Building ‘Learner-Centered’ Curricula, Essay Example

Since the 1990s, the formative trend in education toward ‘learner-centered’ models of classroom facilitation in the teaching and training fields has done much to benefits students with developmental disabilities (Reynolds, 2000). While most recommended best practices in regard to student performance advance standardization as solution, special needs learners show strongest potential in modified programs toward integration into standardized praxis. As new tools find their way into pedagogical applications, informal assessment of students identified to have special learning needs can benefit greatly from alternative modalities in instructional evaluation. Following the work of Swiss Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, and American Psychologist Isabel Meyers (1995), the foregoing informal assessment is designed to measure Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in the psychometric framework for instructional development. Utilizing memory testing by way of both audio and visual memorization articulated in self-reporting by students.

Based on the ‘Think Aloud’ oral response model, data drawn from the informal memory test serves to delineate the student’s style of learning and responsiveness to numeracy. Findings to the in class evaluation record individual strengths in learning – audio, visual inductive, and visual deductive (i.e. semiotic meaning) reasoning. Outcomes to the assessment can be integrated into curricula to better effectiveness of teaching, by way of discernment of individual cognitive behavior into strategies designed to reach a continuum of learners: 1) Extraversion – Introversion; 2) Sensing – Intuition; 3) Thinking – Feeling; and 4) Judging – Perceiving.

Upon proposition, the distinction between auditory memory and visual memory seems without bias.  Most people have a general tendency to recollect information more effectively via one medium of sensory intake over another. In the special education classroom, ‘learning types’ may include auditory, visual and tactile cognitive development. The informal assessment employs numbers – symbols with abstract and semantic meaning. The assessment requests that participant students memorize numerical sequences in a pictogram, with repetition in audio transmission of the same inference. The number sequences can be selected from the random number generator illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Figure 1: Random Number Generator

A simple associate memory test consisting of visual and auditory retention of sequences of seven (7) digits both heard and read, the series of numbers presented by the database are transferred to both an index card and to SPSS by the educator, for retention of each numerical sequence. The below data table illustrated in Figure 2 can be utilized to record correct answers by each student, in each modality of the memory assessment.

Figure 2

Figure 2: Data Table

The visual memory assessment is done by showing the student a single card for 30 seconds, followed by removal of the card, and implementation of an ‘organic’ control: oral recitation of the alphabet.  The numbers are then requested post interruption. The number of correct answers should be recorded. Consecutive application of the auditory assessment with each student is conducted in the same format.

Results from the assessment can be calculated according to the percentage of people correlated to each score will serve to analyze the preliminary data. The formula for the calculation: C / N (100) = P. By adding total number of participants for each column, followed by division of the number of people in receipt of that score by the total number of participants in the study, the educator should multiply the answer by 100 to get the percentage.

To illustrate aggregate distribution within the class, the educator may put the outcomes into a histogram for reporting on median memory in each modality within the findings. Figure 3 represents a normal histogram graph to be used in dissemination of the study’s outcomes with the Y-axis on the left side of the graph as a scale for the percentage of people from 0 to 100%, and on the bottom a scale for the number of correct responses from 0 to 7.

Figure 3

Figure 3: Normal Histogram

The informal assessment recommended in this prospectus draws upon rather non-traditional, yet scientifically verifiable ideas about approaches to cognitive retention discussed in neuroscience and psychology. The memory assessment offers an associated learning format for interpretation of analytical capacity beyond inductive reason. Evolution of recommended best practices in curricula design (i.e. visual media formats and new technologies) and individual learning plans based on interactive growth are but a few of the steps toward integration of students with developmental disabilities into traditional school environments. While far from depth testing of cognitive capacity, the incorporation of statistical tools in this modified evaluation approach encourages educators to look to non-standardized tools as vehicles for building an integrated model of ‘learner-centered’ instruction; and with an eye toward improvement of student performance.

Works Cited

Meyers, S. (1995). Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing.

Reynolds, J. (2000). Learning-Centered Learning: Theory Into Practice. Inquiry, 5 (2), Fall 2000. Retrieved from: http://www.vccaedu.org/inquiry/inquiry-fall2000/i-52-reynolds.html