NUMERACY LEARNING DESIGN

Numeracy Learning Design

Numeracy Learning Design

Introduction

This paper represents a collaborative effort of two teacher educators to articulate a numeracy approach to "designing for learning" rather than planning for teaching. We believe this focus on learning is needed if teachers are to implement a constructive approach to thinking about day-to-day learning by the students. Conventional lesson planning focuses on what the teacher will do. If learning is teacher directed, then the focus of the lesson plan is on what the teacher does. When designing a learning experience for students, teachers focus on what students will do. Our language encourages teachers to focus on thinking about how to organize what learners will do rather than plan their teaching behaviors.

Analysis

Numeracy learning has emerged as a prominent approach to teaching during this past decade. The work of Dewey, Montessori, Piaget, Bruner, and Vygotsky among others provide historical precedents for numeracy learning theory. Constructivism represents a paradigm shift from education based on behaviorism to education based on cognitive theory. Fosnot (1996) has provided a recent summary of these theories and describes numeracy teaching practice. We are proposing a new approach for planning using a "Numeracy Learning Design" that honors the common assumptions of constructivism and focuses on the development of situations as a way of thinking about the constructive activities of the learner rather than the demonstrative behavior of the teacher. Most conventional teacher planning models are based on verbal explanations or visual demonstrations of a procedure or skill by the teacher which are then combined with practice of this method or skill by the student. Much of this approach seems consistent with the description of classroom activities reported in a major research study titled A place called school conducted ten years ago by Goodlad (1984). He found that most of the time, most of the teachers talk to the kids. Students explained that physical education, fine arts, or industrial arts were their most interesting classes because they actually got to do something. They were active participants in learning rather than passive recipients of information. This is the primary message of constructivism; students who are engaged in active learning are making their own meaning and constructing their own knowledge in the process.

Numeracy Learning Design

The "Constructive Learning Design" we are using now has been through a variety of revisions in the past seven years and now emphasizes these six important elements: Situation, Groupings, Bridge, Questions, Exhibit, and Reflections. These elements are designed to provoke teacher planning and reflection about the process of student learning. Teachers develop the situation for students to explain, select a process for groupings of materials and students, build a bridge between what students already know and what they want them to learn, anticipate questions to ask and answer without giving away an explanation, encourage students to exhibit a record of their thinking by sharing it with others, and solicit students' reflections about their learning. We now longer refer to objectives, outcomes, or results since we expect that teachers ...