The Design of Learning Environments

Title: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

Authors: John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking


From this book, it has identified learning environments into 4 different perspectives .



Reflections:
The followings will be a brief description of the 4 different centered environments.

1) Learner-Centered Environments
This term includes teaching practices that have been called "culturally responsive," "culturally appropriate," "culturally compatible," and "culturally relevant''. It is also known as diagnostic teaching. It is based on the structure of a child knowledge, through observation, questioning and conversation and reflection on students' outcomes.

2) Knowledge-Centered Environments
It illustrates how people construct new knowledge based on their current knowledge. It focuses on the kinds of information and activities that help students to develop an understanding of disciplines. It also includes an emphasis on sense-making—on helping students become metacognitive by expecting new information to make sense and asking for clarification when it doesn't. An interesting approach know as "progressive formalization," which begins with the informal ideas that students bring to school and gradually helps them see how these ideas can be transformed and formalized. Instructional units encourage students to build on their informal ideas in a gradual but structured manner so that they acquire the concepts and procedures of a discipline.

3) Assessment-Centered Environments
An environment that provides opptunities for feedback and revision. It ensures that what is assessed must be congruent with the learning goals. It focuses on understanding and not only on memory for procedures and facts.

Two types of assessments:

• Formative (feedback and self-assessment)
• Summative

4) Community-Centered Environments
The term community centered refers to several aspects of community, including the classroom as a community, the school as a community, and the degree to which students, teachers, and administers feel connected to the larger community of homes, businesses, states, the nation, and even the world. It connects what is learnt in school to what happens outside of school and vice versa.

From the pervious posts, we all know that education need a change when our environments changed. People raise important questions about the design of learning environments—questions that suggest the value of rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed. Above are some information that I find it very useful as a educator. It is difficult as an educator to strike a balance between learner-centred and knowledge-centred environments in local context. Personally I feel that we have to judge based on the learning abilities of our students in order to depend what kind of environment is suitable for our students.

I also believe that the key environment for learning is the family. I believe that the character a child depends on what kind of family background he/she come from. And will be related to how well academically the child can perform.