PEC 102

MODULE 2 LEARNER- CENTERED PSYCHOLOGICAL

PRINCIPLES (LCP)

Introduction
You, the Learner, are the center of instruction. The word of instruction revolves
around you. This module is focused on the fourteen (14) principles that run through the
twenty-five (25) modules.

ADVANCE ORGANIZER

Motivational
Cognitive and
and Affective
Metacognitive Factor
Factors (3
(6 principles)
principles)

14

Learner-
Centered

Principle

Developmental and
Individual
Social Factors (2
Differences Factors
principles)
(3 principles)
ENGAGE

Do this activity before you read about the Learner-Centered Psychological Principles?
1. Examine the title, “Learner-Centered Psychological Principles”. Quickly jot down at
least 10 words that come to your mind.
 Student
 Motivation
 Emotions
 Development
 Individual
 Thinking
 Learning
 Strategy
 Environment
 Growth

2. Go back to each word and write phrases about why you think the word. Can be
associated with the LCP.
 Student – Because the learner is the primary focus of all teaching and instruction.
 Motivation – Students need internal drive and purpose to learn effectively.
 Emotions – How learners feel impacts attention, memory, and performance.
 Development – Learners grow physically, emotionally, and intellectually over time.
 Individual – Each learner has unique strengths, needs, and learning styles.
 Thinking – Learning involves reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
 Learning – The process of acquiring knowledge, skills, and values.
 Strategy – Learners benefit from planned methods to achieve their goals.
 Environment – Context such as home, culture, and school influence learning.
 Growth – Learning fosters improvement and personal development across domains.

EXPLORE

Ask three members. Share your responses. Summarizing your group’s responses. We think
that Learner-Centered Psychological Principles focus on.
 We think that Learner-Centered Psychological Principles focus on placing the learner at
the heart of the teaching and learning process. The principles aim to support the holistic
development of the student—cognitive, emotional, social, and motivational. They
emphasize that learning is personal and meaningful when it aligns with the learner’s needs,
interests, background, and abilities. It is also affected by external factors such as the
classroom environment, cultural influences, and social interactions. In essence, LCPs
promote active, reflective, and strategic learning that is inclusive and respectful of
individual differences.
 EXPLAIN

LEARNER-CENTERED PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

The Learner-Center Psychological Principles were put together by the American
Psychological Association. The following 14 psychological principles pertains to the learner
and the learning process. The 14 principles have the following aspect:
 They focus on psychological factors that are primarily internal to and under the
control of learner rather than conditioned habits or physiological factors. However,
the principles also attempt to acknowledge external environment or contextual factors
that interact with these internal factors.
 The principles are intended to deal holistically with learners in the context of real-
world learning situations. Thus, they are best understood as an organized set or
principles; no principle should be viewed in isolation.
 The 14 principles are divided into those referring to (1) cognitive and metacognitive
(2) motivational and affective, (3) developmental and social, and (4) individual
differences factors influencing learners and learning.
 Finally, the principles are intended to apply to all learners--- from children, to
teachers, to administrators, to parents, and to community members involved in our
educational system.

Cognitive and Metacognitive Factors

1.Nature of the learning process
The learning of a complex subject matter is most effective when it is an intentional
process of constructing meaning from information and experience.
 There are different types of learning processes: for example, habit formation in motor
learning and learning that involves the generation of knowledge or cognitive skills
and learning strategies.
 Learning in schools emphasizes the use of intentional processes that students can use
to construct meaning from information, experiences and their own thoughts and
beliefs.
 Successful learners are active, goal-directed, self-regulating and assume personal
responsibility for contributing to their own learning.
2. Goal of the Learning Process
The successful learner, over time and with support and instructional guidance, can
create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge.
 The strategic nature of learning requires students to be goal-directed.
  To construct useful representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and
learning strategies necessary for continued learning success across the life span,
students must generate and pursue personally-relevant goals. Initially, students’ short-
term goals and learning may be sketchy in an area, but over time their understanding
can be refined by filling gaps, resolving matter so that they can reach longer-term
goals.
 Educators can assist learners in creating meaningful learning goals that are consistent
with both personal and educational aspirations and interest.
3. Construction of knowledge
The successful learner can link new information with existing knowledge in
meaningful ways.
 Knowledge widens and deepens as a students continue to build links between new
information and experiences and their existing knowledge base. The nature of these
links can take a variety of forms, such as adding to, modifying, or reorganizing
existing knowledge or skills. How these links are made or developed may vary in
different subject areas, and among students with varying talents, interest and abilities.
However, unless new knowledge becomes integrated with the learner’s prior
knowledge and understanding, the new knowledge remains isolated, cannot be used
most effectively, in new task, and does not transfer readily to new situations.
 Educators can assist learners in acquiring and integrating knowledge by a number of
strategies that have been shown to be effective with learning of varying abilities, such
a concept mapping and thematic organization or categorizing.
4. Strategic thinking
The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and reasoning
strategies to achieve complex learning goals.
 Successful leaders use strategic thinking in their approach to learning, reasoning,
problem solving and concept learning.
 They understand and can use a variety of strategies to help them reach learning and
performance goals, and to apply their knowledge in novel situation.
 They also continue to expand their repertoire of strategies by reflecting on the
methods they use to see which work well for them, by receiving guided instructions
and feedback, and by observing and interacting with appropriate models.
 Learning outcome can be enhanced if educators assist learning in developing,
applying and assessing their strategic learning skills.
5. Thinking about thinking
Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring mental operations facilitate
creative and critical thinking.
  Successful learners can reflect on how they think and learn, set reasonable learning or
performance goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies or method, and
monitor their progress toward these goals.
 In addition, successful learners know what to do if a problem occurs or if they are not
making sufficient or timely progress toward a goal. They can generate alternative
methods to reach their goal (or reassess the appropriateness and utility of the goal).
 Instructional methods that focus on helping learners develop these higher order
(metacognitive) strategies can enhance students learning and personal responsibility
for learning.
6. Context of learning
Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture, technology and
instructional practices.
 Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers play a major interactive role with both
the learner and the learning environment.
 Cultural or group influences on students can impact many educationally relevant
variables, such as motivation, orientation toward learning and ways of thinking.
 Technologies and instructional practices must be appropriate for learners’ level of
prior knowledge, cognitive abilities and their learning and thinking strategies
 The classroom environment, particularly the degree ton which it is nurturing or not,
can also have significant impacts on student learning.
Motivational and Affective Factors
7. Motivational and emotional influences on learning
What and how much is learned is influenced by the learner’s motivation. Motivation
to learn, in turn, is influenced by the individual’s emotional state, beliefs, interests and goals,
and habits of thinking.
 The rich internal world of thoughts, beliefs, goals and expectations or success or
failure can enhance or interfere with the learner’s quality of thinking and information
processing.
 Student’s beliefs about themselves are learners and the nature of learning have a
marked influence on motivation. Motivational and emotional factors also influence
both the quality of thinking and information processing as well as an individual’s
motivation to learn.
 Positive emotions, such as curiosity, generally enhance motivation and facilitate
learning and performance. Mild anxiety can also enhance learning and performance
by focusing the learner’s attention on a particular task. However, intense negative
emotions (e.g., anxiety, panic, rage, insecurity) are related thoughts (e.g., worrying
about competence, ruminating about failure, fearing punishment, ridicule, or
stigmatizing labels) generally detract from motivation, interfere with learning, and
contribute to low performance.
8. Intrinsic motivation to learn
The learner’s creativity, higher order thinking, and natural curiosity all contribute to
motivation to learn. Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by task of optimal novelty and
difficulty, relevant to personal interests, and providing for personal choice and control.
 Curiosity, flexible and insightful thinking, and creativity are major indicators of the
learner’s intrinsic motivation to learn, which is in large part a function of meeting
basic needs to be competent and to exercise personal control.
 Intrinsic motivation is facilitated on task that learners perceive as interesting and
personally relevant and meaningful, appropriate in complexity and difficulty to
learner’s abilities, and on which they believe the can succeed.
 Intrinsic motivation is also facilitated on task that are comparable to real-world
situations and meet needs for choice and control.
 Educators can encourage and support learner’s natural curiosity and motivation to
learn by attending to individual differences in learner’s perception of optimal novelty
and difficulty, relevance and personal choice and control.
9. Effects on motivation on effort
Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner effort and
guided practice. Without learners’ motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is
unlikely without coercion.
 Effort is another major indicator of motivation to learn. The acquisition of complex
knowledge and skills demands the investment of considerable learner energy and
strategic effort, along with persistence over time.
 Educators need to be concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies that
enhance learner effort and commitment to learning and to achieving high standards of
comprehension and understanding.
 Effective strategies include purposeful learning activities, guided by practices that
enhance positive emotions and intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods that
increase learners’ perceptions that a task is interesting and personally relevant.

Developmental and Social Factors

10. Developmental influence on learning
As individuals develop, there are different opportunities and constrains for learning.
Learning is most effective when differential development within and across physical,
intellectual, emotional and social domains is taken into account.
 Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level and is
presented in an enjoyable and interesting way.
  Because individual development varies across intellectual, social, emotional and
physical domains, achievement in different instructional domains may also vary.
 Overemphasis on one type of developmental readiness—such as reading readiness—
may preclude learners from demonstrating that they are more capable on other areas
of performance.
 The cognitive, emotional and social development of individual learners and how they
interpret life experiences are affected by prior schooling, home, culture and
community factors
 Early and continuing parental environment in schooling, and the quality of language
interactions and two-way communications between adults and children can influence
these developmental areas.
 Awareness and understanding of developmental differences among children with and
without emotional, physical or intellectual disabilities, can facilitate the creation of
optimal learning contexts.

11. Social influences on learning

Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal relations and
communication with others.
 Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an opportunity to interact and to
collaborate with other on instructional tasks.
 Learning settings that allow for social interactions and that respect diversity
encourage flexible thinking and social competence.
 In interactive and collaborative instructional context, individuals have an opportunity
for perspective taking and reflective thinking that may lead to higher levels of
cognitive, social and moral development, as well as self-esteem.
 Quality personal relationships that provide stability, trust and caring can increase
learners’ sense of belonging, self-respect and self-acceptance, and provide a positive
climate for learning.
 Family influences, positive interpersonal support and instruction in self-motivation
strategies can offset factors that interfere with optimal learning such as negative
beliefs about competence in a particular subject, high levels of test anxiety, negative
sex role expectations, and undue pressure to perform well.
 Positive learning climates can also help to establish the context for healthier levels of
thinking, feeling and behaving. Such contexts help learners feel safe to share ideas,
actively participate in the learning process, and create a learning community.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES FACTORS

12. Individual difference in learning
Learners have different strategies, approaches and capabilities for learning that are
function of prior experience and heredity.
  Individuals are born with and develop their own capabilities and talents.
 In addition, through learning a social acculturation, they have acquired their own
preferences for how they like to learn and the pace at which they learn. However,
these preferences are not always useful in helping learners reach their learning goals.
 Educators need to help students examine their learning preferences and expand and
modify them, if necessary.
 The interaction between learner differences and curricular and environmental
conditions is another key factor affecting learning outcomes.
 Educators need to be sensitive to individual differences, in general. They also need to
attend to learner perceptions of the degree top which these differences are accepted
and adapted to by varying instructional methods and materials.

13. Learning and diversity

Learning is most effective when differences in learners’ linguistic, cultural and social
backgrounds are taken into account.
 The same basic principles of learning, motivation and effective instructions apply to
all learners. However, language, ethnicity, race, beliefs and socioeconomic status all
can influence learning. Careful attention to these factors in the instructional setting
enhances the possibilities for designing and implementing appropriate learning
environments.
 When learners perceive that their individual differences in abilities, backgrounds,
cultures and experiences are valued, respected and accommodated in learning task and
contexts, levels of motivation and achievement are enhanced.

14.Standards and assessment

Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner as
well as learning progress—including diagnostic process and outcome assessment—are
integral parts of the learning process.
 Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at all
stages of the learning process.
 Effective learning takes place when learners feel challenge to work towards
appropriately high goals; therefore, appraisal of the learner’s cognitive strengths and
weaknesses , as well as current knowledge and skills, is important for the selection of
instructional materials of an optimal degree of difficulty.
 Ongoing assessment of the learners’ understanding of the curricular material can
provide valuable feedback to both learners and teachers about progress toward the
learning goals.
 Standardized assessment of learner progress and outcome assessment provides one
type of information about achievement levels both within and across individuals that
can inform various types of programmatic decisions.
  Performance assessments can provide other sources of information about the
attainment of the learning outcomes.
 Self-assessment of learning progress can also improve students’ self-appraisal skills
and enhance motivation and self-directed learning.
Alexander and Murphy gave a summary of the 14 principles and distilled them into five
areas:
1. The knowledge base. One’s existing knowledge serves as the foundation of all future
learning. The learners’ previous knowledge will influence new learning specifically
on how he represents new information, makes associations and filters new
experiences.
2. Strategic processing and control. Learners can develop skills to reflect and regulate
their thoughts and behaviors in order to learn more effectively (metacognition).
3. Motivation and affect. Factors such as intrinsic motivation (from within), reason for
wanting to learn, personal goals and enjoyment of learning task all have a crucial role
in the learning process.
4. Development and Individual Differences. Learning is a unique journey for each
person because each learner has his own unique combination of genetic and
environmental factors that influence him.
5. Situation or context. Learning happens in the context of a society as well as within an
individual.

EXTENDED BY
APPLYING

The application activity will be done in Module 26 when you revisit the 14 principles. For
now, keep the 14 principles in mind as you explore the rest of the modules. Always try to
relate the principles to the concepts you will learn, especially when you do the 5- minute non-
stop writing at the end of each module. Happy learning!
EXTENDED BY RESEARCHING

Read a research or study related to Learner-Centered Psychological Principles (LCP). Fill out
the matrix below.

PROBLEM RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

How do LCP-based instructional strategies The study used a qualitative case study
affect student motivation and academic method involving classroom observations,
performance in public high schools? teacher interviews, and student focus groups
over one semester.

Title and Source: Garcia, M. (2021). Implementing

Learner-Centered Psychological Principles in Philippine
Classrooms. Journal of Educational Development, 36(2),
112–130.

FINDINGS CONCLUSION/RECOMMENDATIONS

Teachers who implemented LCP observed The study recommends that the DepEd
increased student participation, better integrate LCP training in teacher professional
classroom behavior, and improved development programs. Schools should also
academic outcomes. Students expressed provide resources and support for learner-
feeling more valued and understood. centered instruction.
EVALUATE

1. Describe what you can do to advocate the use of the 14 Learning- Centered Psychological
Principles.

I will:

 Use these principles when designing lessons to ensure they are student-centered and
inclusive.
 Encourage learners to set goals, reflect on their learning, and develop critical thinking
strategies.
 Promote a classroom environment that respects diversity and supports emotional well-
being.
 Share the value of LCPs with colleagues through presentations, discussions, and
action research.
 Use assessments not just to measure but to guide and improve learning outcomes.

2. Advocate the use of the 14 learning principles by means of any of the following:
a. PowerPoint presentation consisting of 5 slides or less

b. A 3-minute speech
"Good day to everyone! I stand before you to advocate for a powerful framework in
education—the Learner-Centered Psychological Principles. These 14 principles teach us that
students are not just passive recipients of information—they are thinkers, feelers, and unique
individuals who learn best when they are understood and supported. These principles tell us
that motivation matters, emotions matter, relationships matter. Learning is not one-size-fits-
all. Each learner carries their own culture, mindset, and background, and it’s our duty as
educators to recognize and nurture that. When we apply these principles, we don’t just help
students succeed in school—we empower them to succeed in life. Let us all work together to
make education more inclusive, reflective, and human-centered. Thank you!"
5-minute non-stop writing
Your 5-minute non-stop writing begins NOW!
From the Module on Learner-Centered Psychological Principles, I realized that……

I realized that every learner is a complex individual shaped by a combination of biological, psychological,
social, and environmental factors. Learning does not happen in isolation—it is deeply connected to the
learner’s personal history, relationships, environment, and internal world.

Sigmund Freud helped me understand that a child’s early experiences and unconscious thoughts can
significantly influence their present behavior. His idea that unresolved conflicts from childhood stages can
lead to difficulties later in life made me more empathetic toward learners who act out or struggle emotionally.
As a teacher, it’s not enough to address only what is seen on the surface; we must also consider that a student
may be silently battling internal conflicts we cannot immediately perceive.

Erik Erikson emphasized the importance of social relationships in the development of identity and emotional
well-being. His psychosocial stages made me realize how crucial it is for learners to develop trust, autonomy,
and a strong sense of self at different points in their life. As a future educator, I play a role in helping students
resolve these developmental conflicts by creating a classroom environment that encourages belonging,
purpose, and self-confidence.

Jean Piaget showed me that children do not think like adults—they understand the world in different ways
depending on their cognitive stage. I must match my teaching strategies to their developmental level to
ensure that learning is meaningful and appropriate. His theory reminded me to be patient with how students
think, solve problems, and grasp concepts because their logic is evolving.

Lawrence Kohlberg taught me that morality is not fixed at birth but grows through exposure, reasoning, and
experience. Teaching is not just about academics but also about shaping ethical individuals. I must create
opportunities for students to reflect on moral dilemmas, consider different perspectives, and practice fairness
and responsibility in their everyday actions.

Lev Vygotsky reinforced that learning is inherently social and most effective when done with the help of
others. His concept of the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding highlighted the importance of
guidance and collaboration. I realized that group work, peer support, and teacher intervention are vital in
helping students reach their potential. I am not just an instructor, but also a guide who should support
students until they can perform tasks independently.

Finally, Urie Bronfenbrenner helped me understand that a learner’s development is influenced by the many
systems around them—from immediate family and school to society and culture. Each layer of a child’s
environment contributes to who they are and how they learn. As a teacher, I need to consider these external
influences and work with parents, communities, and institutions to support holistic child development.

In conclusion, these theories collectively taught me that being an educator means understanding the whole
child—their mind, emotions, relationships, background, and potential. Effective teaching must go beyond the
curriculum and reach into the learner’s world. Only then can we truly help our students grow not just
academically, but as well-rounded human beings.