GOVERNOR MARIANO E.

VILLAFUERTE COMMUNITY
COLLEGE – LIBMANAN
Potot, Libmanan, Camarines Sur

EDUC 211 FACILITATING LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING:

THE LEARNER CENTERED AAPROACH

Chapter 1: FACILITATING LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING

Module 1

Name: __________________________________________________________
John Lee D. San Isidro
Year and Section: _________________________________________________
BTVTEd - Electronics 2B

Introduction Hello dear learner! Welcome to another exciting course that will deepen
your understanding on how to become proficient in implementing a
learner-centered teaching approach.

In the last 20 years of research in the field of learner-centered teaching,

the evidence points strongly to bringing the students at the center or
the focus of the learning process. As a future teacher, you need to
consider very well your students’ learning goals, the subject matter they
want students to learn, and select an appropriate pedagogical approach
that will really enable them to learn.

Activity Take time to thoughtfully answer the checklist below for you to reflect
on your prior knowledge and experience related to student-centered
teaching. Answer the question by YES or NO.

Checklist on Learner-Centered Pedagogy

Were you allowed by your teachers to set NO

specific learning goals for yourself?

Have you experienced being given the freedom NO

to choose a topic for a course requirement?

Have you experienced being asked by your YES

teacher for your input or opinion in deciding
what topics to learn in a course?

Have you experienced being given a chance to NO

choose a type of assessment task you can do to
effectively demonstrate what you already know?

Do your teachers frequently check first what you YES

already know about a certain lesson?
 Has collaboration among students emphasized YES
more than competition in your learning
experience through the years?

Have you experienced being given the YES

opportunity to develop your self- and peer assessment
skills?

Have you experienced being given a flexible date YES

for submitting your project?
Analysis Let us now examine closely your response to the
checklist.

1. Where did most of your responses fall in the checklist? More of

Yes or more of No?
More of a 'Yes'.

2. If more of yes, how did you feel about those experiences?

I felt like the lesson where we were taken to, was focused more on us. As
students and not as to like our instructors are like 'spoon feeding' us. But
rather it's like we were asked first before our instructor may layout such rules.
3. If more of No, how did you feel under those circumstances?

4. For items which you answered NO, which of these would you
have liked to really have or experience in the past? Why do you
say so? It would be interesting if my instructor would be asking me to
choose a type of assessment task that I should be doing. I would tell him
that I'll just be doing some write-ups about it i.e., essays or reflections.
For items in the checklist which you responded to as yes, they are
some clear examples of your own experiences which reflect a learner-
centered teaching approach. To know more about the essential
features of Learner-Centered Pedagogy, let us now turn to the next
section.
Abstraction Learner Centered Teaching (LCT) has become a popular phrase among
educators nowadays. It has been named in several ways such as
student-centered approach or learner-centered pedagogy in many
textbooks and journal articles. Looking at the research literature
surrounding learner-centered teaching in the past 20 years, a book
published in 2002 by Maryllen Weimer stands as one of the earlier
attempts to comprehensively discuss and define what is LCT about.

In Weimer’s book titled, ‘Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes

to Practice’, five key changes were significantly taking place in schools.
Each of the features will be discussed briefly below and are presented
in Figure 1.
Balance of Power
In a traditional classroom, the power to decide what lessons to
discuss, what learning activities students must engage in, and what
assessment tasks to give mainly belongs to the teacher with little input
from students. On the other hand, in a student-centered classroom, a
teacher shares that power by consulting learners prior to making final
decisions.

The traditional exercise of power in the classroom often benefits the

teacher more than it promotes student learning. The uniform
instructional approach or ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept certainly is more
convenient on the part of the teacher who has worked hard in planning,
implementing, and assessing outcomes of learning. However, this
uniform approach has been criticized by scholars by being unresponsive
to the diversity of needs, interests, and readiness among students.

In order to balance power in the classroom, learners are frequently

consulted and given immediate and ongoing feedback by the teacher.
The teacher empowers students by giving them the opportunity to
choose and make decisions like selecting among lesson topics, choose
learning activities, determine pace of learning, and select an
assessment task to demonstrate one’s mastery of targeted learning
competencies.

Function of Content

Current research evidence from educational psychology calls for

a change in the function of curriculum content which should be
less on covering it and more on using content to develop a
learner’s individual way of understanding or sense-making.
Teachers need to allow learners to raise their own questions,
generate their own answers or solutions.

From a constructivist perspective, knowledge cannot simply be

given to students: Students must construct their own meanings”
(Stage, Muller, Kinzie, and Simmons, 1998, p. 35). In other
words, learners are capable of constructing and reconstructing
their knowledge through active personal effort. This view
debunks the current belief about students’ learning from
passively receiving information transmitted from teachers via
lectures.

In order to facilitate learning that changes how students think

and understand, teachers must begin by finding out students’
prior knowledge or conceptions and then design learning
activities that will change these pre-instructional concepts.

Learner-centered teaching also regards content as more of

competency-based learning in which students master targeted
skills and content before progressing to another lesson. The
more important practice here is to accommodate students’
differing pace of learning. For instance, some students may be
able to demonstrate they know how to use a microscope in 1 hour while
others need 2 hours of practice to demonstrate
proficiency in manipulating it.

With patient guidance and ongoing support from teachers,

competency-based learning would ensure that students advance
to new material when they are ready, at their own pace, whether
they can move quickly or whether they need more time.

Role of the Teacher

Constructivism theory brings the role of the

teacher as that of a facilitator of learning,
not as the fountain of learning. He/she
instead encourages students to explore
multiple knowledge sources, make sense of
it, and personally organize the information
taken from different sources.

As generally observed, less knowledgeable and experienced

learners will interact with content in less intellectually robust
ways, but the goal is to involve students in the process of
acquiring and retaining information.

This shifting view on the role of the teacher deemphasizes the

focus on teaching techniques and methods if they are considered
separate from the subject matter and learning structures of the
discipline.

Teachers no longer function as exclusive content expert or

authoritarian classroom managers and no long work to improve
teaching by developing sophisticated presentation skills.
Greater involvement with students by the teacher is central to
student motivation. Diekelmann et al (2004) show how a
nursing teacher increasingly included students in ‘cocreating
compelling courses’ and was surprised ‘by the insight’s students
shared regarding how to create compelling courses and them
willingness to collaborate with …[her] to improve teaching and
learning experiences’ (Diekelmann et al, 2004, p.247).

Maclellan finds that ‘the teacher is involved in clarifying the

subject matter, offering examples, or suggesting arguments for
or against a point of view may minimize the students’ need to
think’ while, equally, ‘little engagement by the tutor, leaving
students to determine both what and how to learn without any
criteria to judge their process, is unsatisfactory, inefficient and
makes a nonsense of formal, higher education as a planned and
designed system (Maclellan, 2008, p.418).

Teachers must become comfortable with changing their

leadership style from directive to consultative-- from "Do as I
say" to "Based on your needs, let's co-develop and implement a
plan of action.

Responsibility for Learning

In recent years, work on self-regulated learning

has advanced, and the goal of 21st century
education ought to be the creation of
independent, autonomous learners who assume
responsibility for their own learning.

Adults are known to be capable of self-directed learning and

that continuous learning occurs across their career span and
lifetime.

Each student may require different ways of learning,

researching and analysing the information available.

It establishes that students can and should be made responsible

for their own learning.

Learning skills of autonomous self-regulating learners can be

learned and must be taught even at an early age. This is even
more important when entering higher education.

The learning skills acquired in basic education and higher

education will be used throughout the course of their
professional and personal lives.

Learning is cooperative, collaborative, and community-oriented.

Students are encouraged to direct their own learning and to
work with other students on research projects and assignments
that are both culturally and socially relevant to them.

Class often starts with a mini-lesson, which then flows into

students making choices about what they need to do next to
meet specific learning targets aligned to the standards.

Evaluation Purpose and Process

The literature on self-directed learning also underscores the

importance of assessment, only in this case it is the ability of
students to self-assess accurately. Sophisticated learners know
when they do or do not understand something.

They can review a performance and identify what needs

improvement.

They have mechanisms for its collections and methods for

evaluating it and acting on it.
Four Principles of Student-centered Approach
More recent research on the student-centered approach was
reported by Kaput in 2018 that was funded by the Nellie Mae
Education Foundation and UMass Donahue Institute. This study
surveyed 12 public high schools in New England in terms of how
they apply learner-centered teaching in their classroom practices.
The said survey summarized their findings in to 4 tenet which are:

Kaput’s study reported that the majority of the participating schools

were effective in personalizing the learning of their students and
creating an environment where students took ownership of them
 learning. However, the study also found that the participating
schools struggled with implementing and practicing “anytime,
anywhere learning” due to a series of challenges that both teachers
and administrators faced. Teachers from the participating schools
largely responded that student-centered learning promoted higher
student engagement and facilitated learning that was more relevant
to students. Further, a large percentage of the teachers contended
that students in student-centered environments explored the
curriculum with more depth and retained knowledge more
effectively than in traditional settings.

Top 20 Principles for PreK–12 Teaching and Learning

The American Psychological Association (APA) published in 2015

its top 20 principles for teaching and learning for basic education
teachers. These principles were based on decades of research on
human learning and can well serve as lampposts for today’s teachers
on how to facilitate learner-centered teaching. A brief statement of
APA on the implications of the top 20 principles to current teaching
practices is quoted below:

“Psychological science has much to

contribute to enhancing teaching and
learning in the classroom. Teaching and
learning are intricately linked to social
and behavioral factors of human
development, including cognition,
motivation, social interaction, and
communication”
(APA, 2015, p.8)

As a future educator, the top 20 principles revolve around the

following key concepts to keep in mind whenever we design our
instructional plans and implement them with our students.

Application It would be good at this time for you to personally find out how
 Filipino teachers are currently practicing the student-centered approach
in teaching.

You may conduct a one-on-one interview with a new and seasoned

teacher in your school, or among your relatives and friends, or those
within your neighborhood. List down his or her practices in terms of
applying the learner-centered teaching approach.
Write their responses on the table below:

Avoiding 'spoon-feeding' of Promoting camaraderie than

information. competence.

Facilitating students to construct Applying intrinsic motivation as a

their own idea. foundation on learning by their
own.
Making sure that learning Providing learning materials that
environment is all properly are age-appropriate.
arranged.

After conducting the interview, what was the most interesting

response you received from your interviewees? Why do you say so?

Among the responses I have gathered, the most interesting response that
_____________________________________________________________
I_____________________________________________________________
have received was the promotion of our Filipino teachers of intrinsic mo-
tivation. Since if students are motivated internally on their own, as if they
_____________________________________________________________
are not forced to study nor pressured by anyone, there's a big impact or
_____________________________________________________________
influence on the level of effort that the students may exert on such task.
_____________________________________________________________

Closure Congratulations for finishing your first lesson on learner-centered

pedagogy. By becoming aware of the essential features and principles
of learner centered pedagogy, you are now informed on how to
appropriately design your teaching practice in a way that would be
best serve the interest, needs and abilities of your future students.

References: Michelle Y. Acledan, Cyril Mamocod, Marivic Neri, et al. (2020) Facilitating
Learner-Centered Teaching.