| A. Therefore, many teachers have been shifting the focus of activity from teacher to learners. B. Meanwhile, those who are teacher-centered should work to engage and involve students. C. In the traditional approach to teaching, most class time is spent with the teacher lecturing and the students watching and listening. D. This approach emphasizes a variety of different types of methods that shift the role of the instructors form givers of information to facilitators of student learning. E. Inductive methods include inquiry - based learning, case-based instruction, problem-based learning, discovery learning, and just-in-time teaching. F. The thinking that teaching is either teacher-centered or learner-centered breaks the inseparable connection and is harmful to both students and teachers. |
Instructor-centered or Learner-centered?
Whether in the East or West, the chief business of traditional education is to pass to the next generation the skills, facts, and standards of moral and social conduct that adults consider to be necessary for the next generation's material and social success.
The students work individually on assignments, and cooperation is discouraged. The result of this emphasis on what instructors do is that students may become passive learned and do not take responsibility for their own learning. Educators call this traditional method "instructor-centered teaching".
In contrast, "learner - centered teaching" occurs when instructors focus on student learning. It is an approach to teaching that is increasingly being encouraged in higher education. These methods include active learning, in which students solve problems, answer questions, formulate questions of their own, discuss, explain, debate, or brainstorm during class; cooperative learning, in which students work in teams on problems and projects under conditions that assure both positive interdependence and individual account ability; and inductive(归纳法)teaching and learning, in which students are first presented with challenges and learn the couse material in the context of addressing the challenges.
Although learner-centered methods have repeatedly been shown to be superior to the traditional teacher-centered approach to instruction, the best teaching, according to Parker Plamer, the author of The Courage to Teach, is not one or the other, but a combination of both.
Learner-centerd teachers still need to lecture because teachers are the definitive content experts in the classroom and the knowledge and experiences of teachers can be extremely helpful to students. They must recognize that students can learn from each other and that the deepest learning happens when students have the opportunity to practice and obtain feedback.
