Subjectivism: A Learning Paradigm for the 21st Century.

This paper describes subjectivism, a new learning paradigm that incorporates successful pedagogic practices from the past into an affect-structured constructivism. Its two goals are student empowerment and subject enculturation. Student empowerment is achieved by designing learning for success so students can take credit for and feel confidence from this success. Subject enculturation attaches professional attitudes, appreciation, and guiding values to the course content. Examples of enculturation processes include peer pressure, social recognition, compliance with authority, shared experience, establishing role identity, in-group bonding, and out-group competition. Student empowerment develops autonomous and self-directed learning. Surface purpose activities (social constructivist activities) use affect-structuring techniques to enhance student empowerment. Three affect-structuring techniques for designing surface purpose activities include: an emotional anchor, a motivator, and cognitive direction. The paper describes how four activities allowed students at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, to perfect what they planned to say on a television debate. (Contains 24 references.) (SM)