Page 39 - Looking_after_school

1. Today's discourse: why should the student be at the center of education?

needs for additional support depending on each individual’s learning
style.” (European Commission, 2013, p. 5)

Technology thus opens a route towards a new, personalised organisa-
tion of learning and evaluation. In this respect, the objective is not only
a tailor-made curriculum, but an educational offer that continuously
tracks down new demands and learning needs to which it can adapt
itself. In other words, under the direction of learning analytics, new
technologies produce an ‘experience education’ in analogy with the
experience economy of Pine and Gilmore (1999).

The recent discourse thus also houses a technological perspective. On
the one hand, this perspective presents itself as a practical solution for
the need, as formulated by the other perspectives, to build education
around each student; on the other hand, it brings about a learning
environment that is no longer bound to time and space and is continu-
ously adapted to the user.

The student and their needs for learning and
education - an educational perspective
There are a range of perspectives which argue for centring the student
or the learner, and which are explicitly connected to education and
learning. In the context of this report, we limit ourselves to a number
of recent, relatively discernible approaches: learning psychology, dif-
ferentiation, talent development, inclusive education and Universal
Design for Learning, the ethical-pedagogical approach, and the learn-
ing citizen.

Learning functions, learning capacity

There is a perspective within (applied) learning psychology in which
so-called teacher-centred forms of education are criticised. This criti-
cism is tightly connected to new insights into the processes of learning.
In line with cognitive psychology and social-constructivist notions,
learning is described as a cognitive, active, constructive, and cumula-
tive process that leads to changes (see for instance Shuell, 1988). From
a traditional educational view, this means that if we have insight into
(and can direct) those learning processes, then we can also direct those

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