What Do Students Need?  Each student needs to be like all others and at the same time, different from all others.  Students need unconditional acceptance as human beings.  Students need to believe they can become something better than they are.  Students need help in living up to their dreams.  Students have to make their own sense of things. (Tomlinson, 1999)

What Do Students Need?  Students need teachers to collaborate with them in order to more effectively and coherently make sense of things.  Students need power over their lives and learning.  Students need help to develop that power and use it wisely.  Students need to be secure in a larger world. (Tomlinson, 1999)

Connecting with Today’s Students Learners should acquire:  Skills (Psychomotor Learning Domain) Learning manual or physical skills.  Knowledge (Cognitive Learning Domain) Acquiring mental skills.  Attitudes (Affective Learning Domain) Growing in feelings or emotional areas.

Psychomotor Learning Domain  Includes physical movement, coordination, and the use of motor skills.  Requires practice to develop.  Measured in terms of speed, precision, distance, procedures, or techniques in execution.  Generally emphasized in career education.

Psychomotor Learning Domain NaturalizationArticulationPrecisionManipulationImitation

Cognitive Learning Domain  Includes development of intellectual skills.  Requires recall or recognition of facts, procedures, and concepts.  Outlines a movement from simple to complex behaviors (Bloom’s Taxonomy).  Academic education and learning goals are based on cognitive learning.

Affective Learning Domain  Includes the manner in which we deal with things emotionally.  Includes feelings, values, appreciation, motivations, attitudes, and enthusiasms.  Typically receives less attention.  Considered “soft skills” in education and business.

Affective Learning Domain InternalizingOrganizingValuingRespondingReceiving

Why is This Important to Me? The theory of student learning breaks down learning into three understandable components  Develop learning goals and targets  Plan curriculum  Assess student achievement