However, you may find that as you begin to revise activities in some units so that the students become designers, making decisions and working in teams, that you will begin rethinking other lessons as well. Learner-centered teaching strategies are not new. John Dewey, Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget, as well as many other educators, have written and put into practice teaching strategies based on the strong link between experience and learning. Constructivism is a more recent term applied to strategies that connect cognitive development with learning activities where students experience their work as discovery and knowledge creation. In this way learner-centered refers to lessons where the central focus is the work of the students.
Educators creating learner-centered activities are in a very real sense pioneers.
Each day in the classroom they are on the frontiers of knowledge creation as they witness students accessing, assimilating, discovering, expressing, sharing and disseminating information and their new knowledge. In this way teaching becomes listening and observing and skillfully encouraging students to demonstrate how they are learning and creating new knowledge about the world. In such classrooms every moment is a learning moment, for both students and teachers. Back to top Click on these links to access additional information on this subject. The slides below can be used in conjunction with this unit's content.