They change approaches when the students have problems grasping the material. They cannot understand what is really new in this national attention to student learning. Certainly, they do not see something as significant as a paradigm shift. Some faculty members are concerned about the loss of teacher control advocated by proponents of the learning paradigm. In the learning paradigm, students are more in control of their own learning, often learning from peers in small groups.
Information is more widely available.
Other faculty members equate a focus on learning with becoming so student centered that academic standards drop. An Institutional Perspective Faculty members who question the ideas of the learning paradigm do not understand that its primary focus is at the institutional level rather than at the individual faculty member level. In fact, their attention to effective teaching in an environment that is sometimes hostile to their new ideas was one of the major factors that led to the proposition that a paradigm shift was needed. It is not an accident that the ideas of the learning paradigm are getting the most attention at institutions that have teaching and learning as primary missions. There are four important tenets of the learning paradigm.