I hope that this blog will be useful for you in your encounters with people, especially children. Learning how people learn is essential for being able to progress in society. I have struggled learning different concepts has I have gone further in my college career, and I have found that there are so many ways of teaching kids, some that work, and some that don't.
I wasn't really sure how to start this entry off other than defining what my focus is...teacher v. student-centered learning.
Teacher centered learning relies on
- focus on the instructor
- Focus is on language forms and structures (what the instructor knows about the language)
- students listening to the instructor while he/she talks
- Students working alone
- Instructor monitoring and correcting every student utterance
- Instructor answering students’ questions about language
- Instructor choosing topics
- Instructor evaluating student learning
- Classroom being quiet
This is what I grew up with; this is where I struggled in college because I expected to be told what to do.
Student-centered learning relies on
- Focus being on both students and instructor
- Focus being on language use in typical situations (how students will use the language)
- Instructor modeling; students interacting with instructor and one another
- Students working in pairs, in groups, or alone depending on the purpose of the activity
- Students talking without constant instructor monitoring; instructor providing feedback/correction when questions arise
- Students answering each other’s questions, using instructor as an information resource
- Students having some choice of topics
- Students evaluating their own learning; instructor also evaluates
The classroom is often noisy and busy. To me this is too distracting, and as a future music teacher, it is alien to me.
So, I will be exploring different ways of teaching musical contexts with both approaches and seeing what works best. I have heard that the north of the United States favors student-centered learning, and the south prefers the teacher-centered, but I haven't seen that much research or talk of it...yet. :)
Let me know how you were taught when you were growing up and if it was effective or not!
