Subject-Centered and Learner-Centered Design
Subject-Centered and Learner-Centered Design
What a curriculum design is
- The organization of learning objectives for teaching and learning.
Subject-centered (discipline-based)
- A separate-subject orientation, with no integration across areas.
- Bruner: subjects are made of concepts, generalizations, and facts.
Learner-centered
- Focuses on the developmental level, needs, and interests of learners.
- Morrison: what and how learners are taught, and their activities, must fit their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive level.
A curriculum design is the way learning objectives are organized for teaching and learning. There are several, and they differ in what they put at the centre. The two most basic put either the subject or the learner first, and every other design sits somewhere between them.
Subject-centered design
The subject-centered, or discipline-based, design focuses on a separate-subject orientation. Each subject is taught on its own, with no integration of information or shared skills across curriculum areas. Mathematics is mathematics, history is history, and the two do not mix.
This design reflects Bruner’s 1960 view that subjects form the basis for what is taught in school, and that each subject is made up of concepts, generalizations, and facts. The work of the curriculum is to organize and teach those subjects soundly. The strength of this design is rigor and clarity within each field; its weakness, met earlier in the work on integration, is that it leaves learners to connect the subjects themselves.
A separate-subject design with no integration across areas
It reflects Bruner’s view that subjects are made of concepts, generalizations, and facts. It is rigorous within each field but leaves learners to connect the subjects for themselves.
Learner-centered design
The learner-centered, or student-centered, design flips the focus. Instead of starting from the disciplines, it starts from the learner: the developmental level, needs, and interests of the students. Knowledge of child growth and development plays a central role, because the design has to fit the learner who is actually there.
Morrison, in 1993, captured the idea: whatever happens to children in school depends on what they are taught, how they are taught, and the activities they take part in, and all of these should be appropriate to the learners’ physical, emotional, social, and cognitive level of development. A lesson pitched above or below a learner’s developmental level fails, however good the content. The learner-centered design makes that fit the first concern.
| Subject-centered | Learner-centered | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts from | The disciplines | The learner |
| Central knowledge | Concepts and facts of the field | Child growth and development |
| Risk | Learners must connect subjects | Rigor of the disciplines can slip |
The developmental level, needs, and interests of the learners
Knowledge of child growth and development is central. As Morrison noted, what and how learners are taught, and their activities, must fit their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive level.
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