Student-centred learning: All or nothing?

From the sage on the stage to take the not knowing position, these phrases permeate education. We as educators move from one approach to the next in an attempt to improve the educational opportunities for our learners. One of the ideas that have been embraced in the last 30 years has been that of student centred learning.

The term student-centred learning refers to a wide variety of learning experiences and instructional approaches that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students and groups of students.

The underlying assumption being by incorporating the interests of the learners and having them drive their education, that instruction will be more authentic, increasing engagement and hence enhancing the learning happening in class. This term is now synonymous with good teaching practice, but does the evidence stack up?

Morgan et al (2014) investigated the effect of different teaching strategies on first-grade students of varying mathematical abilities to determine which were the most effective with students of varying mathematical ability. This allowed them to make tentative causal links about which teaching strategies seem to be more effective for students who were stronger or weaker in mathematics, to begin with. The results suggested that student-centred approaches were not as effective as teacher-led instruction for those struggling with mathematics.

From further analysis of this research, one could also infer that student-centred learning became an effective pedagogy of those who already have a good grasp of concepts. In other words, you can not build a house with first having the bricks to build it. 

Student-centred learning is based on the theory of constructivism. Constructivism is the theory that students learn by individually or socially creating information (Slavin, 1980). This theory is based on several assumptions.

• reality is dependent upon the observer and thus constructed.
• reason or logic is not the only means of understanding reality, but one of many.
• knowledge or truth is subjective and relative to the individual.

However, is constructivism the best philosophy of learning? Another possible approach could incorporate the philosophy of objectivism. Objectivism states that there is one reality independent of anyone perceiving it. This means that regardless of whether or not someone perceives something, it still exists. For example, I can leave the room with a table in it and be convinced that the table still exists. 

Constructivism, on the other hand, holds that reality is dependent upon the observer. This means that something exists only if it is observed. From a constructivist perspective, if I leave a room with a table in it, the table ceases to exist until it is observed again. 

In objectivism, learners take in information through the senses and use reason to obtain knowledge. Constructivism does not deny the efficacy of reason completely but does consider it as only one of many ways of knowing. An offshoot of this has been the now debunked theory of multiple intelligences (Orlandi, 2013) for example, proposes at least ten “intelligences” or ways of knowing: verbal, logical, musical, physical, spatial, inter- and intra-personal, natural, existential, and spiritual. These intelligences are merely specialised bodies of acquired knowledge than actual processors of information. Reason exists in all of them, which suggests that each is the primary way of knowing.

Objectivism also holds that we have objective knowledge and truth. A person observes reality through the senses, forms concepts through the use of non-contradictory logic, and thus acquires knowledge and truth. Constructivism, on the other hand, infers that only subjective knowledge and relative truth are possible. If knowledge is subjective or relative to an individual or a group, then any knowledge could be true.

In my own classroom, I attempted to implement constructivism by allowing the students to construct what a science class is—choosing how and what should be taught. Most of the students did not understand how they could “construct” a science class. They expected me to define the science class for them—a very reasonable assumption considering how young they were and how limited their experience. After a fair amount of prompting, a few bold students thought science should be lots of experiments on things that interested them, even if they were unsure on how to carry out such experiments or how to interpret the results. Some might argue that the students’ answer proves only that they had been prevented from constructing previous learning, and thus had not learned to think for themselves or to question what they were being taught. I concede that the students’ previous conception of what constitutes learning was part of their inability to construct the what a science course would be. However, perhaps students naturally look to teachers to share with them their learned and acquired knowledge. They expect teachers to pass on to them a body of knowledge, imperfect though it may be, that they can update according to their discoveries. Many practising constructivists refuse to do this, believing instead that a student’s knowledge is equal to that of a teachers' and a student is no less an authority on a subject than a teacher. This assumption is untrue and dangerous. It assumes that students are better off entering the world with no knowledge and creating their own rather than entering the world full of knowledge, learning it, and then updating it if it does not stand the test of critical thinking and experiment evidence.

The students in my science class could not be pure constructivists in the context of the experiments they wanted to carry out either. For example, they did an experiment of phase changes of water, the reality of the experiment presented obstacles. If the students would have said that the water boils at 80 degrees C, a constructivist teacher would have to accept their response—right or wrong—because the reality is constructed. For an objectivist science teacher, however, every claim must be supported by evidence and logic—by reality. The phase changes of water, therefore, must be about what the experiment supports and what logic dictates, not about the subjective feelings of the experimenter, which may not be in accordance with reality. Constructivist science teachers who tell students that there are no right-or-wrong answers or that their interpretation is as correct as anyone else's only encouraging students to be careless and uncritical scientists and thinkers.

I shifted to giving students a choice supported by evidence and logic because of the flaws in the practical application of constructivism. Students could choose the purpose and topic, but ultimately their choices had to conform to reality, not to their subjective whims. In other words, their choices had to have a compelling connection to their scientific development.

Finally. despite the inappropriateness of this approach for struggling students, It is also possible that student-centered learning may – paradoxically – be more favoured when students have fewer or weaker skills.

Student-centered approaches could obscure skill gaps, which tend to be more obvious in low-skill classrooms. When students are mostly proficient, teachers tend to have plenty of independent verification that students understand concepts. However, ambiguous, student-centered activities are not relied on for demonstrations of mastery. With lower-skilled students, teachers are more likely to be worried about their students’ skills, because much of the available evidence (e.g., test scores, independent classwork) suggests those skills are absent or weak. When students engage in student-centered activities, they can easily give the illusion of effective learning – collaborating, communicating and so on –  especially as it is difficult to assess what success at these activities looks like.  Therefore, it’s easy to interpret ambiguous evidence of learning favourably if you really want to see proficiency.

Having spent a large part of week researching and discussing with teachers, a large number favour student-centered methods as they are ‘evidence-based’. Teaching strategies are commonly described as “evidence-based,” and so presumably their use by teachers should result in increased achievement. There is some sense in which this is true, at least to the extent that you can find seemingly-reputable education research to support almost any instructional theory.

The trouble is that a great deal of education research is ideologically-motivated, and well-controlled studies of instructional effectiveness are difficult to perform in any case. So how strong, really, is the research for student-centred learning?

Baker, Gersten, and Lee’s (2002) synthesis of researcher-directed intervention studies showed the use of structured peer tutoring increased low-skilled children’s mathematics achievement. Additional syntheses also support peer tutoring as an evidence-based practice (Elbaum, Vaughn, Tejero, & Watson, 2000; Mathes & Fuchs, 1994). However, Guarino et al. (2013) reported a statistically non-significant finding for peer tutoring.

John Hattie (2009) meta-analysis of 300 research studies explored the impact of different instruction techniques on student results. He found that an objectivist approach brought about above-average gains:

• In both surface and deep learning
• For students of all ages and all abilities

What is important about objectivism in education is that it works far better than many other approaches. John Hattie’s review shows us that an objectivist approach has twice the effect size of inquiry-based teaching, four times the effect size as problem-based learning and ten times the effect of student-led learning.

It is possible, that much of the underlying research is just not as strong as we’d like. To be clear, nothing in the research demonstrates that any particular ‘student-centered’ approach doesn’t have its place, even potentially in classrooms with large numbers of struggling students. In fact, in conjunction with objectivist teaching methods to provide a foundation for learners, it can enhance the learning. However, it appears from the evidence that the traditional, ‘teacher-centered’ approaches are often unfairly maligned and under-utilised.

References:

Baker, S., Gersten, R., & Lee, D. S. (2002). A synthesis of empirical research on teaching mathematics to low-achieving students. The Elementary School Journal, 51-73.

Elbaum, B., Vaughn, S., Tejero Hughes, M., & Watson Moody, S. (2000). How effective are one-to-one tutoring programs in reading for elementary students at risk for reading failure? A meta-analysis of the intervention research. Journal of educational psychology, 92(4), 605.

Guarino, C., Dieterle, S. G., Bargagliotti, A. E., & Mason, W. M. (2013). What can we learn about effective early mathematics teaching? A framework for estimating causal effects using longitudinal survey data. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 6(2), 164-198.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge.

Mathes, P. G., & Fuchs, L. S. (1994). The efficacy of peer tutoring in reading for students with mild disabilities: A best-evidence synthesis. School Psychology Review.

Orlandi, K. (2013). Bad education: debunking myths in education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 61(3), 369-371.

Slavin, R. E. (1980). Cooperative learning. Review of educational research, 50(2), 315-342.