Abstract:

For teaching practitioners, at the beginning of the 21st century the educational landscape seems to be changing fundamentally. Standardization on one hand and personalization on the other hand have become cornerstones of public debate about teaching and learning, necessitating to rethink well tried educational patterns: Although phases of teacher-centred instruction have not become completely obsolete, concepts like “competence-orientation”, “self-organized learning” and “process-oriented assessment” guide the shift from teaching to learning, confusing those who are used to teach rather than to coach learning processes.
Anyway, classroom situations that foster active creation rather than passive consummation of knowledge and skills trigger brain-based learning. Neurodidactics, an interdisciplinary research field that combines findings of brain and memory research, psychology and other related fields, shows that learning is always an active process. Knowledge and competences cannot be transferred; they must be newly created in the brain of each student – and creating is always an active process. It occurs by connecting new information to existing knowledge and abilities, which certainly differ from learner to learner. This can be considered best in self-organized and student-centred learning settings, where teachers can respond individually to the needs of each pupil. Furthermore, self-organized learning means following the individual learning rhythm which enhances the memory process. It is proved by neurodidactical research that for a permanent storage of learning contents in the long-term memory the brain needs a short break for their consolidation. New input in this individual phase will inhibit the storing of the former as well as of the new information.
At last, these and other findings of brain and memory research have influenced a new generation of curricula that give competences prominence over content. By now, competence-orientation can be considered the missing link to close the gap between standardized learning goals and the need for personalized brain-based learning processes. On the other hand, adding new accents to learning and teaching, competence orientation demands new frameworks for learners and teachers.
Competence-matrices, task sheets and competence-oriented means of assessment are pedagogical tools considered useful to establish such a framework. Competence matrices inform about compulsory learning goals and describe different levels of competence to take account of individual progress on the side of the learners. Learners can follow their individual learning paths towards these learning goals by choosing appropriate tasks from provided task sheets. Thus, self-estimation and self-organization become guiding principles of the learning processes and should be considered within assessment situations as well.
Using the subject matter Informatics as an example, this paper describes first practical experiences with such a framework, relates these tools to constructivist learning theory and neurodidactics and points at possible further development.

Keywords:

Neurodidactics, active learning, self-organized learning, competence-oriented, problem-based learning.