Typical schools usually adopt a framework of practices to guide them toward their goals.

Most of
the frameworks that schools choose broadly define what to do and often include the targeted
artifacts of successful implementation. These frameworks are essential because they define the
objectives of success. However, these frameworks are often so diverse that they may prevent
schools from focusing on the practices that impact success the most, even when they are within
their abilities to use them within their school to achieve positive success. Therefore, this
dissertation will give a critique of the how people learn framework in Zambian context.

A knowledge of rich, relevant, and well-researched content is required for learners to gain
understanding and expertise. All curricula must be designed in accordance with a solid theory of
learning. It is important to embed both content and theory into an operational model through
which practitioners can create research-based learning environments to help learners become
more successful.

Learning is important because no one is born with the ability to function competently as an adult
in society. It is especially important to understand the kinds of learning experiences that lead to
transfer, defined as the ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts 

According to the HPL framework, effective teaching requires specialized knowledge of the
learners, the learning process, curriculum and pedagogy. With an emphasis on teacher
development within a professional community, the HPL framework provides a “set of lenses on
any teaching situation that teacher’s can use to reflect on and improve their practice. Within this
approach, transforming teaching and learning is based on understanding that teachers need to
develop tools for assessing students’ thinking, understand how they think, assess students’ prior
knowledge, and connect with students’ families and communities (Bransford, et al, 2000).

Furthermore, professional development research supports that teachers need learning

opportunities grounded in their daily work with students, related to their teaching and learning of
curriculum content, organized around real problems of practice, and sustained over time by
conversation and coaching.

Knowing that learning needs to continue once teachers enter the classroom, the HPL framework
recognizes the need for continuous knowledge and skill building. This framework outlines three
general areas of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are important for every teacher to
acquire within four overlapping environments. The three general areas of knowledge, skills, and
dispositions that are important for every teacher to acquire include: (1) knowledge of learners
and how they learn and develop in social contexts; (2) conceptions of curriculum, content, and
goals (understanding the subject matter and skills to be taught); and (3) an understanding of
teaching in light of the content and learners to be taught, informed by assessment and supported
by classroom environments.

The HPL framework also describes four overlapping environments that are used to analyze
learning situations. These environments are called learner centered, knowledge centered,
assessment centered, and community centered learning environments.

In a learner-centered learning environment, the instructor design ways to uncover the knowledge,
skills, interests, attitudes, and beliefs of every learner. Learner-centered instructors know that
students are not blank slates, that a conceptual understanding, or misunderstanding, of a subject
is based on what they bring with them, including the students’ social and cultural traditions and
experiences.

Moreover, because people’s thoughts and beliefs are often tacitly held, it is important to create
many opportunities to draw those beliefs to the surface and make them visible to the learner, the
instructor, and the classroom community, as appropriate. The more visible a student’s thinking
becomes, the more opportunity an instructor has to understand the student’s misconceptions and
correct them. In this way, the instructor can build upon what the student already knows and is
able to do.

Learning centered environments incorporate the learners’ strengths and interests and are designed
to help students make connections between their previous knowledge, skills, attitudes, and
beliefs. These environments provide a framework for student’s construction of meaning by
connecting new knowledge to old knowledge. Teachers must realize that new knowledge is built
on existing knowledge students are not blank slates. Therefore, teachers need to uncover the
incomplete understandings, false beliefs and naïve renditions of concepts that students have
when they begin a course. If these are ignored, students may develop understandings very
different from what the teacher intends them to gain.
Failing to make a student’s thinking visible can be problematic. For example, some students may
do well at memorizing content and will score well on a test, but during the next assignment or
discussion they might revert to ideas and beliefs that are based on their undiscovered
misconceptions.

The second environment knowledge centered, are standards based and organized around big
ideas and are facilitated by providing rigorous content and assistance with helping students’
understand a subject or discipline. Teachers are wise to point their students directly toward clear
learning goals to tell students exactly what knowledge they will be gaining, and how they can
use that knowledge. In addition, a strong foundational structure of basic concepts will give
students a solid base on which to build further learning.

Assessment-centered environments provide frequent formal and informal opportunities for

feedback focused on understanding, not memorization, to encourage and reward meaningful
learning. Feedback is fundamental to learning, but feedback opportunities are often too scarce in
classrooms. Students may receive grades on tests and essays, but these are summative
assessments that occur at the end of projects. What are needed are formative assessments that
provide students with opportunities to revise and improve the quality of their thinking and
understanding. The goal is for students to gain meta-cognitive abilities to self-assess, reflect and
rethink for better understanding.

One important way an instructor might create these opportunities is through formative

assessment. An environment of formative assessment overlaps a learner-centered environment on
the issue of making students’ thinking visible, a prerequisite to helping them meet high
standards.

An environment of formative assessment is one designed to provide continual feedback about

preconceptions and performances to both learners and instructors. This feedback, which may be
from any number of sources including texts, media, instructor comments, and class discussions,
allows learners to reflect on and revise not only their proposed solutions to a problem but also
the way they approached the problem. The feedback from formative assessments can also help
instructors by suggesting ways they might improve their instruction and by identifying where
and how specific learners need further help.
A critical function of formative assessment is to help learners develop metacognitive skills. This
includes developing students’ abilities to take some measure, over time, of what they have
learned and what they are struggling with. It also involves learning to recognize and differentiate
between the strategies that are working well for their own problem-solving and those that are not
as effective. In other words, helping learners to develop their metacognitive abilities means
helping them to develop the “habits of mind” that will allow them to consistently assess and
improve their own learning processes and progress, as opposed to always relying on others to
assess them

Whereas formative assessment measures learning progress in order to encourage reflection and
revision, summative assessment should be designed to measure the results of learning. Thus,
formative assessment might be viewed as part of the journey of learning, whereas summative
assessment might be viewed as a periodic gathering of data points that provides quality control
and serves the important function of legitimizing credentials. 

The final environment, community centered, includes the provision of a supportive, stimulating,
and safe environment in which students challenge themselves. These supportive environments
allow teachers to apply what they learned in pre-service teacher preparation programs to their
current classrooms and the problems encountered in those classrooms. Thus, providing
conductive settings for learning to teach.

The foundation of a community-centered learning environment is the fostering of explicit values

or norms that promote lifelong learning. An example would be students feeling confident to ask
questions and not being afraid to say, “I don’t know.” This is in contrast to a course in which the
norm is “Don’t get caught not knowing something”

To add on, Community-centered environments foster norms for people learning from one
another, and continually attempting to improve. In such a community, students are encouraged to
be active, constructive participants. Further, they are encouraged to make and then learn from
mistakes. Intellectual camaraderie fosters support, challenge and collaboration.

Fowler, and Dupuis, (2003) states that, community-centered learning environments also
contribute to the aligning of students’ and instructors’ course expectations. On the first day of a
course, it is likely that there are as many sets of expectations and assumptions about the course as
there are people in the classroom. When instructors take the time to make course goals and
expectations explicit, they are taking the first step in gaining their students’ cooperation. When
instructors also take the time to elicit their students’ expectations and assumptions, they are
starting down the road to a truly collaborative learning environment.

When students understand that their instructor is paying attention to their needs, both individual
and collective, they are much more likely to become active participants in the construction of a
classroom community that helps all of its members to achieve their learning goals.

One of the foundational beliefs embodied in the HPL framework is that everyone can learn but
that the ways in which that learning takes place may be different for different people. A balanced
learning environment allows learners to have more control over their own academic experiences
by vigorously assessing and improving their own learning. These are important steps in helping
them to develop the attitudes and aptitudes of lifelong learners (Association of College and
Research Libraries (2003).

In conclusion, a consistently applied learning framework like HPL is a useful tool with which
instructors can formatively assess not only learning but also their own instruction. It can reveal
under what circumstances instruction is effective and when it might need improvement. In a
sense, this positions the instructor as the “Learner-in-Chief.” Moreover, this kind of self-
assessment by an instructor is a way to walk in the learner’s shoes. The instructor may model for
his or her students how to navigate and improve the current learning environment for the course.
Doing so reflects a powerful and effective model for the students.
 REFERENCES

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), (2003). Internet Education Project
Database.

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind,
Experience, And School (expanded ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Fowler, CS, & Dupuis, E. A. (2003). What Have We Done? HPL Impact On Our Instruction
Program. Reference Services Review 28 (4): 343-349.