Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

"As a society, we talk about the importance of leaders in all walks of life, but when it comes to our classrooms, many of us seem to want to empower the followers while executing the sages when the former do poorly on standardized tests.

Nowadays, a teacher or professor is not supposed to be "a sage on the stage." He or she is expected to stimulate and captivate already over-stimulated students with collaborative classroom exercises, enthralling videos, and state-of-the-art computers and Internet-ready "SMART" boards (much more expensive than chalk- or white-boards, and requiring expensive maintenance and periodic software and hardware updates). A busy and stimulated student is a learning student and a happy customer to boot, and so are his or her parents, who can marvel at all the computer screens and interactive chattering (both of mouths and of keyboards).

Yet how much real learning is going on in this "student-centered" digital environment?

I grew up without computers in the classroom, when teachers and professors embraced the role of being the sage on the stage, and I can't say my education suffered as a result. A recent study that appeared in today's New York Times suggests that computers and "digital" classrooms have nearly negligible impact on student test results, which is not to condemn computers but rather to suggest they are merely one (over-hyped) tool for acquiring and displaying information. PowerPoint slides are often not much better than old-fashioned overheads or slide projectors; DVDs and streaming videos are often not much better than old-fashioned film projectors.

The key ingredient to learning (besides motivated students and involved parents) is of course a well-informed, caring, creative, and dedicated teacher or professor. Such a teacher or professor puts her students first not by assigning busywork in the classroom or by embracing fancy and expensive gizmos but by the power of her personality and her commitment to stimulating critical, creative, and ethical thinking.

In its essentials, great education hasn't changed much since the days of Socrates. It's ultimately about shaping and informing the character of students. It's not only about teaching them the how of things, but the why. And once they know the why, they can make decisions based on ethics, based on some knowledge of what's right and wrong, within educational and social settings that put integrity and fairness first.

Good educators recognize that teaching is more art than science; more of a calling than a profession. And that true "collaboration" is achieved not among students working together or with computers, but among students and teachers (and parents) working together, with teachers serving as mentors and role models, guided by a vision of education as a stimulus to individual and social betterment.

So what does student-centered learning really mean? It's about avoiding the idea of students as "customers," with the concomitant notion that the customer is always right. It's about avoiding the notion that a magic bullet exists (such as digital classrooms) to educational success. It's really about putting the most talented leaders in front of our students, and empowering them to stimulate the intellectual and especially the moral growth of students.

If you wanted your son or daughter truly to learn, would you put your trust in faster computers in networked classrooms, more "student-centered" classroom activities with his or her peers, or a Socrates to prod him or her to ask fundamental questions about a life worth living?

Sadly, we seem today to prefer computers and customer-centered learning as measured by test score results. And what of our modern-day Socrates? After parental complaints about "unsettling" questioning of students and subpar standardized test scores, our elected leaders once again made him drink hemlock."

Professor Astore writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at [email protected].

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-astore/what-does-studentcentered_b_948403.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Any comments?

Regards,
John

[desertdawg]

Bit of a long quote which seems to be talking about two things: technology in the classroom and a student centred approach.

For me student centred means reducing the TTT. It can be quite simple, I sit at the back and a team of Ss does a presentation. Lots of preparation time has been given and the T facilitates.

If I'm giving a presentation, then eliciting is vital. I might present a model of a grammatical point and wait for the Ss to give me examples. There may be lots of long silences.

As I see it a classroom should be controlled by a T to a large extent, but collaboration should be encouraged between everyone: S-S, T-S and S-T.

I teach ESP in industry. But I have worked in Universities in the past. I've never had the job title of lecturer which I think is an important distinction. It's my job to get the Ss to learn through doing. Not sit back and listen to me as a passive audience.

[Gerund]

In the Middle East not being "student centered" is the kiss of death careerwise, but in practice it means putting the students in groups which with Arab students results in only one thing--complete loss of control with students yakking away in Arabic about mobiles, perfume (if they are females) or football and cars (if they are men).

[123Loto]

First Professor Astore says that students are over stimulated because of technology - then he immediately says technology is not being implemented properly anyway... which is it?

Putting the students' learning into a meaningful context makes sense. Compared to when Professor Astore was young, students' lives are now laden with technology. Shouldn't then technology be used to reach them?

Professor Astore believes that there are essentially eternal methodologies to teaching and learning - ignoring the unprecedented changes to human social interactions that have occurred in the last 150 years - and especially the last 50.

I agree with some of his sentiment. Technology is not effective simply because it is there. The teacher remains an essential part of the learning experience. But addressing these problems doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bath water!

As to the communication of his message - he needs to be careful not to sound like he's rejecting technology because he can't be bothered learning new skills.

Surely a truly motivational educator would lead by example through demonstrating their own willingness to go through a learning process?

[LongShiKong]

I started teaching at an Interactive whiteBoard-centered franchise for kids in July. The faith in IWBs is unbelievable--virtually no training other than in using them with the poorly designed curriculum (digitized coursebooks with integrated audio). Without any staff or student performance expectations, and since the courseware is ill-suited to fluency practice, let alone student levels, there's very little teaching or learning going on. I've never seen kids so bored before. Even parents have complained about the lack of training of the Chinese teachers.

The most capable kids I taught were in cities of 1 million or less. Definitely the affluence of Beijing coupled with a drop in the time and quality their caregivers 'attend' to them understandably affects the child's own ability to attend. China is looking more and more like America every day.

I do what DESERTDAWG does. I reduce TTT using the IWBs far less than the contractually obligated minimum of 70% of the time. Since language is a social tool, I want students to have as much immediate learning experience in the classroom as possible. Learning has always been a social activity, long before the industrial revolution institutionalized education and is what successful teachers and schools have achieved. Social networking is not socializing and is certainly not new. Incidentally, in Deschooling Society (1970), Ivan Illich advocated using computers to connect people with similar interests for learning purposes.

What does student-centered mean? For me it's all about (mutual) goal-setting, and continual feedback--the kind of thing you'd expect from a fitness trainer or coach.

[spiral78]

I'm impressed by the other responses to the OP.

For me, as well (and I've lots of experience in what are considered 'student centred' learning contexts) this is not about technology. Nor is it about letting students flounder around on their own, trying to succeed at something they clearly haven't the tools to accomplish.

Sure, technology can be nice and very useful as well, depending on how it's incorporated into the learning process. Too many institutes likely put the technology into the forefront to the detriment of the learning process (on the principle of: we paid for it, so it must be used!!!). But when it's appropriately used to support the goals of a course, it can bring life and interest to an otherwise paper-based experience.

Student-centred in my teaching/learning contexts runs a range: it can mean sometimes working with peer feedback and collaboration for ultimate marking of written text or presentations (with consequences like pass/fail) by an instructor. It can mean that students pool their knowledge to produce either a spoken or written text in English.

It can mean negotiated goals - again running a range from a few of those addressed in a course to ALL the goals (most likely in a high-level business course for professionals who have specific reasons to study communication in English, or for post-grad students who have dissertations to write and/or present).

Sage on the stage becomes the Expert in the Room (who occasionally/sometimes gets to be the SOTS as needed)