Complete thesis - Murdoch University

student needs to do, or they passively slide through the educational system, respondingmainly to teachers who ‘make’ them learn. The teacher acts as authority, coachStage 2 learners are ‘available’. They are interested or interestable. They respond to motivationaltechniques. They are willing to do assignments they can see the purposeof. They are confident but may be largely ignorant of the subject of instruction. Theteacher acts as motivator, guideStage 3 learners have skill and knowledge, and they see themselves as participants in theirown education. They are ready to explore a subject with a good guide. They will evenexplore some of it on their own. But they may need to develop a deeper self-concept,more confidence, more sense of direction, and a greater ability to work with (and learnfrom) others. These learners benefit from learning more about how they learn, such asmaking conscious use of learning strategies. The teacher acts as facilitatorStage 4 learners set their own goals and standards – with or without help from experts.They use experts, institutions, and other resources to pursue these goals. Learners atthis stage are both able and willing to take responsibility for their learning, direction,and productivity. They exercise skills in time management, project management, goalsetting,self-evaluation, peer critique, information gathering, and use of educationalresources. The teacher acts as consultant, delegator.More recent research into student approaches to learning (eg Entwistle et al (1974); Biggs(1970); Prosser and Trigwell (1999); Meyer and Shanahan (2000), amongst others) indicatesincreased important of this aspect – that what learners know and believe at the time affectshow they interpret new information, so that sometimes current knowledge supports newlearning, while at other times it hampers learning. In addition, student-centring can bedisturbing for learners who are used to a teacher-directed approach. Therefore, how readythe students may be for this approach and whether they are likely to need induction ortraining for it are questions that need to be addressed.Table 9.4 provides a summary of the differences between teacher- and student-centred learningenvironment, based on the work of Hirumi (2002).3.5.3 PBLProblem-based Learning (PBL) emerged in the 1960s to enable medical students to apply andsynthesise knowledge through using ‘real life’ case studies (Boud, 1985) in an environmentwhere an expanding knowledge base made it impossible to include all the knowledge required162