Talk:Foundations and Assessment of Education/Edition 1/Foundations Table of Contents/Chapter 2/2.6.2

Reader Responses
This article i found to be very informative. I believe that an effective teacher should use both teacher and students centered philosophies. Positive reinforcements are extrememly successful in the teacher centerede approach, especially when working with young children. Student centered approachs allow students to work in groups and do more hands on activites. I learned some of the basics of the different approaches and learned the benefits of both of the approaches. Lwill031 (talk) 13:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

This well written article clearly described both teacher-centered and student-centered classrooms while providing supporting evidence for the reasoning behind and potential effectiveness for each. I beleive that a modern classroom should have a combination of both learning environments in order to be successful. A teacher-centered approach helps to keep student behavior in check by providing positive reinforcement through appropriate teacher modeling. I support student-centered learning because it fosters social development through peer interaction. Cooperative learning environments allow students at all levels the ability to participate in classroom activities while providing learning that is appropraite for their ability level. Students remember more when they make connections to a new concept. Children can easily memorize facts, but I find that they retain more through inquiry using interactive learning techniques. Acrow005 (talk) 01:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

This was a very good article that is beneficial to us as future teachers. I think that student centered classrooms are important. They engage the student with group activities. They learn problem solving and it is said that we learn 80% of what we experience personally, and 95% of what we teach to someone else. The group activities are so important because they help build friendships, enhance self-esteem, and help establish good communication skills. The face to face interaction helps students learn to value individual differences and how to work together effectively while encouraging each other. All of these things are important in the workforce. When students are engaged they are motivated and learn better. Aferg006 (talk) 23:56, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I thought this article did a very good job of explaining the basics of the difference between student centered learning and teacher centered learning. There are times in the classroom when one is more appropriate than the other. Having said that, I think that more and more, student centered learning is becoming prevalent in the classroom and I am a fan of cooperative learning techniques. I believe that student centered learning is a more active type of learning style and when a student is engaged, they are better able to remember what they have learned and better able to apply what they have learned to real world situations.Sciaston (talk) 23:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Despite constantly hearing about a student-centered and teacher-centered classroom, I only discovered what it really meant when I visited the Newport News Public Schools website. One section had a diagram with a list of basic teaching instruction. On the side was a two-way arrow, displaying how some activities were more student-centered than others. This one diagram was really important to me, because it presented to me how student-centered, or teacher-centered, my lesson plans were. I believe that many teachers think that they know the difference between the two classrooms, when they actually do not. As a result, their students enter a learning environment where the teacher benefits more than they do. In today’s schools, it is very obvious that learning should be directed towards the student, however it is not simple to stop more than an approach of teaching and learning that has lasted since the beginning of schools. In my opinion, classrooms should be 60-70% student-centered and 30-40% teacher-centered. As the article mentioned, some concepts are best taught through a teacher-centered classroom with lecture, reading and memorization, especially for knowledge learning targets and students who are visual or auditory learners. Nevertheless, students have to be active within the learning process and be able to apply their knowledge in the real world. They are the sole reason that the classroom exist; for that reason, the classroom should designed for student. Adart001 (talk) 19:52, 4 July 2009 (UTC)