7.+Learner

=__My Experience with Learner Analysis __= = =  As a teacher, I have spent a lot of time reviewing information about students to get a clearer understanding of what their strengths and weaknesses are. Despite 12 years of dealing with students with a wide range of abilities, I am a bit disappointed to read this chapter. This chapter sets forth very clear and understandable models for learning more about the learners in our classrooms and how to use that information to help make decisions regarding instruction. My disappointment comes from all of the years of fumbling around and doing piece-meal learner analysis on so many students. This is a problem that I see with the type of learner analysis that I have seen conducted in public schools. The analysis usually occurs when a problem is noticed, not before instruction begins. There is no coherence or order to the information being gathered - it will vary from student and from teacher to teacher. Although success can occur in these situations, any of the models presented would help to organize the investigation into the students and, hopefully, encourage a broader investigation into what types of students are in the entire class, not just those that are exhibiting warning signs. As for specific methods used to conduct learner analysis in schools, I have seen a variety of sources being tapped. The student's cumulative file is a frequent starting point. If the student has more than one teacher, then a discussion among the student's teachers is also very common. A guidance counselor may also be involved in such a discussion. Parent conferences are another option for gathering information about a student's strengths and challenges. On rare occasions, the student is also queried regarding what his or her learning strengths and weaknesses. I feel that the learner analysis that I have seen conducted is helpful but lacking in rigor and structure. The use of a model would go a long way to making more pertinent information available to the teacher. In particular, I think that Dick, Carey and Carey's model would be very helpful. The key aspects of this model that I feel would be valuable to teachers would be information regarding the learner's attitudes toward the content and to potential delivery systems. As with most things, students would have to be taught how to share useful information as opposed to delusions (I don't like homework).

=__Learner Analysis in Different Venues __= = =  I am sure that the venue and the learners have an effect on the learner analysis, but I believe that, at its core, all learner analysis of any learner in any situation simply wants to discover as much pertinent information about the learner as it can. The pertinent information vary depending on the situation. If you are going to train assembly line workers on a specific technique, it would be very important to know if they are visual learners or not. It might not be as important to know that they have math anxiety. The questions might change, the model may be different, but the purpose for a learner analysis is always the same - what can you learn about the group of learners that you will be teaching.

=__A New Method for Learner Analysis__ = = =  What I think would be a powerful method for learner analysis is to involve all of the stake-holders (parents/guardians, teachers, **//and//** student). My vision includes having "intro" conferences where everyone gets together to talk about the learner before school even begins. This would be a big time investiture to be sure, but the data gathered would help the teacher to know what the strengths and weaknesses of not just individual students are, but also of the entire class. I further see student-teacher "mini-conferences" at the end of each grading quarter to get some time to discuss what has happened over the last nine weeks. The last step would be an end of the year summary conference. Not only would the results of the year be reviewed, but the teacher would help the parents/guardians and student prepare for the next year's entry conference.

I have outlined/clustered the above ideas in the following graphic organizer: I created this with the Mindmeister site. On a side note, although the site was easy to use, I did not like the "outcome". Both the printed version and the exported image were impossible to read as all of the information in each "node" was a straight line sentence. Thus the overall appearance was very long and very thin - and totally illegible. Oh well, maybe I missed something. I took the easy route and used a screen capture.

top