Five Key Changes in Learner
Centered Teaching Practices
Lesson 2
Start!
5 Features





Balance of Power
Function of Content
Role of the Teacher
Responsibility for Learning
Evaluation Purpose and Process
Balance of Power
 In a traditional classroom, the power to decide what lessons to discuss, what learning
activities students must engage in, and what assessment tasks to give mainly belongs to
the teacher with little input from students.
1
2
 On the other hand, in a student-centered classroom, a teacher shares that power by
consulting learners prior to making final decisions.
3
 The traditional exercise of power in the classroom often benefits the teacher more than it
promotes student learning.
4
Balance of Power
 The uniform instructional approach or ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept certainly is more
convenient on the part of the teacher who has worked hard in planning, implementing, and
assessing outcomes of learning.
1
2
3
 However, this uniform approach has been criticized by scholars by being unresponsive to
the diversity of needs, interests, and readiness among students.
4
Balance of Power
 In order to balance power in the classroom, learners are frequently consulted and given
immediate and ongoing feedback by the teacher.
 The teacher empowers students by giving them the opportunity to choose and make
decisions like selecting among lesson topics, choose learning activities, determine pace of
learning, and select an assessment task to demonstrate one’s mastery of targeted
learning competencies.
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 Current research evidence from
educational psychology calls for a change
in the function of curriculum content which
should be less on covering it and more on
using content to develop a learner’s
individual way of understanding or sensemaking.
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 Teachers need to allow learners to raise
their own questions, generate their own
answers or solutions.
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 From a constructivist perspective,
knowledge cannot simply be given to
students: Students must construct their
own meanings”
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 Learners are capable of constructing and
reconstructing their knowledge through
active personal effort. This view debunks
the current belief about students’ learning
from passively receiving information
transmitted from teachers via lectures.
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 In order to facilitate learning that changes
how students think and understand,
teachers must begin by finding out
students’ prior knowledge or conceptions
and then design learning activities that will
change these pre-instructional concepts.
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 Learner-centered teaching also regards
content as more of competency-based
learning in which students master targeted
skills and content before progressing to
another lesson.
 The more important practice here is to
accommodate students’ differing pace of
learning.
1
2
3
4
Function of Content
 With patient guidance and ongoing
support from teachers, competencybased learning would ensure that
students advance to new material when
they are ready, at their own pace,
whether they can move quickly or
whether they need more time.
1
2
3
4
Role of the Teacher
 Constructivism theory brings the role of the teacher as that of a facilitator of
learning, not as the fountain of learning. He/she instead encourages students to
explore multiple knowledge sources, make sense of it, and personally organize the
information taken from different sources.
 As generally observed, less knowledgeable and experienced learners will interact
with content in less intellectually robust ways, but the goal is to involve students in
the process of acquiring and retaining information.
1
2
3
4
Role of the Teacher
 This shifting view on the role of the teacher deemphasizes the focus on teaching
techniques and methods if they are considered separate from the subject matter
and learning structures of the discipline.
 Teachers no longer function as exclusive content expert or authoritarian classroom
managers and no long work to improve teaching by developing sophisticated
presentation skills
1
2
3
 Greater involvement with students by the teacher is central to student motivation
4
Role of the Teacher
 Maclellan finds that ‘the teacher is involved in clarifying the subject matter, offering
examples, or suggesting arguments for or against a point of view may minimize the
students’ need to think’ while, equally, ‘little engagement by the tutor, leaving
students to determine both what and how to learn without any criteria to judge
their process, is unsatisfactory, inefficient and makes a nonsense of formal, higher
education as a planned and designed system (Maclellan, 2008, p.418).
1
2
3
4
Role of the Teacher
 Teachers must become comfortable with changing their leadership style from
directive to consultative-- from "Do as I say" to "Based on your needs, let's codevelop and implement a plan of action.
1
2
3
4
Responsibility for Learning
 In recent years, work on self-regulated learning has advanced, and the goal
of 21st century education ought to be the creation of independent,
autonomous learners who assume responsibility for their own learning.
 Adults are known to be capable of self-directed learning and that continuous
learning occurs across their career span and lifetime.
Math
 Each student may require different ways of learning, researching and
analysing the information available
M
T
W
T
F
Responsibility for Learning
 It establishes that students can and should be made responsible for their own
learning.
 Learning skills of autonomous self-regulating learners can be learned and
must be taught even at an early age. This is even more important when
entering higher education.
Math
 The learning skills acquired in basic education and higher education will be
used throughout the course of their professional and personal lives.
M
T
W
T
F
Responsibility for Learning
 Learning is cooperative, collaborative, and community-oriented.
 Students are encouraged to direct their own learning and to work with other
students on research projects and assignments that are both culturally and
socially relevant to them.
 Class often starts with a mini-lesson, which then flows into students making
choices about what they need to do next to meet specific learning targets
aligned to the standards.
Math
M
T
W
T
F
Evaluation Purpose and Process
M
T
 The literature on self-directed learning also underscores the importance of
assessment, only in this case it is the ability of students to self-assess accurately.
Sophisticated learners know when they do or do not understand something.
W
 They can review a performance and identify what needs improvement.
 They have mechanisms for its collections and methods for evaluating it and acting
on it.
T
F
Four Principles of Student-centered Approach
A more recent research on the student-centered approach was reported by Kaput in 2018
that was funded by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and UMass Donahue Institute. This
study surveyed 12 public high schools in New England in terms of how they apply learnercentered teaching in their classroom practices. The said survey summarized their findings
in to 4 tenet which are:




Learning is Personalized
Learning is competency based
Learning happens anytime, anywhere
Students take ownership of their learning
Cu
lture
M
T
W
T
F
Learning is Personalized
M
T
 Students engage in different ways and in different
places.
W
T
F
Learning is competency based
M
T
 Students move ahead when they have demonstrated mastery of content,
not when they’ve reached a certain birthday or endured the required
hours in a classroom.
Geography
W
T
F
Learning happens anytime, anywhere
M
Learning takes place beyond the traditional school day,
and even the school year.
T
W
Learning is also not restricted to the classroom.
Science
T
F
Students take ownership of their learning
1
2
 Students are engaged in their own success, as well as
incorporate their interests and skills into the learning
process.
3
4
1
 Kaput’s study reported that the majority of the
participating schools were effective in personalizing
the learning of their students and creating an
environment where students took ownership of their
learning.
2
3
 However, the study also found that the participating
schools struggled with implementing and practicing
“anytime, anywhere learning” due to a series of
challenges that both teachers and administrators faced.
4
1
Teachers from the participating schools
 largely responded that student-centered
learning promoted higher student
engagement and facilitated learning that
was more relevant to students. Further, a
large percentage of the teachers contended
that students in student-centered
environments explored the curriculum with
more depth and retained knowledge more
effectively than in traditional settings.
2
3
4
1

2
Thank you for listening!
3
4