To continue the topic from last week, I am going to provide some examples of teacher-centered versus student-centered instructional approaches.
In The Teaching Professor Blog, the blogger proposed that it is better for teachers to teach and address "the more complex and interesting task" through the combination of teacher-centered and student-centered instructional approach. She stated great points about two approaches: "Learner-centered teachers should not leave students to muddle through on their own, but must know when to intervene and what kind of interventions enable students to discover their own way to understanding. Teacher-centered instruction does not get bogged down in a morass of policies and prohibitions that establish the teacher’s authority, but explores how to set boundaries within which students can make choices and move toward autonomy in learning." Let me examine some tech integration teachers' practices by looking at their blogs and see how they use teacher-centered and/or student-centered instructional approaches in their classrooms.
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Teacher-centered classrooms:
This video shows the traditional teacher-centered classroom. A lot of times we can tell the different instructional approaches by looking at students' seat arrangement in a classroom. As we can see in this video, the teacher first told students what to do next and then let students complete the task individually. Also, students just did what the teacher told them to do. Students were not allowed to discuss with others about what they are learning. Instead, the teacher directly gave students the definition of "Weather" and asked them to write down what he said. Obviously, students were not really engaged and motivated in what they were learning. They did not learn actively. Although I do not think it is always bad to have teacher-centered instruction, teachers need to know when they need to step back and change their roles in the classroom and let students actively learn what they need to learn in more engaging and collaborative ways.
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Student-centered classrooms:
Student-centered classrooms:
From this teacher's blog, we can see the teacher encouraged and helped her students to make a video of the advice for new first graders. Although the teacher did not say the video was filmed and edited by her students, I can see the teacher discussed the idea of making the video and then put all the elements focused on students' thoughts in this video, including students' drawings with each of their recordings. The reason why I see this teacher's instructional approach as student-centered is that the teacher engage her students in this project and get students motivated to have their own advice for new first graders. The students experienced how it feels to be a new first grader, so the teacher let them collaborate and share with others about their own experiences.
Another student-centered instruction example: Kate Seward's SMART Collaborative Classroom
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Here is a great blog I really like that shows how a teacher provides student-centered teaching and learning.
Teacher Tom
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** Susan Sample talked about student-centered learning in practice in college:
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In Primary Tech blog by Kathleen Morris, a teacher got 2012 Edublog Awards, showed the shift of her instruction from teacher-centered to student-centered.
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Additional issues I would like to investigate in the future:
1. Why do some teachers consider themselves using student-centered teaching approach in classrooms, yet what they have done turn out to be identified as teacher-centered approach? I am interested in investigating why this situation would happen. Also, I would like to know whether there are some issues or challenges teachers encountered in practice to shift their instructional approach from teacher-centered to student-centered.
2. From my own perspective, I feel it would be easier to design and develop student-centered teaching and learning in lower grades, but much more difficult in higher grade levels because of school policy (focus more on grades in higher grades), changing learning atmosphere, and learning content, etc. I wonder whether there will be different strategies for teachers in different grade levels to give a balanced teacher-centered and student-centered instruction in order to have best practices.
