Teacher-Centered Approach to Learning
Tags: Students, Teachers, Teaching And Learning, Classroom

Student-centered instruction is a broad teaching approach that includes replacing expository classes with active learning, holding students accountable for their own learning and using learning at a personal pace and, or cooperative (group) learning. Another way of focusing our teaching on the student includes passing open and kind problems that require creative reasoning and critical, reflective writing exercise, involving students in simulations and role-playing. When used appropriately, this approach increases motivation to learn, knowledge retention, depth of understanding and appreciation for what is being taught. For instance if you ask a student to write an essay, his or her class room and teaching method of the teacher has a lot to do with what he/she will write.

When faced with the need to take more responsibility for their own learning, students may claim that they are paying to be taught and not to teach themselves. After starting to participate, in cooperative learning, some may complain loudly and bitterly about teammates who are not doing their part, or because they have to spend a lot of time explaining everything to slower colleagues. On the other hand, good teachers of expository classes may feel shy when they start using student-centered methods, in addition, their end-of-course assessments may initially get worse. It is tempting for teachers to give up in the face of all this and, unfortunately, many do.

Student-centered instruction can impose steep learning curves for everyone involved. The teacher feeling bashful and the students feeling hostile represent common and natural phenomena. The key is to understand how the process works, take some precautions to smooth the journey and endure the inevitable setbacks until the rewards arise.

Traditional students in a non-traditional class

Students forced to take more responsibility for their own learning go through some or all of the steps that psychologists associate with trauma and regret:

· Shock;

· Denial;

· Strong emotion;

· Resistance and withdrawal;

· Fight and exploitation;

· Return of trust;

· Integration and success.

Just as some go through the weighing process more quickly than foals, some students immediately adapt to whatever method you use; while others may experience difficulties, going through negative steps. The important point is that the resistance you encounter on the part of some students is a natural part of the journey from addiction to intellectual autonomy. If you provide enough structure and guidance by the end of the semester, most students will be satisfactorily performing and accepting responsibility for their own learning.

Teacher-Centered Class — Learning process

The characteristics of the learning process are directly related to the way it occurs. The knowledge consists in the interaction as the physical and social environment, a process that depends on the conditions apprentice and environmental conditions.

Jean Piaget and Lev Semenovich Vigotsky, two great scholars of education, developed theories of learning, of great importance. Piaget defends cognitive constructivism, according to which learning results from the development of mental processes largely related to the reality of the learner. In Piaget’s view, the development of these processes is fundamental and the scholar calls it the construction of knowledge. The views of the two scholars complement each other and lead to the conclusion that the construction of knowledge depends on both the conditions of the apprentice and the conditions of the environment. In addition, learning must be seen as a dynamic process, in which the active participation of the learner is essential. In this context, Vigotsky proposes social constructivism, which consists in the fact that the individual develops his cognitive abilities based on the interactions he maintains with the community where he lives.

It is clear, then, that the social character of learning depends on interaction, just as it is clear that the learning process occurs differently for each person. It is individual and, in a way, unpredictable. It is idiosyncratic, that is, particular to each person. The interest in this idiosyncratic word is that it reveals a very broad meaning, useful for understanding individuality in the learning process: it concerns idiosyncrasy, which is the disposition of the temperament of each individual, the sensitivity of each one and what makes with each person to react in a very personal way to each situation.

This shows that the fundamental idea in the constructivist theory is that the process of building knowledge is done by the learner and not caused by another agent.

If the construction of knowledge is an individual process, it is concluded, then, that the teacher may have difficulty in directly causing learning in his students, although he has an important role to play in this process.

Teacher-Centered Class — Factors that influence the individuality of the learning process

There are several aspects that must be considered when justifying the fact that students cause their own learning and one of them is the concept of “learning style”. There are a large number of factors that determine the differences in learning style, which cause the use of a single teaching methodology to end up resulting in poor learning, which we can relate to the concept of learning style. There are five dimensions of style:

1) Sensory / intuitive perception

When sensory, the student tends to focus on sensory information, that is, what is seen, heard or touched. An intuitive student tends to focus on memories, ideas, and possibilities. For example, the sensory likes facts and data, while the theories and models of intuitive likes. Everyone has a little of both dimensions, but some tend more or less to one or the other.

2) Visual, auditory or kinesthetic perception

According to neurolinguistics, each person prefers one or more of these channels of representation. Both when expressing ideas and when capturing them. Some are more visual, while others find it difficult to think visually. Others are more verbal, talking about their experiences easily, although some people find it difficult to deal with words. And there are people who communicate and learn more through action than through sight or hearing.

3) Inductive or deductive organization

The most inductive people tend to organize knowledge from the specific to the general, that is, they start by observing the details, the data, associating them, so that they can then arrive at the general principles of information. The more deductive people do the opposite. They start from the general to the specific, starting with the general principles of information until they deduce the consequences and the phenomena.

4) Active or reflective processing

Active learners tend to process information better when they are doing something actively, in a practical way, especially doing something. Reflective learners tend to process knowledge in a more introspective way.

5) Comprehensive or sequential understanding

People classified as sequential learners learn one step at a time, walking little by little, associating portions of information that come to them. Global learners, on the other hand, learn more from large clusters of connected information.

Teacher-Centered Class — Characteristics of individualized teaching activities

The teacher-centered teaching is a work strategy that replaces part of traditional lectures, by learning more active, combining strategies and methodologies, in which we seek greater responsibility on the students for their own learning, style process and to the personal pace of each individual.

In the specific case of individualized methodologies, activities are done, most of the time, outside the classroom, as extra-class activities. In the classroom, the teacher will offer the bases for the individual activities to be developed, guiding and supervising the study, answering doubts, closing the studied content and evaluating.

The activities developed based on this methodology are proposed in a way that the teacher passes to the class, depending on the discipline he teaches, open problems that demand creative and critical reasoning or more reflective writing exercises. The activity should be designed to involve students in simulations, in which they play active roles that simulate their own reality when solving problems. By contextualizing the content, the teacher will be making the situation more concrete, more palpable, which is an essential factor for learning.

At the same time, by increasing the autonomy of each student in relation to their own learning, the teacher makes them feel more valued and, therefore, more motivated.

Conclusion

Consider that all individualized teaching methodologies should be put into practice, considering the principles of individualized teaching and student-centered teaching strategies. And although these principles and strategies may initially seem complex, if used with ease and introduced little by little, they end up being incorporated into the teacher’s work routine over time. As a result, activities that follow these principles also become routine, becoming part of the work methodologies that the teacher normally uses with his classes, greatly increasing the performance of his work.