What is a Value about Learning?

(Excerpted from Beatty 2002)

The fundamental values about learning that an educator (teacher or instructional designer) holds form the foundation for the learning environment s/he creates. For example, an educator that values the formation of a learning community will design a learning environment to achieve learning goals and implement instructional methods that are aligned with the value of community. In each case report selected for this study, the author stated his or her fundamental value(s) about learning while establishing the theoretical basis for the subsequent case description. Several examples of value statements found in the case reports included in this study are:
  • Learning should use a learner-centered approach as it becomes a collaboration among participants (Yakimovicz & Murphy, 1995).
  • The design of learning environments should support community building (Wegerif, 1998).
  • Learning should be a dynamic and interactive educational process that facilitates critical thinking (Bullen, 1998).
  • Community-based, active learning on the Web (Matuga, 2001)
In some cases, the value was not stated explicitly but was implicit in the literature cited and the language used to describe a particular learning environment design. Also, in some cases, the value stated by the author was focused on the means of the learning process, rather than the end of the learning process. For example, the value, "Learning should be a dynamic and interactive process" (Bullen, 1998) is a value about the means (or processes) of learning rather than a value about the end state of learning.

Occasionally, the case author described fundamental learning values on multiple levels, positioning a particular case report as a focused investigation of a small aspect of a larger learning environment design perspective. For example, one report investigated the importance of student dialogue in online discussions as part of a larger research effort to understand the formation of community in the online learning environment (Murphy & Collins, 1997). In this case, the report described values of community in general and values of student dialogue and discussion in particular. In cases such as these, I chose to record the more focused value.

View the values in the SIO tool