Communication Challenges of Creating Personalized, Learner-Centered Instruction

This chapter describes and systematically analyzes the changing beliefs, practices, and challenges of a middle-level English language arts teacher’s journey from a traditional classroom environment, to a personalized, learner-centered environment rich with active engagement, student motivation, and relevance. The researchers described the competency that the teacher researcher made progress on and how shifts in her beliefs and practices could stimulate additional thought and future examinations of competencies by applied communication and education researchers and others interested in developing personalized, learner-centered environments. The researchers used collaborative autoethnography research methods. The researchers discovered the following overarching themes in response to the teacher researcher’s changing briefs, practices, and challenges faced: the curriculum should be natural, not forced; a student-driven process and assessment are critical; and authentic collaborations and communication accelerate student-centered teaching. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of communication challenges that teachers face in transforming traditional to learner-centered environments.