Neil Gold Explains Learning-Centredness

by Anna Galka and Neil Gold

“Learning-centred.” It’s a term that has appeared in learning theory literature over the past decade and is being used extensively to promote the teaching and learning environment here at the University of Windsor. But what does this somewhat abstract term really mean to the faculty and students of this university? Neil Gold, Provost and Vice-President, Academic of the University of Windsor believes that a learning-centred culture will make a positive difference for the university, the students, and yes, the faculty. In a recent conversation, he began by saying what he beleive to be the core of learning-centredness.

The University’s official definition of “learning-centred” may be found here.

“To begin with, learning-centredness means being clear about what we want students to know and be able to do, value, and appreciate. It means helping them understand what they have learned, and to be able to use that knowledge in new situations and contexts so that they can expand their abilities.”

He further explains that this involves actively engaging students in their learning. And so, learning-centred means the students must be considered first after the outcomes have been set, before the instructor or the material, when choosing teaching methods. He elaborates:

"If we really care about helping students learn, then we have to relate to them: Who are they? Where do they come from? What is their experience? How can we help them construct their own knowledge of things? How can we help them build on what they have? To do that, we have to care about them and know about them and learn about them – personally if possible, but if not personally, at least as a group or as a cohort or as a segment of society."

Agreeing that we, as professional educators, have always been concerned with the teaching and learning of our students, he continues by describing how a truly learning-centred institution differs from where we are now.

"It’s being a lot more intentional, a lot more systematic, and a lot more certain that we’re actually focusing on the student’s learning. We make sure it happens and that the learner knows that it’s happening. Because, as we know, if students are aware of what they are learning, they have a much better chance of actually consolidating that learning and making good use of that learning in the future.

Learning-centredness is really all about the best practices of helping people learn. Those best practices by and large do not come only from instinct or intuition or even our background experience – although they will play an important part – these practices come from an extensive body of knowledge about how people learn.

There is a research basis for these ideas. For example, it is said that adults learn by constructing knowledge and the term of art for that is “constructivism”. What does it really mean? It means that I don’t just learn something and integrate it, which is what kids tend to do. As an adult, I relate almost all new learning to previous learning, and I construct what I acquire on a scaffold, on a knowledge framework that I already have and I make meaning of it. I form my understanding of it in my own way. That’s what constructivism is really about – that I make the meaning myself. And my meaning will always be individual and personal and so somewhat different from yours."

Professor Gold acknowledges that for many instructors here, these are not new ideas.

"There are many people teaching on this campus who teach in learning-centred ways as a result of experience or their training. In being specific and intentional about being learning-centred we recognize that we can always do better and that we want to do better – which is what caring about learning, especially others’ learning, and being learning-centred is all about."

"We would like to give our community some ideas about things that we know from the research work, on average, for many students ... so it’s an assumption that we can all change for the better."

So how will we do this? What help and support is there for those who do not know how to integrate learning-centred strategies into their classrooms and those already preparing learning-centred teaching portfolios or dossiers?

"We’ll have more workshops on teaching and learning and we’ll provide more individual support – coaching if you will – if people want it. We will have more expertise to help those who want to improve their teaching and help them develop new courses and even programs. It will take us some time to build the consulting expertise internally, but we’ll do it!"

Learning theory literature can be very convincing for the need to embrace a learning-centred culture. But Gold identified two of the most compelling reasons to invest in the challenging task of changing our institutional culture to reflect more learning-centred values.

1. The demand for learning-centred education will continue to grow throughout this century.

This will be, as we have been told, the century of the student.
Provincial guidelines for the development and review of courses and degrees now require attention to learning outcomes and the appropriate methods to support their achievement as well as the use of appropriate assessment mechanisms to assure learning has taken place and that the process of assessing that learning has been accomplished through fair and appropriate means. Other institutions have already committed resources to improve their teaching and learning strategies. As he points out,

“even if we decided that we’re just going to be in the main stream, we would have to pursue this much more. However, it is our intent to be known as the institution where people thrive on the acquisition of new knowledge, who do best-practice, research-based activities, who engage actively in learning about how to involve students so that they learn better and so on.”

2. A learning-centred culture works for the benefit of the entire community.

The students benefit, the faculty benefit, and the institution benefits. Gold begins with the students,

"We’re here to help our students learn – we’re here for others. When we say “learning” we are talking about a process which engages students in learning. What’s learning? Learning is usually some kind of change that occurs in the mind or muscles or even the heart and spirit ... A shift has occurred as a result of an experience one has had as a learner. So what we do, at the university, is we intentionally intervene to influence the life experience of someone so that they will change in some way which is considered to be valuable, useful, appropriate, as the case may be. And so we intervene to help others to learn new knowledge, new skills, new abilities, to process experience, to reflect, to manage their emotions, to grow and develop as human beings, to understand what they value and what they don’t value… and so on. So learning is a process of change. It goes on with or without university or teachers. We all do it, every day. We can’t help but be learning all the time. But we can be learning more, more efficiently, more effectively, in a more systematic, orderly, and directed way with the help of supportive, strategic, useful, helpful, or facilitative intervention."

He describes the positive changes for faculty.

"Anyone who has been in a lively classroom – where students were engaged, and involved, as distinguished from passive, laid back, and glazed over – as an instructor, is excited by the opportunity that liveliness provides. There may be those who haven’t been enlivened for some time thinking that the want of engagement is derived from student disinterest. I think they can discover new ways to involve students and so part of this move to being learning-centred is about putting life and joy back into teaching for those who may have lost it."

Finally, he sums up the effects of striving for a learning-centred culture on the university community.

"This is a major endeavour. It’s going to be incremental. Little by little, faculty and students together can build this sense of a learning community and it’ll become a much happier place to be. I don’t mean that it’ll always be easy…but it can make a real difference to the overall spirit and culture of the campus. This spirit and culture can promote learning in many areas including the things the students want to do – and we think would be useful for them to do – beyond the classroom in their social and personal lives and in their “co-curricular” lives. Similarly we want our learning-centred approach to learning and teaching to support faculty who are deeply engaged in their own research and experimentation and creative activity and who will themselves be enlivened by the experience of teaching and by linking their research and creative activity to teaching.

The current strategic plan for the university is called “To Greater Heights: Enhancing a Culture for Learning”. We understand that we need to have that culture for learning – that is of course what a university is about. If we bring people together around common concerns, issues, questions, and matters of importance to learning, I think we can change the way everybody feels about being here. Learning is invigorating and being a learning-centred institution to the core will be significant in identifying Windsor as the place to study."

Anna Galka is a writer, publicist and sessional instructor at the University of Windsor.

© 2006, Anna Galka & Neil Gold. All rights reserved.