Enhancing Learners’ Academic Performances Using Student Centered Approaches

Preeti Jaiswal,Abdulghani Al-Hattami

doi:10.3991/ijet.v15i16.14875

Abstract

Abstract- Contemporary higher education institutions place students at the centre of their thinking and emphasize on student centered approaches to help learners construct knowledge during their learning paths in higher education. The study was guided by Bloom’s taxonomy in designing learning outcomes, incorporating engaging learning activities and assessing learning outcomes. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives provides a hierarchical classification system that classifies thinking abilities from basic information acquisition to more complex processes. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using the hierarchical instructional set of cognitive processes delineated in Bloom’s taxonomy for boosting learners’ vocabulary competency in English language learning, in higher education. The sample for this study consisted of 39 students (nine males and thirty females) who were studying course entitled English for Business in Department of English Language & Literature, College of Arts, during the academic year 2018-19 at University of Bahrain. The course aims to enhance learners’ language skills to enable them to communicate constructively in various business contexts. The results revealed that Bloom’s learning approach was successful in augmenting learners ’retention and transfer of productive and receptive vocabulary in language learning and conducive for promoting proficiency in English vocabulary knowledge.

Highlights

Teaching within higher education has experienced a pedagogical shift in recent years, with new approaches to enhance student motivation, autonomy and achievement (Fernandes, Flores, and Lima, 2012)
The taxonomy for affective domain consists of a fiveleveled classification system consisting of receiving, responding, valuing, organizing and characterizing
The findings revealed that promoting higher order thinking skills, as hierarchically organized by Bloom’s taxonomy, increases both academic achievement and English proficiency

Summary

Introduction

Teaching within higher education has experienced a pedagogical shift in recent years, with new approaches to enhance student motivation, autonomy and achievement (Fernandes, Flores, and Lima, 2012). A student centred approach encompasses four fundamental features: active engagement for learning, dedicated enthusiastic management of learning experience, autonomous knowledge construction and teachers in the role of facilitators (Geven and Santa, 2010) They exemplify the process of active teaching in a self-directed learning environment (Grabinger and Dunlap, 1994). Educators may find Bloom’s taxonomy useful in designing their course curriculum, describing students’ intended learning outcomes lucidly, selecting relevant learning tasks, and assessing students’ learning outcomes This Taxonomy, provides a list of measurable action verbs for each hierarchical level, to help educators describe and classify observable knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors and abilities. The hierarchical model, makes it simpler and easier for students to understand the learning targets they are expected to achieve by the end of a learning program

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion