Student-Centered Learning by Design

by Jacquelyn Whiting, Michelle Luhtala (Foreword)

This book empowers librarians, teachers, and administrators to be empathic problem-solvers and decision-makers. By reframing the challenges that members of a learning community face as opportunities to better meet teaching and learning needs, readers will find that adoption of a mindset focused on users—namely, design thinking—elevates and creates opportunities for innovating pedagogy. Moreover, it can enhance school culture as well as build channels of communication among various stakeholders in schools and districts. When educators of any subject or discipline apply design thinking skills to their curriculum implementation, authentic student-centered learning experiences become the core of the learning experience. The case studies shared in this book provide examples of student-centered approaches being used in elementary, middle, and high schools, so that readers have many models on which to base their work and from which to build confidence in shifting their pedagogy to keep the student at the center of teaching and learning decisions.

183 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2021

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The font/readability of the text bothered me, and I know I shouldn’t be focusing on that because the book is really good. However, if someone struggles to begin reading the book because of how it looks, then that matters. If you are like me, please persevere because the content/information is good. Full of real-life case studies that range across all content areas and grades, along with problems and solutions, these stories that include graphs, photos, and templates can be easily adapted to individual classroom needs. Your classes might not be exactly like those in this book, but you will invariably recognize some of the same issues you wrestle with. I love, love, love the brain sketches that provide context for “understanding your stakeholders.” I would love to see us do this at a staff meeting or in departments, and I think it could work well in classes with our learners. The author provides clear explanations and steps for the design process and always reminds us to be clear about what students need in order to be successful. Hooray for chapter 5 which discusses transdisciplinary collaboration and how we need to understand what we, as teachers, need to be able to collaborate well. Too often, we are asked to team with someone else without going through a process of determining how we can effectively work well together. Finally, I appreciate the templates in the back of the book. They were all explained throughout the book and having them to use on our own is quite helpful. I hope the author demands a reprint of the book so the text is more readable and doesn’t feel like it’s been written on a typewriter with its small font. This surprises me because today’s books are simply not set up this way.