledge, culture, and social
experience.
● Education: Education should offer opportunities for students to use and
connect to their social consciousness in order to make meaning of their
surroundings.
● Imagination: It can take a learner beyond what was intended, only if these
opportunities are provided.
● Culture: Schools should offer opportunities to connect students to their past,
demonstrating the beauty and charm of their traditions, language, and history
represented by their parents.
“The situation would be very much the same if we should
place a teacher who, according to our conception of the
term, is scientifically prepared, in one of the public schools
where the children are repressed in the spontaneous
expression of their personality till they are almost like
dead beings. In such a school the children, like butterflies
mounted on pins, are fastened each to his place, the desk,
spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless
knowledge which they have acquired.” (Montessori)
The Underlying Values of the
“Learner Centered Ideology”
● In your assigned groups, summarize the key
underlying assumptions of this ideology in the articles
(aims/purposes of curriculum, teachers/teaching,
learners/learning, nature of knowledge, evaluation)
● Identify a quote from the text that encompasses
these key values
Small Groups
● Simon, Joti, Carrie, Jenn
Montessori, “A Critical Consideration of the New Pedagogy”
● Robyn, Todd, Kaitlin, Renuka
Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed”
● Oli, Sharissa, Sheela, Amy
Addams, “The Public School and the Immigrant Child”
● Belinda, Cherie, Angela, Peter
Greene, “Curriculum and Consciousness”
Same Idea, Different Names
● 1974: Eisner, Self-Actualization
● 1992: Posner, Experiential and Cognitive
● 1996: Schubert, Experientialist
● 2004: Kliebard, Child Study
● 2008: Schiro, Learner Centered
Key Values
● student-centered; learner as source of knowledge
● personal meaning; subjective reality
● student interests (internal/having worth)
● individualized
● freedom to choose
● learning environments focused on student interests
● Purpose: Schools should be enjoyable, stimulating, child-centered
environments organized around the developmental needs and interests
of children as those needs and interests present themselves from day to
day.
● Teaching: Teachers should be aids to children, helping them learn by
presenting them with experiences from which they can make meaning.
● Learning: Learning best takes place when children are motivated to
actively engage in experiences that allow them to create their own
knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live.
● Knowledge: The knowledge of most worth is the personal meaning of
oneself and of one’s world that comes from one’s direct experience in
the world and one’s personal response to such experience.
● Childhood: Childhood is essentially a time when children unfold
according to their own innate natures, felt needs, organic impulses, and
internal timetables. The focus is on children as they are during
childhood rather than as they might be as adults.
● Evaluation: Evaluation should continuously diagnose children’s needs
and growth so that further growth can be promoted by appropriate
adjustment of their learning environment. It is primarily for the
children’s benefit, not for comparing children with each other or
measuring them against predetermined standards.
● focus not on the needs of society or the academic disciplines but on the
needs and concerns of individuals; growth of learners is central
● schools should be enjoyable places where people develop naturally
according to their own innate natures
● the goal of education is the growth of individuals, each in harmony with
his or her own unique intellectual, social, emotional and physical
attributes
● people contain their own capabilities for growth, are the agents who
must actualize their own capabilities, and are essentially good in nature
● people are viewed as the source of content for the curriculum
● potential for growth lies within people; people are stimulated to grow
and construct meaning as a result of interacting with their physical,
intellectual, and social environments
● environments of work in which students can make meaning for
themselves by interacting with students, teachers, ideas and things
● is the job of educators to create contexts which will stimulate growth in
people as they construct meaning for themselves
Reflecting on Your Practice
● In your small groups, describe how this
ideology is (or is not) practiced in your
classrooms/schools/districts today
● If it is not truly practiced, be sure to
identify external and/or internal factors
that are inhibiting its practice
Out with the Old and
in with the New?
To Be Continued…
Next week will examine:
● dangers of compulsory, competitive schools
● learning by doing
● emphasis on freedom to think, do and be
● deschooling/unschooling
● free school movement/homeschooling (Holt
and his personal experiences; Summerhill in
England, Albany in New York)