Learner-Centered Innovation: Spark Curiosity, Ignite Passion, and Unleash Genius

by Katie Martin

Motivation comes when learners have opportunities to exert agency in the learning process.

we must change how we design learning experiences for students and educators.

And without new models, people tend to revert back to what they experienced as learners as creatures of habit.

He explains in his blog that he wanted these young educators to experience a different type of learning.

I realized that publishing work brings a different level of accountability that I had never expected. You know you have a wider audience to critique but also to support.”

Creating structured opportunities to be metacognitive about how and what you are learning can inspire the creation of new learning experiences for students.

Beyond the resources, they also experienced the power of connecting across diverse networks.

Voice, Choice, and Agency

This shift from teaching the content and assessing what they retained to sparking curiosity and empowering learners to question, curate, and teach one another created a sense of agency that took the learning to an entirely new level

Likewise, the opportunity to engage in a worthy challenge can illuminate what one is capable of and expand one’s horizons and dreams.

The opportunity to engage in a worthy challenge

can expand one’s horizons and dreams.

The ideal learning space is one of encouragement and mentorship that empowers self-guided learning rather than a place where the focus is on the teacher managing and monitoring student compliance.

Too often, our own inhibitions and lack of experience are projected on the learners we serve.

If our goal is for students to create better opportunities for themselves and others, we have to step back and allow them the space to explore and learn how to learn.

But not all traditions in school serve learners.

We need to help them learn how to drive the technology so that they can thrive in an age of acceleration.

What is needed is a new definition of being smart, one that promotes

higher levels of human thinking and emotional engagement. The new smart will be determined not by what or how you know but by the quality of your thinking, listening, relating, collaborating, and learning.

Quantity is replaced by quality. And that shift will enable us to focus on the hard work of taking our cognitive and emoti...

Technology cannot replace the human connection, the relationship and the guidance and support that we are ...

This need requires that we examine traditions in education and eliminate those that get in the way of learning and innovation.

Cramming all night for a test is not a badge of honor; more homework does not make your class more rigorous; and good grades don’t guarantee a student will make a difference in the world.

subtra...

Prioritizing what matters most can help us go deeper and create better learning experiences that meet today’s ...

Eight Questions to Create Personal Learning Experiences

Personalization is an expectation in our food and entertainment today. So why shouldn’t our students expect personalized learning in schools?

But isn’t it time to admit that flawed accountability measures have failed to deliver on the promise of meeting the needs of all learners?

To see the change that is necessary in our schools, we must provide learning experiences that offer personal learning paths that include learner voice and choice.

Teachers can and should set up the parameters aligned with clear learning objectives

The learners, not the teacher, should leave class exhausted.

I believe that our traditional expectations around lesson planning hold us back from creating more personal learning experiences.

I don’t think the reasons are that teachers and leaders don’t believe this kind of learning is best for kids or that they don’t know how to make learning personal.

I think the reason we don’t see more schools devoted to meeting the unique needs of each learner is that we are still operating in systems where standardization is deeply ingrained in our procedures and policies.

The reality is that we can’t ensure all students go through every unit in a book if we aspire to personalize...

We have to omit some existing practices to make room for ne...

Educators who are providing learner-centered experiences have prioritized the learners’ and aligned learning experiences to meet and develop the desires, knowledge, skills, and mindsets. This alignment requires keeping some practices, refining some, and eliminating others to make room for new practices that allow for more personal and authentic learning.

But what if professional learning were driven by teacher goals, student needs, and personal learning opportunities?

What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.

but she chose not to.

she made the conscious decision to teach the students—not the curriculum—in

With an understanding of the learning goals, she learned the passions, strengths, and interests of her students and designed learning experiences that they connected with a...

I went into this unsure of how we would arrive to the final product but they proved to know more about these digital literacies than me.

but doing so would have limited her students to what she knew.

In addition to involving students in the decision making in their classroom, Steph sought feedback from her students in surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one conversations throughout the year.

She often asked a variety of open-ended questions to find out students’

interests and what motiv...

Reading the poet’s comments brought me back to being in school when we had to answer questions about the main idea or the author’s purpose. I remember being frustrated that there was only one “right” answer. I kept thinking, How does my teacher know? Did she call the author?

I have worked in schools where support programs or “response to intervention” programs, designed with the very best of intentions, pull kids out of class to provide extra time to ensure that students have the skills to be successful. The problem is that success was defined by the test scores, and, in some cases, this focus resulted in limiting (or eliminating) authentic learning experiences to make room for repeated exposure and practice on drill-and-kill test-prep questions. The primary goal wasn’t learning, rather it was to ensure students were well versed in the test genre and able to select the appropriate answers. In my experience, this test-centric approach rarely leads to significant gains in test scores, nor does it increase motivation for learning (or test taking) by students or their teachers.

fail to measure the scope of what we say we value?