The Learner-Centered Curriculum: Design and Implementation

by Roxanne Cullen, Reinhold R. Hill, Roxanne Cullen

THE LEARNER-CENTERED CURRICULUM

“If an institution is to be truly learner-centered, all processes and practices need to be learner-centered, and the curriculum is no exception.”—From the Preface

The Learner-Centered Curriculum is for educators and administrators who envision an educational environment that produces students who are creative and autonomous learners. By encouraging an appreciation and adoption of learner-centered practices, educators can transform their curricula to become more focused on the learner.

The book presents a framework for curriculum design based on learner-centered principles while at the same time offering technical advice on implementation as well as the strategic use of assessment, technology, and physical spaces to support innovative design. The authors include several examples of existing curricula that illustrate their framework in practice. Throughout the book, they emphasize the need for assessment, both formative and summative, stressing the point that assessment is an effective driver of change. The book includes a wide variety of options both for individual classroom practice and for programmatic assessment.

The Learner-Centered Curriculum explores the current technology and tools available to educators that can support learner-centered practices and foster autonomous learning and demonstrates how technology can assist in removing some of the obstacles to achieving a learner-centered design. In addition, the authors explain the importance of physical spaces in relation to learner-centered curricular design and show how to tie renovation to curricular implementation to foster incentive to innovate and provide a physical manifestation of learner-centered principles.

291 pages, Kindle Edition

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.