The Learner-Centered Curriculum: Design and Implementation

by Roxanne Cullen, Reinhold R. Hill, Michael Harris

Most of the scholarship on learner-centeredness is focused on individual classroom pedagogy, but this book takes learner-centeredness beyond the classroom and asks academic leaders to consider the broader implications of making their institutions fully learner-centered. Systemic change is needed, and curriculum is at the heart of what higher education does. To truly effect change, the curriculum needs to be examined and aligned with learner-centered practices. In this book the authors offer both design specifications for a learner-centered approach to curriculum as well as practical recommendations for implementation and assessment. The book covers the need for redesigning curriculum, curriculum design in the instructional paradigm, learner-centered design in practice, implementation, program assessment (including a helpful rubric for this), innovating through technology, and learning spaces that support learner-centered curricula.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Saundra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was read for a campus "book club." While I'll no doubt get even more out of it after a second (or third) reading, the book was interesting, and offered good suggestions about how faculty can make their curriculum more "learner centered." The most useful chapters to me were chapter 6, which focused on assignments/activities that can be used for formative/summative assessments, and chapter 8, on how classroom and building design can be more conducive to student learning. While the primary audience for this book is probably faculty, administration would be well served to read it as well, I'm sure, since a change in curriculum can not happen without them.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had interesting parts and gives a good overview of learner centered curriculum from both an educator approach and an administrative approach for those trying to implement it. It got a little repetitive and by the end most of what they were writing was referring back to what they wrote in other chapters so I think it could have been shortened a bit. As a reader I got a little bored with the lists of "in chapter 3 we suggested __________," "in chapter 5 we reviewed _________," Etc. There are still some good tools and ideas in here for those who are new to this type of curriculum.