College of Teacher Education

Second Semester, A.Y. 2022-2023

PS 5: FACILITATING LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING

MODULE 1
LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING: FOUNDATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS

Introduction

This module entitled Learner-Centered Teaching: Foundations and Characteristics is about the philosophical
foundations of teaching that present similarities and differences from today’s classroom teaching. It also tackles what
‘learner-centered teaching’ really means, its certain characteristics, and its impact to student’s learning.

Date and Time Allotment

Week 1-2 (6hours)

I. Objectives

At the end of the end of this module, students should be able to:

1. differentiate learner-centered teaching from other teaching approaches as applied in various teaching areas;
2. discuss the need to shift from teacher-centered teaching to learner-centered teaching based on philosophical
foundations, teaching principles and current research; and
3. discuss the varied roles of the teacher in learner-centered teaching and learning.

II. Lecture

LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING (PART 1 of MODULE 1)

WHAT IS LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING?

1. An approach to teaching that focuses on the learners and their development rather than on the transmission of
content; it addresses the balance of power in teaching and learning, moves toward learners actively constructing their
own knowledge, and puts the responsibility for learning on the learners. 

2. Students learn information by systematically examining the subject and critically assessing the situation.
Students are active members of this learning process. 

3. A teaching approach where students are required to take on active learner roles and responsibilities beyond
listening passively to instructors’ lectures and taking notes.
CHARACTERISTICS OF LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING

1. Engage students in the learning process.

On traditional teaching in most classes teachers are working much harder than students. Students don’t
develop sophisticated learning skills without the chance to practice and in most classrooms the teacher gets far
more practice than the students. With Learner-Centered Teaching students have the opportunity to implement a real
task and acquire 21st century skills and key competences through the process.

2. Learner-centered teaching includes explicit skill instruction.

 Students learn how to think, solve problems, decision making, team work, evaluate evidence, analyze
arguments, generate hypotheses—all those learning skills essential to mastering material in the discipline. They do
not assume that students pick up these skills on their own, automatically. A few students do, but not all, research
shows that learning skills develop faster if they are taught explicitly along with the content.

3. Learner-centered teaching encourages students to reflect on what they are learning and how they are
learning it.

Learner-centered teachers talk about learning. In conversations, students write( in the e-portfolio or diary)
about what they have learned, what were their difficulties and strengths . In class they may talk about their own
learning and do pair assessment. They challenge student assumptions about learning and encourage them to
accept responsibility for decisions they make about learning. Learner-centered teaching includes assignment
components in which students reflect, analyze and critique what they are learning and how they are learning it. The
goal is to make students aware of themselves as learners and to make learning skills something students want to
develop.

4. Learner-centered teaching motivates students by giving them some control over learning processes.

Teachers make most of the decisions about learning for students. Teachers decide what students should
learn, how they learn it, the pace at which they learn, the conditions under which they learn and then teachers
determine whether students have learned.. Learner-centered teachers search out ethically responsible ways to
share responsibility with students. They might give students some choice about which assignments they complete.
They might make classroom agreements something students can discuss. They might let students set assignment
deadlines within a given time window. They might ask students to help create assessment criteria.

5. Learner-centered teaching encourages collaboration.

Learner-centered teaching makes possible students can learn from and with others. The teacher has the
expertise and an obligation to share it, but teachers can learn from students as well. Learner-centered teachers
work to develop structures that promote shared commitments to learning. They see learning individually and
collectively as the most important goal of any educational experience.

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION DIVIDES LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING INTO FIVE (5)
DOMAINS:

1. The knowledge base.

The conclusive result of decades of research on knowledge base is that what a student already knows
largely determines what new information he attends to, how he organizes and represents new information, and how
he filters new experiences, and even what he determines to be important or relevant. (Alexander & Murphy, 2000)

2. Strategic processing and executive control.

The ability to reflect on and regulate one’s thoughts and behaviors is an essential aspect of learning.
Successful students are actively involved in their own learning, monitor their thinking, think about their learning, and
assume responsibility for their own learning (Lambert & McCombs, 2000)

3. Motivation and affect.

The benefits of learner-centered education include increased motivation for learning and greater
satisfaction with school; both of these outcomes lead to greater achievement. Personal involvement, intrinsic
motivation, personal commitment, confidence in one’s abilities to succeed, and a perception of control over learning
lead to more learning and higher achievement in school. (Alexander & Murphy, 2000)

4. Development and individual differences.

Individuals progress through various common stages of development, influenced by both inherited and
environmental factors.
 5. Situation or context.

Theories of learning that highlight the roles of active engagement and social interaction in the students’ own
construction of knowledge. Many environmental factors including how the teacher teaches, and how actively
engaged the student is in the learning process positively or negatively influence how much and what students learn
(Lambert & McCombs, 2000).

TO ACHIEVE LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING, TEACHERS SHOULD FOCUSED IN THE FOLLOWING:

✔ Content: teaching will be based on building a strong knowledge foundation and to develop learning skills and
learner self-awareness.

✔ The role of the teacher: The role of the teacher is as facilitator of the learning process. The teacher proposes
students a real task and shares some decisions about the learning process.

✔ Responsibility of their own learning: The teacher creates learning environments that motivate students to take
responsibility for own learning.

✔ Assessment: Learner-centered teaching uses assessment as a part of the learning process, we propose use of
rubrics and the use of e-portfolio and other ICT tools.

FOSTERING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING

We must implement in students:

⮚ Readiness: This shows in motivation, curiosity, the belief you can achieve, and that you deserve to be successful.

⮚ Reflectiveness: This displays in looking back at your learning, improving your learning, performance and practice.

⮚ Resourcefulness: Characterized by learning with and from others, learning creatively in different ways, being
flexible, applying what you have learned.

⮚ Resilience: This shows by keeping going, learning under stress, and managing your feelings about learning and
the people you learn with.

⮚ Responsibility: This shows you on your own self-awareness in learning and taking ownership of your learning
and being able to learn alongside others.

PARADIGM SHIFT: FROM TEACHER-CENTERED TO LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING (PART 2 of MODULE 1)

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

TEACHER-CENTERED PHILOSOPHIES

1. ESSENTIALISM

Why teach?
❖ Teachers teach for learners to acquire basic knowledge, skills and values.
❖ Teachers teach not to radically shape society but rather transmit the traditional moral values and intellectual
knowledge that students need to become model citizens.

What to teach?
❖ Essentialist programs are academically rigorous.
❖ It emphasizes on academic content for students to learn the basic skills or fundamental R’s (reading, ‘riting,
‘rithmetic, right conduct) in preparation for adult life.
❖ The essentialist curriculum includes the “traditional disciplines” such as Math, Natural Science, History, Foreign
Language & Literature.
 ❖ Essentialists frown upon vocational courses or other courses with ‘watered down academic content.’ The
teachers and administrators decide what is more important for students to learn and place little emphasis on
student interests, particularly when they divert time and attention from the academic curriculum.

How to teach?
❖ Essentialist teachers emphasize mastery of subject matter. They are expected to be intellectual and moral
models of their students.
❖ Teachers are seen as “fountain” of information and as “paragon of virtue,” if ever there is such a person.
❖ To gain mastery of basic skills, teachers have to observe ‘core requirements, longer school day, a longer
academic year.’
❖ Teachers rely heavily on the use of prescribed textbooks, drill method and other methods that will enable them
to cover as much academic content as possible like the lecture method.
❖ There is a heavy stress on memorization and discipline.

2. PERENNIALISM

Why teach?
❖ We are all rational animals, schools; therefore, develop the students’ rational and moral powers.
❖ ARISTOTLE said ‘if we neglect the students’ reasoning skills, we deprive them of the ability to use their higher
faculties to control their passions and appetites.

What to teach?
❖ Its curriculum is a universal one on the view that all human beings possess the same essential nature. It is
heavy on the humanities, on general education. It is not a specialist curriculum but a general one.
❖ There is less emphasis on vocational and technical education.
❖ Philosopher MORTIMER ADLER claims that the Great Books of ancient and medieval as well as modern times
are a repository of knowledge and wisdom, a tradition of culture which must initiate each generation.

How to teach?
❖ The perennialist classrooms are ‘centered on teachers.’ The teachers do not allow the students’ interests or
experiences to substantially dictate what they teach.
❖ Teachers apply whatever creative techniques and other tried and true methods which are believed to be most
conducive to disciplining the students’ minds.
❖ Students engaged in ‘Socratic dialogues’ or mutual inquiry sessions to develop an understanding of history’s
most timeless concepts.

LEARNER-CENTERED PHILOSOPHIES

1. PROGRESSIVISM

Why teach?
❖ Teachers teach to develop learners into becoming enlightened and intelligent citizens of a democratic society.
❖ This group of teachers teach learners so they may live life fully NOW not to prepare them for adult life.

What to teach?
❖ The progressivists are identified with need-based and relevant curriculum.
❖ This is a curriculum that responds to students’ needs and that relates to students’ personal lives and
experiences.
❖ It accepts permanence of life and the inevitability of change. For progressivists, everything else changes.
Change is the only thing that does not change.
❖ Progressivist teachers are more concerned with teaching the learners the skills to cope with change.
❖ Teaching is focused on teaching of skills or processes on gathering and evaluating information and in
problem-solving instead of occupying students with facts and information.
❖ The subjects that are given emphasis here are the “natural and social sciences” where teachers expose
students to many new scientific, technological, and social developments reflecting the progressivist notion that
progress and change are fundamental.
❖ Students solve problems in the classroom similar to those they will encounter outside the school/house.

How to teach?
❖ Teachers employ experiential methods. They believe that one learns by DOING.
 ❖ JOHN DEWEY, the most popular advocate of progressivism, said that ‘book learning is no substitute for actual
experience.’
❖ One experiential teaching method that progressivist teachers heavily rely on is the ‘problem-solving method.’
❖ Other ‘hands-on-minds-on’ teaching methodology is field trips which students interact with nature or society.
❖ Teachers also stimulate students through thought-provoking games & puzzles.

2. EXISTENTIALISM

Why teach?
❖ The main concern is “to help students understand and appreciate themselves as unique individuals who
accept complete responsibility for their thoughts, feelings and actions.”
❖ Since ‘existence precedes essence,’ the existentialist teacher’s role is to help students define their own
essence by exposing them to various paths they take in life and by creating an environment in which they are
freely choose their own preferred way.
❖ Since feeling is not divorced from reason in decision making, the existentialist demands the education of the
whole person, not just the mind.

What to teach?
❖ Students are given a wide variety of options from which to choose. Students are afforded great latitude in their
choice of subject matter.
❖ The humanities, however, are given tremendous emphasis to ‘provide students with vicarious experiences that
will help them unleash their own creativity and self-expression.’

How to teach?
❖ Existentialist methods focus on the individual.
❖ Learning is self-paced, self-directed. It includes a great deal of individual contact with the teacher, who relates
to each student openly and honestly.
❖ Teachers employ values clarification strategy to help students know themselves and their place in society. In
using such strategy, teachers remain non-judgmental and take care not to impose their values on their
students since values are personal.

3. BEHAVIORISM

Why teach?
❖ Behaviorist schools are concerned with the modification and shaping of students’ behavior by providing for a
favorable environment, since they believe that they are a product of their environment. They are after students
who exhibit desirable behavior in society.

What to teach?
❖ Behaviorist teachers teach students to respond favorably to various stimuli in the environment because they
believe look at people and other animals as complex combinations of matter that act only in response to
internally or externally generated physical stimuli.

How to teach?
❖ Teachers ought to arrange environmental conditions so that students can make the responses to stimuli.
❖ Physical variables like light, temperature, arrangement of furniture, size and quantity of visual aids have to be
controlled to get the desired responses from the learners.
❖ Teachers ought to make the stimuli clear and interesting to capture and hold the learners’ attention. They ought
to provide appropriate incentives to reinforce positive responses and weaken or eliminate negative ones
(Trespeces, 1995).

Learner-centered teachers shift the teacher's role from being a provider of information to being a facilitator of
learning. This shift in focus increases student engagement in the learning process and makes students more responsible for
their own learning progress. With learner-centered teachers, students become invested in their own learning because they
are actively driving the learning process, unlike with non-learner-centered teachers.
Dimensions of learner-centered teaching
Blumberg thoroughly discusses five dimensions, or areas, of learner-centered teaching, which are: 1) the function of
content; 2) the role of the instructor; 3) the responsibility for learning; 4) the purposes and processes of assessment, and 5)
the balance of power.

Dimension Definition of this An Essential Instructor-Centered Learner-Centered

Dimension Component Approach Approach

The Function of Content includes Level to which Instructor allows Instructor encourages
Content building a knowledge students engage students to memorize students to transform
base, how the content. content. and reflect on most
instructor and the the content to make
students use the their own meaning out
content. of it.

The Role of the An essential role of Instructors uses Instructor: Uses teaching and
Instructor the instructor is to teaching and learning learning methods that
assist students to methods appropriate Does not have conflict with learning
learn. for student learning specific learning goals goals
goals. and/or Instructor intentionally
uses various teaching
and learning methods
that are appropriate
for student learning
goals.

The Responsibility Students should Responsibility for Instructor assumes all Instructor provides
for Learning assume greater learning should rest responsibility for increasing
responsibility for their with the students. students learning opportunities for
own learning over (provides content to students to assume
time. memorize, does not responsibility for their
require students to own learning, leading
create their own to achievement of
meaning of content, stated learning
tells students exactly objectives.
what will be on
examinations).

The Purposes and There are additional Formative Instructor Consistently

Processes of purposes and assessment (giving throughout the
Assessment processes of feedback to foster Uses only summative learning process,
assessment beyond improvement. assessment (to make instructor integrate
assigning grades. decisions to assign
grades) Formative
Provides students assessment
with no constructive Constructive feedback
feedback
The Balance of Power The balance of power Flexibility of course Instructor mandates all Instructor is flexible on
shifts so that the policies, assessment policies and deadlines. most
instructor shares some methods, learning
or ● Course policies
decisions about the methods, and deadlines. ● Assessment
course with the Instructor does not methods
● Learning
students. adhere to policies. methods
● Deadlines

and
 Instructor always
adheres to what
instructor has agreed to
with the students.

WHY IS LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING IMPORTANT?

By creating a learner-centered environment, you increase each student's motivation to remain engaged in the
learning process. This is especially true in higher grades, where students' motivation to learn increasingly centers on the
interests and subjects they believe will be personally beneficial. I'm sure you've heard students say, ''And how will this help
me when I'm older?''
Learner-centered teaching fosters independence. While this style of teaching is applicable to all levels, in higher
grades, there is a real push to help students transition from dependent student to independent adult. Learner-centered
teaching achieves this goal through giving students the autonomy they need to drive their own learning process, while still
having a teacher available for guidance when needed.

Another advantage of learner-centered teaching is that it allows for individual differences in student learning styles.
When the learner drives their own learning process, it naturally follows that the learning process will conform to the learner's
needs.

Additionally, social engagement is greatly increased in the learner-centered teaching environment. By engaging
socially, through collaborative work with each other and engagement with their teacher, students learn skills that will help
them throughout their lives. It has been said that learning is an act of social interaction. Studies show that learning increases
in environments where students are socially engaged rather than being passive recipients of information.

---END OF LECTURE NOTES OF MODULE 1---

References:

◆ Bilbao, P.P., Corpuz, B.B., Avelina, T.L., and Salandanan, G.G. (2006). The teaching profession. Lorimar Publishing
Co., Inc.: Boston Street, Cubao, Quezon City, Metro Manila.
◆ http://www.edu.xunta.gal/centros/cpicruce/system/files/Learnercentred.pdf
◆ https://study.com/academy/lesson/characteristics-of-learner-centered-teachers.html
◆ https://www.qedfoundation.org/5-characteristics-of-learner-centered-teaching/
◆ https://www.uvu.edu/otl/blog/lct.html

Prepared by:

JAN KARLO THOMAS V. RANCHEZ, LPT

Instructor, College of Teacher Education

BLESSMA JOY C. ABENES, LPT

Instructor, College of Teacher Education

Checked by:

RAYMOND N. CLARO, PhD

Dean, CTE