Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Development

Week 1

Learning Outcomes:
● Understand the 14 learner-centered principles in teaching and learning.
● Inculcate these principles in your own teaching and learning strategies as a
future professional teacher.

Lesson 1: Learner-Centered Principles

The learner is the center of instruction. As a future professional teacher, you
should be familiar with these 14 learner-centered principles that can guide you in
forming your own pedagogy.

These learner-centered principles were developed by the American

Psychological Association. They focus on psychological factors that are internal to and
controlled by the learners although they can be influenced externally by factors such as
environment and culture. It is important that you view these principles as an aggregate
to one another. These principles are divided into 4 categories: 1.) cognitive and
metacognitive, 2.) motivational and affective, 3.) developmental and social, 4.)
individual difference factors.

COGNITIVE AND METACOGNITIVE FACTORS1

1. Nature of the learning process

“The learning of complex subject matter is most effective when it is an intentional

process of constructing meaning from information and experience.

There are different types of learning processes, for example, habit formation in
motor learning; and learning that involves the generation of knowledge, or
cognitive skills and learning strategies. Learning in schools emphasizes the use
of intentional processes that students can use to construct meaning from
information, experiences, and their own thoughts and beliefs. Successful learners
 are active, goal-directed, self-regulating, and assume personal responsibility for
contributing to their own learning.

2. Goals of the learning process

The successful learner, over time and with support and instructional guidance,
can create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge. The strategic
nature of learning requires students to be goal directed. To construct useful
representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and learning strategies
necessary for continued learning success across the life span, students must
generate and pursue personally relevant goals. Initially, students' short-term
goals and learning may be sketchy in an area, but over time their understanding
can be refined by filling gaps, resolving inconsistencies, and deepening their
understanding of the subject matter so that they can reach longer-term goals.

Educators can assist learners in creating meaningful learning goals that are
consistent with both personal and educational aspirations and interests.

3. Construction of knowledge.

The successful learner can link new information with existing knowledge in
meaningful ways. Knowledge widens and deepens as students continue to build
links between new information and experiences and their existing knowledge
base.

The nature of these links can take a variety of forms, such as adding to,
modifying, or reorganizing existing knowledge or skills. How these links are made
or developed may vary in different subject areas, and among students with
varying talents, interests, and abilities. However, unless new knowledge
becomes integrated with the learner's prior knowledge and understanding, this
new knowledge remains isolated, cannot be used most effectively in new tasks,
and does not transfer readily to new situations. Educators can assist learners in
acquiring and integrating knowledge by a number of strategies that have been
shown to be effective with learners of varying abilities, such as concept mapping
and thematic organization or categorizing.

4. Strategic thinking.

The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and reasoning
strategies to achieve complex learning goals. Successful learners use strategic
thinking in their approach to learning, reasoning, problem solving, and concept
 learning. They understand and can use a variety of strategies to help them reach
learning and performance goals, and to apply their knowledge in novel situations.

They also continue to expand their repertoire of strategies by reflecting on the

methods they use to see which work well for them, by receiving guided
instruction and feedback, and by observing or interacting with appropriate
models. Learning outcomes can be enhanced if educators assist learners in
developing, applying, and assessing their strategic learning skills.

5. Thinking about thinking.

Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring mental operations facilitate
creative and critical thinking. Successful learners can reflect on how they think
and learn, set reasonable learning or performance goals, select potentially
appropriate learning strategies or methods, and monitor their progress toward
these goals.

In addition, successful learners know what to do if a problem occurs or if they are

not making sufficient or timely progress toward a goal. They can generate
alternative methods to reach their goal (or reassess the appropriateness and
utility of the goal). Instructional methods that focus on helping learners develop
these higher order (metacognitive) strategies can enhance student learning and
personal responsibility for learning.

6. Context of learning

Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture, technology,

and instructional practices. Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers a
major interactive role with both the learner and the learning environment. Cultural
or group influences on students can impact many educationally relevant
variables, such as motivation, orientation toward learning, and ways of thinking.

Technologies and instructional practices must be appropriate for learners' level of

prior knowledge, cognitive abilities, and their learning and thinking strategies.
The classroom environment, particularly the degree to which it is nurturing or not,
can also have significant impacts on student learning.
 MOTIVATIONAL AND AFFECTIVE FACTORS

7. Motivational and emotional influences in learning.

What and how much is learned is influenced by the motivation. Motivation to

learn, in turn, is influenced by the individual's emotional states, beliefs, interests
and goals, and habits of thinking. The rich internal world of thoughts, beliefs,
goals, and expectations for success or failure can enhance or interfere the
learner's quality of thinking and information processing.

Students' beliefs about themselves as learners and the nature of learning have a
marked influence on motivation. Motivational and emotional factors also influence
both the quality of thinking and information processing as well as an individual's
motivation to learn. Positive emotions, such as curiosity, generally enhance
motivation and facilitate learning and performance. Mild anxiety can also
enhance learning and performance by focusing the learner's attention on a
particular task. However, intense negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, panic, rage,
insecurity) and related thoughts (e.g., worrying about competence, ruminating
about failure, fearing punishment, ridicule, or stigmatizing labels) generally
detract from motivation, interfere with learning, and contribute to low
performance.

8. Intrinsic motivation to learn.

The learner's creativity, higher order thinking, and natural curiosity all contribute
to motivation to learn. Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty
and difficulty, relevant to personal interests, and providing for personal choice
and control.

Curiosity, flexible and insightful thinking, and creativity are major indicators of
the learners' intrinsic motivation to learn, which is in large part a function of
meeting basic needs to be competent and to exercise personal control. Intrinsic
motivation is facilitated on tasks that learners perceive as interesting and
personally relevant and meaningful, appropriate in complexity and difficulty to the
learners' abilities, and on which they believe they can succeed. Intrinsic
motivation is also facilitated on tasks that are comparable to real-world situations
and meet needs for choice and control.
 Educators can encourage and support learners' natural curiosity and motivation
to learn by attending to individual differences in learners' perceptions of optimal
novelty and difficulty, relevance, and personal choice and control.

9. Effects of motivation on effort.

Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner

effort and guided practice. Without learners' motivation to learn, the willingness to
exert this effort is unlikely without coercion. Effort is another major indicator of
motivation to learn.

The acquisition of complex knowledge and skills demands the investment of

considerable learner energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over
time. Educators need to be concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies
that enhance learner effort and commitment to learning and to achieving high
standards of comprehension and understanding. Effective strategies include
purposeful learning activities, guided by practices that enhance positive emotions
and intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods that increase learners' perceptions
that a task is interesting and personally relevant.

DEVELOPMENTAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS

10. Developmental influences in learning.

As individuals develop, there are different opportunities and constraints for

learning. Learning is most effective when differential development within and
across physical, intellectual, emotional, and social domains is taken into account.

Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level

and is presented in an enjoyable and interesting way. Because individual
development varies across intellectual, social, emotional, and physical domains,
achievement in different instructional domains may also vary. Overemphasis on
one type of developmental readiness--such as reading readiness, for
example--may preclude learners from demonstrating that they are more capable
in other areas of performance. The cognitive, emotional, and social development
of individual learners and how they interpret life experiences are affected by prior
schooling, home, culture, and community factors. Early and continuing parental
involvement in schooling, and the
 quality of language interactions and two-way communications between adults
and children can influence these developmental areas. Awareness and
understanding of developmental differences among children with and without
emotional, physical, or intellectual disabilities, can facilitate the creation of
optimal learning contexts.

11. Social influences in learning.

Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal relations, and

communication with others. Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an
opportunity to interact and to collaborate with others on instructional tasks.
Learning settings that allow for social interactions, and that respect diversity,
encourage flexible thinking and social competence. In interactive and
collaborative instructional contexts, individuals have an opportunity for
perspective taking and reflective thinking that may lead to higher levels of
cognitive, social, and moral development, as well as self-esteem.

Quality personal relationships that provide stability, trust, and caring can increase
learners' sense of belonging, self-respect and self-acceptance, and provide a
positive climate for learning. Family influences, positive interpersonal support and
instruction in self-motivation strategies can offset factors that interfere with
optimal learning such as negative beliefs about competence in a particular
subject, high levels of test anxiety, negative sex role expectations, and undue
pressure to perform well. Positive learning climates can also help to establish the
context for healthier levels of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Such contexts help
learners feel safe to share ideas, actively participate in the learning process, and
create a learning community.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES FACTORS

12. Individual differences in learning.

Learners have different strategies, approaches, and capabilities for learning that
are a function of prior experience and heredity. Individuals are born with and
develop their own capabilities and talents. In addition, through learning and social
acculturation, they have acquired their own preferences for how they like to learn
and the pace at which they learn.
 However, these preferences are not always useful in helping learners reach their
learning goals. Educators need to help students examine their learning
preferences and expand or modify them, if necessary. The interaction between
learner differences and curricular and environmental conditions is another key
factor affecting learning outcomes. Educators need to be sensitive to individual
differences, in general. They also need to attend to learner perceptions of the
degree to which these differences are accepted and adapted to by varying
instructional methods and materials.

13. Learning and diversity.

Learning is most effective when differences in learners' linguistic, cultural, and

social backgrounds are taken into account. The same basic principles of
learning, motivation, and effective instruction apply to all learners. However,
language, ethnicity, race, beliefs, and socioeconomic status all can influence
learning.

Careful attention to these factors in the instructional setting enhances the

possibilities for designing and implementing appropriate learning environments.
When learners perceive that their individual differences in abilities, backgrounds,
cultures, and experiences are valued, respected, and accommodated in learning
tasks and contexts, levels of motivation and achievement are enhanced.

14. Standards and assessment

Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner
as well as learning progress -- including diagnostic, process, and outcome
assessment -- are integral parts of the learning process.

Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at all
stages of the learning process. Effective learning takes place when learners feel
challenged to work towards appropriately high goals; therefore, appraisal of the
learner's cognitive strengths and weaknesses, as well as current knowledge and
skills, is important for the selection of instructional materials of an optimal degree
of difficulty. Ongoing assessment of the learner's understanding of the curricular
material can provide valuable feedback to both learners and teachers about
progress toward the learning goals. Standardized assessment of learner
progress and outcomes assessment provides one type of information about
achievement levels both within and across individuals that can inform various
types of programmatic decisions.
 Performance assessments can provide other sources of information about the
attainment of learning outcomes. Self-assessments of learning progress can also
improve students’ self-appraisal skills and enhance motivation and self-directed
learning.

Let’s Practice!
● Look back on the best and worst teacher you had and try to understand
their pedagogy by reflecting on the learner-centered principles they
employed.

Learning Outcomes:
● Understand human’s developmental changes.
● Differentiate between traditional and life-span approach development

What is Human Development?

Human development is the pattern of change that begins with conception and
ends in death. This development can either be growth or decline. Growth refers to the
positive changes leading to maturity. Decline refers to the negative changes that lead to
deterioration. Human’s develop in order to become mature. Maturity refers to the
completion of all aspects of development in a human being.

Approaches to Human Development

● Traditional approach. It is the belief that humans will continually grow until
maturity and decline experience decline after peak adulthood.

● Life-span approach. It is the belief that even in maturity, development takes

place and continuously does so until the end of life.

Paul Baltes (Santrock, 2002), an expert in life-span development, give the

following characteristics:
1. Development is lifelong.
It does not end in adulthood. Joseph and Anna will continue developing even in
adulthood. It means that development is not completed in infancy or childhood or at any
specific age; it encompasses the entire lifespan, from conception to death.
2. Development is plastic.
Plasticity refers to the potential for change. Development s possible throughout
the lifespan. No one is too old to learn. There is no such thing as “I am too old for that
...” Neither Joseph nor Anna will be too old to learn something.

Plasticity denotes intrapersonal variability and focuses heavily on the potentials

and limits of the nature of human development. The notion of plasticity emphasizes that
there are many possible developmental outcomes and that the nature of human
development is much more open and pluralistic than originally implied by traditional
views; there is no single pathway that must be taken in an individual’s development
across the lifespan.

3. Development is multidimensional.
Baltes is referring to the fact that a complex interplay of factors influence
development across the lifespan, including biological, cognitive, and socioemotional
changes. Baltes argues that a dynamic interaction of these factors is what influences an
individual’s development.

Development as a process is complex because it is the product of biological,

cognitive and socioemotional processes (Santrock, 2002). Biological processes involve
changes in the individual’s physical nature. The brains of Joseph and Anna develop.
They will gain height and weight. They will experience hormonal changes when they
reach the period of puberty, and cardiovascular decline as they approach late
adulthood. All these show common biological processes.

Biological processes involve changes in the

individual’s physical nature. They will gain height and
weight. They will experience hormonal changes when
they reach the period of puberty, and cardiovascular
decline as they approach late adulthood. All
these show common biological processes.

a. Development is relatively
orderly. Joseph
and Anna, for example, will learn to sit, crawl then walk
before they can run. The muscular control of
the trunk and the arms comes earlier as
compared to the hands and fingers. This is the
proximodistal pattern. During infancy the
greatest growth in always occurs at the top –the head – with physical growth in size,
weight and future differentiation gradually working its way down from top to bottom (for
example, neck, shoulders, middle trunk and so on). This is the cephalocaudal pattern.

b. Development takes place gradually. Joseph and Anna won’t

develop into pimply teenagers overnight. It takes years before they become one. In fact,
that’s the way of nature. The bud does not blossom suddenly. The seed does not
germinate overnight. While some changes occur in a flash of insight, more often it takes
weeks, months or years for a person to undergo changes that result in the display of
developmental characteristics.

Cognitive processes involve changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence and

language. Joseph and Anna develop from mere sounds to a word becoming two words,
the two words becoming a sentence. They would move on to memorizing their first
prayer, singing Lupang Hinirang in every flag ceremony to imagining what it would be
like to be a teacher or a pilot, playing chess and solving a complex math problem. All
these reflect the role of cognitive processes in development.

Socioemotional processes include changes in the individual’s relationships with

other people, changes in emotions and changes in personality. As babies, Joseph and
Anna responded a sweet smile when affectionately touched and frowned when
displeased and even showed temper tantrum when they could not get or do what they
wanted. From aggressive children, they may develop into a fine lady and a gentleman
or otherwise, depending on myriad of factors. They may fall in love and get inspired for
life or may end betrayed, deserted and desperate afterwards. All these reflect the role of
socioemotional processes in development.

These biological, cognitive and socioemotional processes are inextricably

intertwined. While these processes are studied are studied separately, the effect of one
process or factor on a person’s development is not isolated from the other processes. If
Joseph and Anna were undernourished and troubled by the thought of father and
mother about to separate, they could not concentrate on their studies and consequently
would fil and repeat. As a consequence, they may lose face and drop out of school,
revert to illiteracy, become unskilled, unemployed and son on and so forth. See how a
biological process, affects the cognitive process which in turn, affects the
socioemotional process.

c. Development is contextual.
 In Baltes’ theory, the paradigm of contextualism refers to the idea that three
systems of biological and environmental influences work together to influence
development. Development occurs in context and varies from person to person,
depending on factors such as a person’s biology, family, school, church, profession,
nationality, and ethnicity. Baltes identified three types of influences that operate
throughout the life course: normative age graded influences, normative history-graded
influences, and nonnormative influences. Baltes wrote that these three influences
operate throughout the life course, their effects accumulate with time, and, as a dynamic
package, they are responsible for how lives develop. Joseph’s and Anna’s biological
make-up, social and cultural contexts may vary and therefore make them develop
differently from each other.

d. Development is multidirectional

Baltes states that the development of a particular domain does not occur in a
strictly linear fashion but that development of certain traits can be characterized as
having the capacity for both an increase and decrease in efficacy over the course of an
individual’s life.

If we use the example of puberty again, we can see that certain domains may
improve or decline in effectiveness during this time. For example, self-regulation is one
domain of puberty which undergoes profound multidirectional changes during the
adolescent period. During childhood, individuals have difficulty effectively regulating
their actions and impulsive behaviors. Scholars have noted that this lack of effective
regulation often results in children engaging in behaviors without fully considering the
consequences of their actions. Over the course of puberty, neuronal changes modify
this unregulated behavior by increasing the ability to regulate emotions and impulses.
Inversely, the ability for adolescents to engage in spontaneous activity and creativity,
both domains commonly associated with impulse behavior, decrease over the
adolescent period in response to changes in cognition. Neuronal changes to the limbic
system and prefrontal cortex of the brain, which begin in puberty lead to the
development of self-regulation, and the ability to consider the consequences of one’s
actions (though recent brain research reveals that this connection will continue to
develop into early adulthood).

Multidirectional development is the development happening in the physical,

biological, cognitive, social factors of an individual. In the case of Joseph and Anna,
their puberty, hormonal changes will occur which helps in the production of gametes
responsible for sexual reproduction. Physical, emotional and mental changes are
exhibited from crude to refined state. When they become as older adults, they have got
much experience on situations, people, society and handle it wisely, however, they
could not have sufficient physical strength to perform the task.

Principles of Child Development And Learning That Inform Practice

1. All the domains of development and learning are important.
2. Learning and development follow sequences.
3. Development and learning proceed at varying rates.
4. Development and learning result from a interaction of maturation and experience.
5. Early experiences have profound effects on development and learning.
6. Development proceeds towards greater complexity, self-regulation and symbolic or
representational capacities. Children develop best when they have secure relationships.
8. Development and learning occur in and are influenced by multiple and cultural
contexts.
9. Children learn in variety ways.
10.Play is an important vehicle for developing self-regulation and promoting language
cognition and social competence.
11.Development and learning advance when children are challenged.
12.Children’s experiences shape their motivation and approaches to learning.

Assessment:
To be added

References:
● Retita, P. (n.d.) Educ 1: The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
[Learning Module]. Surigao State College of Technology College of Teacher Education.
Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/educ-1-learning-module-completedpdf/251434538
on September 5, 2024.