Holistic Education Framework for Individualised Anti-Stigma Quality Learning

Abstract

In any educational setting, stigmatisation and implicit biases can stifle growth and reduce the quality of the learning experience of students from low socio-economic status by creating invisible barriers to opportunity and achievement. Furthermore, due to the lack of monitoring and mentoring, these invisible barriers become harder to detect and overcome. Considering that human learning potential has no limits, there is a need for quality teaching and learning processes that provide fitting unstigmatized learning experience to each individual learner. To achieve the fitting learning experience and desired outcomes, understanding teaching quality is essential for continuous improvement of educational objectives, curricular contents and instructional delivery. Considering that teaching and learning are two interconnected phases of any educational process, both teaching and learning have distinctive subphases leading to desired outcomes that are tied to the long reaching educational objectives. It is evident that, at the end of any successful education process, the learning outcomes demonstrated by the constructed learning of the learner are strongly linked to the quality of the instituted educational objective, curricular contents, and quality unstigmatized delivery of the teacher to each individual learner. In fact, studies of the quality of the learning experiences show that one of the main keys to maximising learners' success is the quality of course contents and instructional activities. To ensure quality of the learning experience to all the learners in the class, these instructional activities must provide the needed monitoring and mentoring to each individual learner. In this paper, a framework for individualised unstigmatized holistic education process teaching and learning phases is discussed from quality of education perspective. The framework addresses the full learner development, the corresponding holistic teaching, and the teacher learner interface. The essential elements, subphases and key characteristics are discussed through the development of the three educational framework domains. The development and deployment of the presented framework are illustrated in higher education context.