1

TESL 4340 – (A) LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES；(B) Learner-Centered Teaching

Dr. Diana SHAMDr. Diana SHAM

Email: dianasham@uic.edu.hk

2

(A) LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES

1. ACTIVE AND REFLECTIVE LEARNERS

Active learners tend to retain and understand information best by doing something active with it--discussing or applying it or explaining it to others. Reflective learners prefer to think about it quietly first. Active learners tend to like group work more than reflective learners, who prefer working alone.

3

Sitting through lectures without getting to do anything physical but take notes is hard for both learning types, but particularly hard for active learners.

Everybody is active sometimes and reflective sometimes. Your preference for one category or the other may be strong, moderate, or mild. A balance of the two is desirable. If you always act before reflecting you can jump into things prematurely and get into trouble, while if you spend too much time reflecting you may never get anything done.

4

2.SENSING AND INTUITIVE LEARNERS Sensing learners tend to like learning

facts, intuitive learners often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships.

Sensors often like solving problems by well-established methods and dislike complications and surprises; intuitors like innovation and dislike repetition. Sensors are more likely than intuitors to resent being tested on material that has not been explicitly covered in class.

5

Sensors tend to be patient with details and good at memorizing facts and doing hands-on (laboratory) work; intuitors may be better at grasping new concepts and are often more comfortable than sensors with abstractions and mathematical formulations.

Sensors tend to be more practical and careful than intuitors; intuitors tend to work faster and to be more innovative than sensors.

Sensors don't like courses that have no apparent connection to the real world; intuitors don't like "plug-and-chug" courses that involve a lot of memorization and routine calculations.

6

Everybody is sensing sometimes and intuitive sometimes. Your preference for one or the other may be strong, moderate, or mild. To be effective as a learner and problem solver, you need to be able to function both ways. If you overemphasize intuition, you may miss important details or make careless mistakes in calculations or hands-on work; if you overemphasize sensing, you may rely too much on memorization and familiar methods and not concentrate enough on understanding and innovative thinking.

7

3.VISUAL AND VERBAL LEARNERS

Visual learners remember best what they see--pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, films, and demonstrations. Verbal learners get more out of words--written and spoken explanations. Everyone learns more when information is presented both visually and verbally.

8

In most college classes very little visual information is presented: students mainly listen to lectures and read material written on chalkboards and in textbooks and handouts. Unfortunately, most people are visual learners, which means that most students do not get nearly as much as they would if more visual presentation were used in class. Good learners are capable of processing information presented either visually or verbally.

9

4.SEQUENTIAL AND GLOBAL LEARNERS Sequential learners tend to gain understanding

in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one. Global learners tend to learn in large jumps, absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connections, and then suddenly "getting it."

Sequential learners tend to follow logical stepwise paths in finding solutions; global learners may be able to solve complex problems quickly or put things together in novel ways once they have grasped the big picture, but they may have difficulty explaining how they did it.

10

Sequential learners may not fully understand the material but they can nevertheless do something with it (eg. problem solving) since the pieces they have absorbed are logically connected. Strongly global learners who lack good sequential thinking abilities, on the other hand, may have serious difficulties until they have the big picture. Even after they have it, they may be fuzzy about the details of the subject, while sequential learners may know a lot about specific aspects of a subject but may have trouble relating them to different aspects of the same subject or to different.

11

(B) Learner-Centered Teaching Being a learner-centered teacher means

focusing attention squarely on the learning process. Definition of Learner-Centered Teaching is “Shifts the responsibility to the students and away from the teacher—it focuses on what the students are doing not what the teacher is doing.”

12

This approach that now features students, accepts, cultivates and builds on the ultimate responsibility students have for their own learning.   Teachers cannot do it for students. They must set the stage and help out during rehearsals, but it is up to the students to perform, and when they do learn it is the students not the teachers that should receive the accolades.

13

Four Key Questions

1. What are the students learning? 2. How are the students learning? 3. What are the conditions under which the

students are learning? 4. How does current learning position the

students for future learning?

14

Learner-Center Teaching and Content

1. Content is not to be “covered”—it is a vehicle to develop learning skills and strategies both general and specific to the content.

2. Content promotes self—awareness. 3. (Metacognition) Helping students

understand how they learn and developing confidence in their abilities as learners is a key component of learner-centered

15

teaching. Helping students to identify their strengths and weaknesses as learners and then helping them to develop ways to use their strengths and improve their weaknesses is vital to this approach.

4. Content is learned by experiencing it—using it.

5. The teacher creates a synergy of content and learning together.

16

Content Questions

1. What do students most need to be successful with the course content?

2. How do you get the course experience to cause a qualitative change in a person’s way of seeing, experiencing, understanding, and conceptualizing something in the real world as opposed to a qualitative change in the amount of knowledge possessed?

3. How do we get content to move from an end to a means?

17

Five Areas of Learner-Centered Teaching

1.  The Balance of Power in the Classroom

The classroom is a microcosm of the real world and it’s our chance to practice the ideals and beliefs we cherish.

Competition vs. Cooperation—Students need to understand how to learn from their peers and then practice learning from each other.

18

2.  The Function of Content Exploring the Constructiveness approach to

learning in which learners construct their own knowledge rather than passively receiving it. In this view of learning knowledge cannot be simply given to students they must construct their own meaning.

Learning is to occur most often in a social context. The forming of a classroom community is a key to success. It requires invention and self-organization on the part of the learner. Learners raise their own questions, generate their own hypotheses.

19

3.  Role of the Teacher The goal is to involve students in the

process of acquiring and retaining information, skills and strategies.

How do the actions of the teacher impact learning?

The role of the teacher is to promote learning which is a different role then the traditional one most teachers have embraced.

20

4.  The Responsibility for Learning Learning skills as sophisticated as those

needed to be an autonomous, self-regulating learner do not develop through the “simple” exposure to content but must be taught.

Our students will be lifelong learners. How do we move students from where

they are to where we need them to be? 

21

5.  Evaluation Purpose and Process Students learn what ever they are tested or

evaluated on. Tests and assignments are the courses most

potent impetus of learning. Do the instructor’s assignments contribute to the desired “learning” outcomes?

What and how students learn depends to a major extent on how they think they will be assessed. The assessment practices must send the right signals.

How do we fight the notion of “getting a grade” as opposed to growing as a learner in a given content area?

22

How to Make a Learner-Center Approach Work

Develop an integrated, coherent philosophy of education. Teachers need an approach not just a set of practices.

Make the change slowly and systematically with a specific plan in mind.

Plan to tinker as you go—trail and error. Set realistic expectations for success.

23

Develop a deeper and more accurate self-knowledge—seek feedback from students, colleagues and experts and listen to it.

Get feedback that is specific to the task or change being tried and not clouded by other course factors.