Helping Students Learn in a Learner-Centered Environment - Softcover

Doyle, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1579222226 ISBN 13: 9781579222222

Publisher: Routledge, 2008

Synopsis

Before entering higher education, most students’ learning experiences have been traditional and teacher-centered. Their teachers have typically controlled their learning, with students having had little say about what and how to learn. For many students, encountering a learner-centered environment will be new, possibly unsettling, and may even engender resistance and hostility.

Taking as his starting point students’ attitudes toward, and unfamiliarity with, learner-centered classrooms, Terry Doyle explains that motivating students to engage with this practice first of all requires explaining its underlying rationale, and then providing guidance on how to learn in this environment. This book is about how to help students acquire the new skills and knowledge they need to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities. It is informed by the author’s extensive experience in managing learner-centered classes, and by his consultation work with faculty.

The first four chapters focus on the importance of imparting to students the evidence and underlying philosophy that is driving higher education to move from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered practice, and what this means for students in terms of having control over, and making important choices about, their learning. The final eight chapters focus on how to impart the skills that students need to learn or hone if they are to be effective learners in an environment that is new to them. The book covers such practices as learning on one’s own; creating meaningful learning when collaborating with others; peer teaching; making presentations; developing life long learning skills; self and peer evaluation; and give meaningful feedback.

This book provides a rich and informative answer to the fundamental question: how do I help my students adjust to a learner-centered practice?

About this title

Book Description

“Oh boy, am I glad this book is here. Terry Doyle’s book brings together findings that will enable us to answer what so many college & university faculty members want to know: How do we enable our students to learn to learn (and love it)? If your goal is to develop lifelong learners, this book is a guidebook for your practice.”―Laurie Richlin, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Health Sciences

“This book is brilliant in that it does three things very simply and without unnecessary complexity: it explains why learner-centered environments should be used, how to create them (complete with how to sell students on an approach that will actually help them), and how to tell when students are learning. What is different about this book is that Terry Doyle outlines WHY students will resist this change. His point-by-point guidance on creating a learner-centered classroom incorporates a strategy for bringing the students along as willing participants.”―Todd Zakrajsek, Director of the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching at Central Michigan University

Taking as his starting point students’ attitudes toward, and unfamiliarity with, learner-centered classrooms, Terry Doyle explains that motivating students to engage with this practice first of all requires explaining its underlying rationale, and then providing guidance on how to learn in this environment. This book is about how to help students acquire the new skills and knowledge they need to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities.

About the Author

Terry Doyle is the Chief Instructor for Faculty Development and Coordinator of the New Faculty Transition Program for the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at Ferris State University. He has worked with faculty on 30 campuses across the country on how to develop a learner centered teaching practice and has spoken at over fifty national, international, and regional conferences on topics of teaching and learning over the past eight years. He is a regular featured presenter at Lilly conferences. He is a Professor of Reading and Learning Disabilities at Ferris State where he has taught for the past 30 years.

John Tagg is Associate Professor of English at Palomar College in San Macros, California, and author of The Learning Paradigm College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1579222226
• ISBN 13: 9781579222222
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212