Talk:Student-centered learning

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 11 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yaelstromer, MorahStacy.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
The whole section on what student centred learning is not is a whole rant against the US school system. It's not world-wide in focus, it's not encyclopædic, and it's deeply tendentious, making it contrary to NPoV. 213.60.65.210 (talk) 05:30, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I find this page completely misleading and wish to edit it severely. Before doing that I would like to hear the response of its authors to some criticisms.  My apologies for the brusque nature of this note – I do not have time to write it properly.

1)	… rather than those of others involved in the educational process, such as teachers and administrators. Can you cite any examples of education systems where the aim of the system is focussed on the needs of administrators or teachers? I am not talking here of subtle nuances where the teacher or administrator starts to loose focus on the objectives of the learning institution, but that the institution is set up to meet the needs of teachers and administrators. 2)	The term Student Centred Learning as used by most people that I converse with on this subject is also referred to as Child Centred Learning. [Bransford John, Ed., p133 How People Learn, National Research Council] refer to it as Learner-Centered Environments contrasting it with Knowledge and Assessment Centred Learning. 3)	Bransford says: We use the term learner centred to refer to environments that pay attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the education setting. 4)	The essence of student centred is that the students are active learners and construct their own meanings – this does not mean that they set the curriculum – which is implied in the list of characteristics of student centred learning. Perhaps that might take place in a fringe situation, but this is not what the term means in mainstream education where it has similar general meaning, but with distinct and important differences. Teachers can adopt a student centred approach and involve the students in a host of decisions, but generally she will control these to meet the needs the curriculum and the whole class, as she perceives them. 5)	I think the list of characteristics you have written is extreme. You can have student centred learning where students are not working in collaboration with each other.  You can have such learning situations where they are in competition with each other.  You can have learning situations where collaborative learning is taking place but the environment in Knowledge Centred. 6)	I assume I understand the phrase: Students are active participants in their learning. As it is written it is meaningless. Even if you are sitting listening to a lecture you are an active participant providing you are not dead and are listening – you are however a passive learner. I think what you mean is: Students are active learners. This is a completely different meaning – as per the way Piaget, Papert and other constructionists use the term. 7)	I think a lot of the phrases used in your characteristics of student centred learning need subtle adjustments as per my last point. Dave Catlin 10:16, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Permission sought to add an external site
Dear Sir/madam

Would you agree to allow the following link to be included under External Links? Children First: the case for child-centred education. The website (of which I am NOT the author!)includes a paper discussing the practical experience of applying a child-centred approach to learning in the Primary school as well as a video of the approach in action.

Yours sincerely

MargyWMargyW (talk) 15:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Article needs work
This article could do with some work to make it better. Specifically, how about adding:


 * examples of student-centered learning
 * ...contrasted with the same content taught in a knowledge-centered way, or other methods of teaching
 * a section of the role of Facilitators - perhaps using material from that page and the Facilitation page
 * a section on Peer Assisted Learning - perhaps using material from the Peer mentoring article (which would also benefit from a re-write)
 * a What student-centered learning is section - the article focuses to much on what it is not
 * links to some videos - there are plenty on the subject Google video search
 * some of the ideas above in the first comment - there are some good points there
 * possible student and teacher resistance to student-centered learning and how to deal with it (this page on Psychological resistance is long but contains many relevant ideas)
 * an explanation of why student-centered learning is so effective - expand on the note in the background section
 * references to books and papers on the subject
 * requirements of student-centered learning: what it requires of the student
 * and what it requires of the facilitator / teacher
 * any criticism of the approach
 * and any contributions you can make to an In popular culture section

Whitespace (talk) 14:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The author states "educators have largely replaced traditional curriculum approaches with "hands-on" activities and "group work", which the child determines on his own what he wants to do in class." This is categorically false, and it is the rare educator who individually approximates this. I would agree with the assertions that most schools are teacher and administrator centered and more importantly that they serve the needs of those who pay the bills, not the students. But I would also agree that such an assertion is a matter of perspective or perhaps definition. I do not think any assertion about what "what schools are like", beyond measurable statistics, belongs here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.192.139.151 (talk) 19:39, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe student-centred learning can only be applied to those students who (a) have a solid foundation in the subject matters, and (b) have demonstrated the eagerness to learn. Since many students do not have such attributes, this explains why their academic levels continue to drop in the areas of literacy and numeracy.

In order to gain solid foundation in a subject, teacher-centred learning is necessary so that teacher can transfer the basic knowledge to the students. Only when the students are equipped with fundamental information, they can start meaningful exploration in the subject.

In our current world where a lot of media always promote "enjoy life". A lot of students misunderstand this and blindly follow such attitude. So they just want fun and not learning. It is no doubt that learning needs a lot of efforts. On the contrary, just turn on the TV or computer, many students can have fun from such devices. Furthermore, the commercial world continue to promote their user friendly electronic gadgets, many students spend a lot of their time playing with those gadgets where they can find fun easily. So why will they want to learn something that needs hardworking and efforts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chansiukai (talk • contribs) 01:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I guess the question really comes down to whether student-centered learning is to be associated with constructivist learning theory. If it is, then we need not consider education to be the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, but the construction of knowledge by learners in zones of proximal development. I'm not sure I agree that student-centered education necessarily means students set the curriculum, although this certainly would certainly fall under its umbrella. The idea I think is that these learning environments encourage students to explore self-regulation and self-determinism in developmentally conducive activities. Project/Problem/Challenge Based Learning scenarios are examples of the active and experiential roles aligned with student-centered learning. So does allowing students to design (or have a say in) their own assessment such as rubrics and goals. There are difficulties of course in introducing students unfamiliar with the expectations and self-direction required of them to be successful in student-centered learning environments. These difficulties only serve to emphasize the need for students to play a more active and mature role in their own learning experiences. Paulbmckenzie (talk) 19:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

As a read the comments here after reading the article I am compelled to ask how many of the commentors are teachers and if so where did you teach. I have taught Astronauts, grades K-12, alternative and Job Corps. I say great article for the following reason and the following reason only. It is an attemopt to propose a different way of teaching our students (Public School System). If any one dare say that is not needed then please explain to me how this system we use only graduates less than 50% and I do mean less than 50% of students from High School. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.79.214.54 (talk) 21:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Title change
The article needs work, but let's start with the title: "student-centred" (British spelling) is the least used of all of the variations per Google Ngrams. Is there any objection to changing the title to the common term "student-centered" (American spelling)? (Alternatively, "child-centered" was the common term through ~2000, popularized by Dewey.) czar   &middot;   &middot;  02:36, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

peacockery
like most "education" articles, this seems to be little more than a jargon-laden advert for one particular school of thought. These schools of thought seem to be differentiated by little more than the jargon they prefer, so this is a bit circular. Critical, third-party references are desperately needed. To my mind, the suggestion that the opposite of "student-centered" should be "teacher-centered" is clearly disingenious.

The professed aim of "student-centered" approaches, such as "what the child is curious about learning" is much rather the antithesis of content-centered learning (what do we feel is important for the child to learn?). The "student-centered" idea seems to prance about the "emotional needs" or naive a-priori appetites of the student. The opposite of this obviously isn't focussing on the teacher's emotional needs or appetites instead, as is maliciously implied, but much rather on a "traditional" view of education based on the question, what do we, as adults, feel is important for the students to learn. I am not going to invest much work here, as the entire topical area seems to be deeply broken and fixing it would be the labour of weeks or months, but this appears to me to be simply too glaring to leave standing without cleanup notices. --dab (𒁳) 14:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Just to throw my opinion in here, I read this article and came to the conclusion that 'student-centred learning' is a wooly, badly-framed hypothesis with no evidence behind it. And that it is mainly defined as 'not the bad aspects of ordinary classroom teaching'. Either this is correct and the article is successful in communicating the nature of student-centred learning as an idea, or the article needs to be changed to give student-centred learning a fair representation. I suspect it is the latter, as modern school teaching is thankfully not lecture-like and I guess the student-centred concept has been part of that. 129.31.241.147 (talk) 08:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The Background Section
Much of what is given, after paragraph one, in the background section is written in highly biased language actively promoting "student-centred learning" (as opposed to simply describing the background of the subject). LeapUK (talk) 09:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Summit Model
It isn't a field I know much about, but there seems to be a movement afoot, generating controversy and even resistance. Pro. Con. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:40, 22 April 2019 (UTC)