Theme 1: Learner-centred
“People know how to learn; they did it from birth until they went to school. It's a question of helping them remember how to do it.” (Kenyon and Hase, 2001, p.7)
Definitions
As noted by O'Neill and McMahon (2005), student-centred learning (SCL) can mean different things to different people. Three key components are frequently included in definitions of SCL:
1. the level of active involvement on the part of the learner
2. the level of choice the learner has (over content, timing, methods for example)
3. the locus of power
O'Neill and McMahon suggest that in practice, learning is neither wholly student-centred nor teacher-centred but tends to fall somewhere on a continuum as shown below.
Where to from here?
In the last 50 years there has been a progression from teacher-centred to learner-centred approaches and ultimately to self-determined learning, such as the notion of Heutagogy of Kenyon and Hase (2001). This I understand to mean self-determined learning, in the sense that learning should be centred on the learner's needs, interests and preferences rather than those of teachers or curricula or institutions. In recent years I have myself undertaken the study of introductory computer programming via a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and have found the experience extremely rewarding, particularly the ability to proceed at my own pace and to determine how far to go with some learning activities.
Kenyon and Hase note: “Educators must help learners remember how to learn, develop confidence in their perceptions, and learn to question their interpretation of reality within a framework of competence. (Kenyon and Hase, 2001, p.7)
These ideas are of interest to me though I have yet to fully explore how the heutagogical approach would work in my own practice. Kenyon and Hase’s article is directed particularly towards vocational education and training, and in this regard the concepts and suggestions could be very appropriate for many programmes in a Polytechnic.
Where am I at now?
Today I frequently work along learner-centred and experiential lines, having learnt through experience
about things that work and things that don’t, and also having developed the ability to creatively adapt
planned activities ‘on the fly’. In this regard, two things that help enormously are self-confidence that
you can make an activity work and belief/knowledge that it will/does work.
Examples from my practice, reflecting the three components of choice, activity and power, include:
-
use of role-play to apply and practice new career counselling skills
-
giving students a choice of role-play scenarios or the chance to create their own (based on own experiences)
-
offering students choice over the use of some class time that is not spoken for (choice and power)
-
asking for students to suggest which topics in a given range will be of most use to them
-
requesting students to suggest topics that are not in my offerings
Of the three, the power component is the one that is least student centred. I still retain a reasonably firm hand on the overall content and direction of learning. I have had feedback from students that they prefer for their teacher/facilitator to keep things 'on track' in class situations.
Development of learner-centred approaches
Having received my own early education in relatively traditional teacher-centred environments in the 1960s and 70s, I found that it has taken some time for me to adopt to a more learner-centred or student-centred approach. For a time, especially during my secondary teaching years, there was internal conflict in the way I wanted to go about teaching – while my own preference as a learner was for a learner-centred approach, what seemed to work in large classes was a more traditional teacher-centred method. The exception was for small senior music classes where my approach was much more to enable self-directed, learner-centred situations and practical experiential activities.
In my secondary teacher training there had been some emphasis on learner-centred and experiential teaching but when on teaching practice placements I found the logistics of managing large groups of teenagers tended to make these approaches impractical.
When I retrained as a career counsellor however, I latched onto client-centred strategies (following counselling models based on the work of Carl Rogers) and these strategies began to trickle into my teaching. After completing my career development training, I taught at a tertiary institution where I also had the opportunity to observe and team-teach with colleagues who utilised learner-centred methods.
My own understanding of student/learner-centred learning aligns closely with and includes these three components of choice, activity and power.