Student-centered learning -- Week 7

Student-centered learning 

Schools now-a-days are moving towards more student-centered methods of teaching and learning.  That is, teachers are adapting instructional approaches and strategies with the intention of catering to different learning styles and interests of students.  The role of the teacher in a student-centered classroom is to facilitate and engage students in learning.  i.e. rather than simply making students take notes, the teacher allows students to be active in learning and discovering concepts.   The role of students in these classrooms is to take initiative of their learning, be inquisitive and challenge the teacher.  i.e. do not simply accept information presented to them by the teacher as correct, but ask questions and critically analyze information given to them. 

One method to engage students interest would be to present them with a problem that promotes curiosity.  This will promote thinking in the classroom, as well as establish an environment dominated by dialogue among the students and teacher.  I believe that by allowing dialogue in a lesson, students are than given more responsibility of their learning which allows them to better develop their math skills. 

Student-centered, constructivist learning requires students to develop their problem-solving skills.  I believe this method of teaching benefits them because it allows them to discover multiple perspectives of a certain concept, as well as promotes flexibility in their reasoning and thinking skills.  This approach to learning allows students to reflect on past knowledge and experiences, and integrate new knowledge and ideas with old ones.  i.e. it allows them to make connections between past knowledge and new knowledge.  I also think that by taking on a constructivist approach, teachers are than able to encourage students to use logical evidence and arguments in order to support their conclusions.  For example, with the S-pattern problem we did in class, we needed to provide evidence, as well as explain how and why our formulas for the pattern worked.  I also think this benefits students because they get the opportunities to question and test different ideas and results by comparing their work with others.  i.e. during the S-pattern activity, after writing down several answers on the board, we could have taken it another step further by simplifying the equations to see if they were all the same.  Another reason to implement student-centered teaching in lessons is that it allows students to solve problems using their own individual techniques, as well as share their methods with others.  This results in students to be exposed to various methods of thinking of a problem, which in turn helps aid in their understanding of a problem. 


One disadvantage of the constructivist approach to teaching is that many teachers may not be as experienced or comfortable in teaching this way.  I also think that many teachers may not be comfortable with allowing students to take control of their learning.  Another disadvantage would be the time it takes for students to complete tasks.  The time it takes for students to learn concepts could result in teachers not being able to cover most of the curriculum expectations. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Ours is not to reason why, just invert and multiply”-- Week 8

Image
One of the most common methods of teaching students how to divide fractions is to use the saying: “Ours is not to reason why, just invert and multiply”.   I find this troubling because throughout my undergrad courses, I have constantly been taught that as an educator, it is my job to ensure students are able to make sense of the concepts being taught.   However, this saying contradicts everything I learned because it discourages students from reasoning and understanding mathematical processes.   Many students struggle with fractions, so when you bring in a rule about dividing factions without working with students to build an understanding of the method used, it discourages making sense of the mathematics.   As future educators, it’s important for us to encourage students to practice ‘knowing’ rather than simply ‘doing’.   i.e. we need to teach students in such a way that promotes understanding of the concepts rather than rely mostly on the rules and procedures...
Read more

Lesson Activities: Grade 12 Data Management/ Advanced Functions

Image
Lesson Activities: Grade 12 Data Management/ Advanced Functions I find Data Management is a math course many teachers may not be comfortable with teaching because they are not as familiar with the subject content.   For this reason, I believe that many teachers teach this course in a very traditional way (i.e. a lot of lecture & note taking), which is unfortunate because data management is a course that has a lot of opportunity for experimenting and inquiry learning.   Colleen demonstrated this through her presentation on discrete probability.   She had in place 5 different probability scenarios that students could work on: rolling 2 dice, choosing a coloured egg from a bag at random, spinning a spinner, choosing a card from a deck of cards, and flipping a quarter.   I think data management is the type of course students would learn best from hands on experience, and using tangible objects to understand problems and how to solve them.   I also think...
Read more

Differentiated Instruction--Class 4

Differentiated Instruction      In this week’s lesson, we looked at differentiated instruction in mathematics.  Given that students differ in many ways, teachers need to plan their lessons to cater to all learning styles.  I find that in mathematics education, teachers are less likely to vary the materials students work with because they are these different teaching tools.  When I hear differentiated instruction, I think of creating a unique instructional activity/ path for each student.  Understandably, this is an unrealistic alternative to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ method of teaching, so teachers need to develop manageable strategies into their teaching in order to cater to most of their students at once.  During our lesson, we were given examples of questions that were open to interpretation.  I think these types of open questions would be useful for differentiation in mathematics because it allows stude...
Read more