Unit 2: Learner-Centered Psychological Principles

Topic 1: Cognitive and metacognitive Factors

Throughout its history, psychology has provided vital information for the design of
schooling based on theory and research on human learning, development, and
motivation. Research in psychology relevant to education has been particularly
informative during the past decade. Advances in our understanding of thinking, memory,
and cognitive and motivational processes can contribute directly to improvements in
teaching, learning, and the whole enterprise of schooling. At the same time, educators
concerned with the growing problems of school dropout, low levels of academic
achievement, and other indicators of school failure are arguing for more learner-
centered models of schooling. Such models attend to the diversity among students, and
use this diversity to enrich learning and to produce results within the context of current
school reform.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the unit, you should be able to:
1. contextualize the 14 Learner- Centered Psychological principles; and
2. advocate the use and significance of the 14 principles in the teaching- learning
process
Learning Content

COGNITIVE AND
METACOGNITIVE FACTORS

LEARNER-CENTERED
MOTIVATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTAL
AFFECTIVE PRINCIPLES FACTORS
FACTORS

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
FACTORS

The 14 learner-Centered Psychological Principles

The following 14 psychological factors pertain to the learner and the learning
process. They focus on psychological factors that are primarily internal to and under the
control of the learner rather than biological factors. However, the principles also attempt
to acknowledge external environment or contextual factors that interact with these
internal factors.

The principles are intended to deal holistically with learners in the context of real-
world learning situations. Thus, they are best understood as an organized set of
principles; no principle should be viewed in isolation. The 14 principles are divided into
those referring to cognitive and metacognitive, motivational and affective,
developmental and social, and individual difference factors influencing learners and
learning.
Finally, the principles are intended to apply to all learners-from children, to
teachers, to administrators, to parents, and to community members involved in our
educational system.
COGNITIVE AND METACOGNITIVE FACTORS
Nature of the learning process
The learning of complex subject matter is most effective when it is an intentional
process of constructing meaning from information and experience.
There are different types of learning processes; for example, habit formation in
motor learning and learning that involves the generation of knowledge or cognitive skills,
and learning strategies. Learning in schools emphasizes the use of intentional
processes that students can use to construct meaning from information, experiences,
and their own thoughts and beliefs. Successful learners are active, goal-directed, self-
regulating, and assume personal responsibility for contributing to their own learning.
Goals of the learning process
The successful learner, over time and with support and instructional guidance,
can create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge.
The strategic nature of learning requires students to be goal directed. To
construct useful representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and learning
strategies necessary for continued learning success across the life span, students must
generate and pursue personally relevant goals. Initially, students’ short-term goals and
learning may be sketchy in an area, but over time their understanding can be refined by
filling gaps, resolving inconsistencies, and deepening their understanding of the subject
matter so that they can reach longer-term goals. Educators can assist learners in
creating meaningful learning goals that are consistent with both personal and
educational aspirations and interests.
 Construction of knowledge
The successful learner can link new information with existing knowledge in
meaningful ways.
Knowledge widens and deepens as students continue to build links between new
information and experiences and their existing knowledge base. The nature of these
links can take a variety of forms, such as adding to, modifying, or reorganizing existing
knowledge or skills. How these links are made or develop may vary in different subject
areas and among students with varying talents, interests, and abilities. However, unless
new knowledge becomes integrated with the learner’s prior knowledge and
understanding, this new knowledge remains isolated, cannot be used most effectively in
new tasks, and does not transfer readily to new situations. Educators can assist
learners in acquiring and integrating knowledge by a number of strategies that have
been shown to be effective with learners of varying abilities, such as correct mapping
and thematic organization or categorizing.
Strategic thinking
The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and reasoning
strategies to achieve complex learning goals.
Successful learners use strategic thinking in their approach to learning,
reasoning, problem solving, and concept learning. They understand and can use a
variety of strategies to help them reach learning and performance goals, and to apply
their knowledge in novel situations. They also continue to expand their repertoire of
strategies by reflecting on the methods they use to see which work well for them, by
receiving guided instruction and feedback, and by observing or interacting with
appropriate models. Learning outcomes can be enhanced if educators assist learners in
developing, applying, and assessing their strategic learning skills.
Thinking about thinking
Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring mental operations facilitate
creative and critical thinking.
Successful learners can reflect on how they think and learn, set reasonable
learning or performance goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies or
methods, and monitor their progress toward these goals. In addition, successful
learners know what to do if a problem occurs or if they are not making sufficient or
timely progress toward a goal. They can generate alternative methods to reach their
goal (or reassess the appropriateness and utility of the goal). Instructional methods that
focus on helping learners develop this higher order (metacognitive) strategies can
enhance student learning and personal responsibility for learning.
Context of learning
Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture, technology,
and instructional practices.
Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers play a major interactive role with
both the learner and the learning environment. Cultural or group influences on students
can impact many educationally relevant variables, such as motivation, orientation
toward learning, and ways of thinking. Technologies and instructional practices must be
appropriate for learners’ level of prior knowledge, cognitive abilities, and their learning
and thinking strategies. The classroom environment, particularly the degree to which it
is nurturing or not, can also has significant impacts on student learning.
MOTIVATIONAL AND AFFECTIVE FACTORS
Motivational and emotional influences on learning
What and how much is learned is influenced by the learner’s motivation.
Motivation to learn, in turn, is influenced by the individual’s emotional states, beliefs,
interests and goals, and habits of thinking.
The rich internal world of thoughts, beliefs, goals, and expectations for success
or failure can enhance or interfere with the learner’s quality of thinking and information
processing. Students’ beliefs about themselves as learners and the nature of learning
have a marked influence on motivation. Motivational and emotional factors also
influence both the quality of thinking and information processing as well as an
individual’s motivation to learn. Positive emotions, such as curiosity, generally enhance
motivation and facilitate learning and performance. Mild anxiety can also enhance
learning and performance by focusing the learner’s attention on a particular task.
However, intense negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, panic, rage, insecurity) and relative
thoughts (e.g., worrying about competence, ruminating about failure, fearing
punishment, ridicule or stigmatizing labels) generally detract from motivation, interfere
with learning, and contribute to low performance.
Intrinsic motivation to learn
The learner’s creativity, higher order thinking, and natural curiosity all contribute
to motivation to learn. Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty and
difficulty relevant to personal interests, and providing for personal choice of control.
Curiosity, flexible and insightful thinking, and creativity are major indicators of the
learners’ intrinsic motivation to learn, which is in large part a function of meeting basic
needs to be competent and to exercise personal control. Intrinsic motivation is facilitated
on tasks that learners perceive as interesting and personally relevant and meaningful,
appropriate in complexity and difficulty to the learners’ abilities, and on which they
believe they can succeed. Intrinsic motivation is also facilitated on tasks that are
comparable to real-world situations and meet needs for choice and control. Educators
can encourage and support learners’ natural curiosity and motivation to learn by
attending to individual differences in learners’ perception of optimal novelty and
difficulty, relevance, and personal choice and control.

Effects of motivation and effort

Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner effort and
guided practice.
Without learners’ motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is unlikely
without coercion. Effort is another main indicator of motivation to learn. The acquisition
of complex knowledge and skills demands the investment of considerable learner
energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over time. Educators need to be
concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies that enhance learner effort and
commitment to learning and to achieving high standards of comprehension and
understanding. Effective strategies include purposeful learning activities, guided by
practices that enhance positive emotions and intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods
that increase learners’ perceptions that a task is interesting and personally relevant.
Developmental influences on learning
As individuals develop, there are different opportunities and constraints for
learning. Learning is most effective when differential development within and across
physical, intellectual, emotional, and social domains is taken into account.
Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level
and is presented in an enjoyable and interesting way. Because individual development
varies across intellectual, social, emotional, and physical domains, achievement in
different instructional domains may also vary. Overemphasis on one’s type of
developmental readiness–such as reading readiness, for example–may preclude
learners from demonstrating that they are more capable in other areas of performance.
The cognitive, emotional and social development of individual learners and how they
interpret life experiences are affected by prior schooling, home, culture, and community
factors. Early and continuing parental involvement in schooling and the quality of
language interactions and two-way communications between adults and children can
influence these developmental areas. Awareness and understanding of developmental
differences among children with and without emotional, physical, or intellectual
disabilities can facilitate the creation of optimal learning contexts.

Social influences on learning

Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal relations, and
communication with others.
 Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an opportunity to interact and to
collaborate with others on instructional tasks. Learning settings that allow for social
interactions, and that respect diversity, encourage flexible thinking and social
competence. In interactive and collaborative instructional contexts, individuals have an
opportunity for perspective taking and reflective thinking that may lead to higher levels
of cognitive, social, and moral development, as well as self-esteem. Quality personal
relationships that provide stability trust, and caring can increase learners’ sense of
belonging, self-respect and self-acceptance, and provide a positive climate for learning.
Family influences, positive interpersonal support and instruction in self-motivation
strategies can offset factors that interfere with optimal learning such as negative beliefs
about competence in a particular subject, high levels of test anxiety, negative sex role
expectations, and unique pressure to perform well. Positive learning climates can also
help to establish the context for healthier levels of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Such
contexts help learners feel safe to share ideas, actively participate in the learning
process, and create a learning community.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES FACTORS

Individual differences in learning
Learners have different strategies, approaches, and capabilities for learning that
are a function of prior experience and heredity.
Individuals are born with and develop their own capabilities and talents. In
addition, through learning and social acculturation, they have acquired their own
preferences for how they like to learn and the pace at which they learn. However, these
preferences are not always useful in helping learners reach their learning goals.
Educators need to help students examine their learning preferences and expand or
modify them, if necessary. The interaction between learner differences and curricular
and environmental conditions is another key factor affecting learning outcomes.
Educators need to be sensitive to individual differences, in general. They also need to
attend to learner perceptions of the degree to which these differences are accredited
and adapted to by varying instructional methods and materials.
Learning and diversity
Learning is most effective when differences in learners’ linguistic, cultural, and
social backgrounds are taken into account.
The same basic principles of learning, motivation, and effective instruction apply
to all learners. However, language, ethnicity, race, beliefs, and socioeconomic status all
can influence learning. Careful attention to these factors in the instructional setting
enhances the possibilities for designing and implementing appropriate learning
environments. When learners perceive that their individual differences in abilities,
backgrounds, cultures, and experiences are valued, respected, and accommodated in
learning tasks and contexts, levels of motivation and achievement are enhanced.
Standards and assessment
Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner
as well as learning progress including diagnostic, process, and outcome assessment
are integral parts of the learning process.
Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at all
stages of the learning process. Effective learning takes place when learners feel
challenged to work towards appropriately high goals. Therefore, appraisal of the
learner’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses, as well as current knowledge and skills,
is important for the selection of instructional materials of an optimal degree of difficulty.
On-going assessment of the learner’s understanding of the curricular material can
provide valuable feedback to both learners and teachers about progress toward the
learning goals. Standardized assessment of learner progress and outcomes
assessment provides one type of information about achievement levels both within and
across individuals that can inform various types of programmatic decisions.
Performance assessments can provide other sources of information about the
attainment of learning outcomes. Self-assessments of learning progress can also
improve students’ self-appraisal skills and enhance motivation and self-directed
learning.
Teaching and Learning Activities
❖ Ask the students to discuss and give situations which they can apply based on
the learner- centered psychological principles
(Topic was assigned as reading assignment)
Learning materials and resources for supplementary reading.
Reading text (pdf)
Open Educational Sources
Flexible Teaching Learning Modality (FTLM) adopted
❖ Google classroom
❖ Module, exercises
Assessment Task

Guide Questions

1. What is the importance of the LCP in the development of the learning?

 2. As a learner, how will you apply the LCP?
3. What do you think the reason/s why they created this framework?

Activity 1: Activity
Construct a paragraph that states the difficulties/problems you’ve encountered upon
learning and how would you apply the LCP to address those difficulties?

Rubrics:
Content: 50%
Organization: 50%
Total 100%
A. Identify what principle is being asked on the following.
__________1. The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking
and reasoning strategies to achieve complex learning goals”.
__________2. Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture,
technology, and instructional practices.
__________3. Learners have different strategies, approaches, and capabilities
for learning.
__________4. Learning is most effective when differences in learner’s linguistic,
cultural, and
Social backgrounds are taken into account.
__________5. Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal
relations, and communication with others.
References
A. Book
● Lucas, M. R. & B. Corpus. (2007). Facilitating Learning A Metacognition
Process: Lorimar Publishing. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
B. Website
● https://www.cdl.org/articles/learner-centered-psychological-principles/ . Retrieved
November 17, 2019.