Student-Centered Leaning

An outline of the transformation of the primary school classroom from the 1950's until today. I do not own the rights to any of the images, videos or music in this clip. I do not own any of the images used in this video. No copyright infringement intended.

Shelley Wright is a teacher/education blogger living in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Currently, she serves as the high school learning consultant for Prairie South Schools. Her passion in education is social justice, global education and helping students make the world a better place.

What interests you? Sports? Historical novels? Cars? Finding crafty ideas on Pinterest? For adults, making choices is the norm. We're motivated by stimuli that we value, by our passions. If ideas hold no personal interest for us, we often quit, unless a relationship or reward is involved. Our students aren't so different.

From Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology

Practical Tips for Designing a Student-Centered Lesson Plan

Editor's Note: Paul Bogdan was once an old-fashioned lecturing teacher centered secondary math teacher who left teaching for 14 years to build computer systems. He has come back and is reborn as a student-centered teacher trying to make a difference and trying to figure out what works in today's classroom.

If kids can access information from sources other than school, and if school is no longer the only place where information lives, what, then happens to the role of this institution? "Our whole reason for showing up for school has changed, but infrastructure has stayed behind," said Diana Laufenberg, who taught history at the progressive public school Science Leadership Academy for many years.

Diana Laufenberg shares three surprising things she has learned about teaching -- including a key insight about learning from mistakes.

We encourage teachers to use student-centered teaching strategies that nurture students' literacy and critical thinking skills within a respectful classroom climate. The strategies suggested here can be used with students of all ages with any academic content. You'll find a complete list of teaching strategies on this page.

In a learner-centered classroom, both teachers and students reflect on the learning process. Teachers learn to shift the focus to the learners and encourage them to share responsibility for their learning. In other words, "All student activities involve active cognitive processes, such as creating, problem solving, reasoning, decision-making, and evaluation.