Learning Principles and Collaborative Action
Powerful
Partnerships: A Shared Responsibility for Learning (PDF File 
)--A joint report by the
American Association for Higher Education, the American College Personnel Association,
and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators
- Learning is fundamentally about making and maintaining connections:
biologically through neural networks; mentally among concepts, ideas, and
meanings; and experientially through interaction between the mind and the
environment, self and other, generality and context, deliberation and action.
- Learning is enhanced by taking place in the context
of a compelling situation that balances challenge
and opportunity, stimulating and utilizing the brain's ability to conceptualize
quickly and its capacity and need for contemplation and reflection upon experiences.
- Learning is an active search for meaning by the
learner -- constructing knowledge rather than passively receiving it, shaping
as well as being shaped by experiences.
- Learning is developmental, a cumulative process
involving the whole person, relating past and present, integrating
the new with the old, starting from but transcending personal concerns and
interests.
- Learning is done by individuals who are intrinsically
tied to others as social beings, interacting as
competitors or collaborators, constraining or supporting the learning process,
and able to enhance learning through cooperation and sharing.
- Learning is strongly affected by the educational climate
in which it takes place: the settings and surroundings, the influences of
others, and the values accorded to the life of the mind and to learning achievements.
- Learning requires frequent feedback if it is
to be sustained, practice if it is to be nourished,
and opportunities to use what has been learned.
- Much learning takes place informally and incidentally,
beyond explicit teaching or the classroom, in casual contacts with faculty
and staff, peers, campus life, active social and community involvements, and
unplanned but fertile and complex situations.
- Learning is grounded in particular contexts and individual
experiences, requiring effort to transfer specific knowledge
and skills to other circumstances or to more general understandings and to
unlearn personal views and approaches when confronted by new information.
- Learning involves the ability of individuals to monitor their own learning, to understand how knowledge is acquired, to develop strategies for learning based on discerning their capacities and limitations, and to be aware of their own ways of knowing in approaching new bodies of knowledge and disciplinary frameworks.
Address questions or comments about TEP or this site to:
Georgeanne Cooper, Program Director, 64 PLC
Phone: 541-346-2177 Fax: 541-346-2184
Teaching Effectiveness Program, Teaching and Learning Center, University of Oregon.
Last Modified:
07/07/09