I saw a post the other day that talked about ’empathy’, and I’m strongly supportive. But along the way they cited another topic that I’ve had mixed feelings about. So I thought it was time to address it. I’m wondering about ‘learner-centered’, and it may seem churlish to suggest otherwise. However, let me make the case for an alternative.
First, ‘learner-centered’ (apparently also known as ‘student centered‘) is used to take the focus away from the teacher. And I approve. It’s too easy, without awareness, to put the emphasis on ‘teaching’, and you’re on a slippery slope to lectures and knowledge tests. I’m all for that. However, I’m worried about a down-side.
My worry, with learner-centered learning, is that we may become too accommodating. It could be too easy to cater to learners. For instance, one belief that persists is that learning should be ‘fun’. Which is wrong. We know that we need ‘desirable difficulty’ (ala Bjork). That’s why I’ve lobbied for ‘hard fun‘. We could also use learner-centered to make the case for adapting to preferred learning styles. Which, too, would be wrong.
Obviously, you can also argue that learners need meaningful learning, so a learner-centered approach would be appropriate. But I want to suggest another candidate. One that, I argue, leads to good outcomes without carrying any opportunity for baggage.
I’m arguing for ‘learning-centered’, not learner-centered. That is, the focus is on the learning needed, not on the learner. Which isn’t to say we leave the learner out of the equation, but the question then becomes: what does this mean?
I’m suggesting that the key is learning focused on:
- meaningful outcomes
- aligned design
- addressing learners’ prior knowledge
- addressing learners’ emotions: motivation, trust, anxiety, confidence
And, look, I get that folks talking about ‘learner-centered’ will argue that they’re talking about the same things. I just see it also carrying a greater potential for focusing on the learner at the expense of learning. And, in general, I would expect to be wrong. That is, most folks aren’t going to go awry. But is there an alternative without the problems?
So, the question is whether ‘learning-centered’ has similar pitfalls, or is it more likely to lead to better outcomes? And I don’t know the answer. It’s just a concern that I’ve felt, and thought I’d raise. Now it’s your turn! What are your thoughts on the phrase ‘learner-centered’?
Agree. And if the learning is Educational Learning, then learning-centered is okay. But in an Enterprise Learning context, I’d prefer Performance-centered, or Performance-centric.
Learner vs learning … I feel like your argument holds, if emphasis is placed on the “process” of learning – we can achieve progressive results by focusing on the elements you listed and that fits nicely within existing models of quality instruction like Gagne.
A focus on the learner can risk too much content to arrive at a simple outcome.
Great point, Clark!
I see myself currently faced with people claiming “learning should be like netflix”, which is in this in this absolute nature wrong, I believe. Learning can be fun, but it does not have to be and fun is not its main purpose. Learning (or operating learning technology, which is rather my place) can be as easy as using netflix, but not as an end in itself. Netflix is primarily trying to engage people, and not to teach people / make people learn.
L&D should stand by the fact that learning can be (hard) work and should not be too afraid of the learner’s happy sheet.
Moving the focus from “learner-centered” to “learning centered” is a very good re-focus, I’d say!
Agreed! This, like many things, is something that sounds fine in concept but is also easy to see how actually *doing* it that way could lead to poor practice since the statement is so broad. Feel like that’s where a lot of things get started that end up getting twisted and turning into zombies that haunt us for years, right?
Doesn’t it also feel like if we as an industry put more focus on learning-centered practice, many of the zombies would go away? That’s where I really agree with you, it’s *not* the same thing because learnER-centered puts the focus on the myths that we know don’t work. LearnING-centered seems to involve the stuff we say as a way to counter myths.
I agree with Guy. Performance-centered is stronger than learning-centered, which is much more meaningful and appropriate than learner-centered. The performance-centric approach is strengthened even more by using real-world whole tasks for demonstration, application, and integration, based on M. David Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction. When we teach effectively with real-world tasks, the learners should be able to perform those real-world tasks on the job and in the real world!
So the progression of effective approaches could from learner-centered, to learning-centered, to performance-centered, to task-centered, each of which could be better at achieving desired performance than the previous one. Merrill argues that the task-centered approach is efficient, effective, and engaging. Learning with real-world tasks is generally engaging, and even fun!