Entry the Seventh or: Learner Centered Teaching? Really?

See Title.


I.
The reading for this week was interesting because it offered three distinct looks at student centered learning.

In Teaching Tips the first chapter I read talked about motivational theories and how students can become motivated or unmotivated by a lot more things than you think. I liked this chapter quite a bit because I feel that it can be applied to the classroom easier than the other methods talked about in this week’s reading. It focuses on what drives a student to do well on an assignment and then how to use that to your advantage when teaching. This chapter is a great jumping off point for a teacher who wants to design a course that encompasses motivational techniques and gets students to do their best on their own terms.

The next chapter in Teaching Tips is all about teaching culturally diverse students. This was a really interesting chapter because it outlined some common miscommunications between teachers and international/diverse students. Some of the things it talked about in detail were eye contact, nonparticipation, and reluctant speakers. The chapter also went into detail about the differences in motivation and stress for culturally diverse students. I thought this was the best part of this chapter because it offered an explanation to a big question. I only have one international student between my two classes, but after reading this chapter I can already see many of the things that McKeachie is talking about. This chapter will be one that I reference later-on in my teaching career, I’m sure.

The excerpt from Learning Centered Teaching is actually quite different from the material in Teaching Tips. It is much more about LCT as a method rather than McKeachie’s chapters which offer a more narrow look into teaching. The main point in the LCT section, at least what I took it to be, is that power should be shared and students should feel like they are in control of the learning process. The excerpt talks about how to involve students in many classroom decisions such as grading, assignments, classroom policies, and course content. This article was a little harder for me to swallow than the others because it was more about why a teacher would adopt this specific method rather than the “tips” offered by McKeachie.

II.
Despite the bad taste left from the LCT excerpt, I would actually like to employ some of these techniques in my teaching. I feel that the motivation theories are a great place for me to start. I really like the section on Mastery on page 144 in Teaching Tips. For me a class that focuses on mastery would be a dream to teach. I’m a very laid back person and I feel that it has worked to my advantage as a teacher, and if I could I would teach Comm 110 as a mastery course and do away with the performance aspect of it. I know that I most likely won’t get to teach a class that is solely focused on mastery so I’ll have to settle for adding mastery techniques, such as peer reviews, into my teaching.

I would also like to become more culturally aware as a teacher. This doesn’t mean that I’m culturally oblivious, but when it comes to learning styles I really only understand them based on a western view of learning. The chapter in Teaching Tips was really helpful in showing me that there are a ton or reasons for why a culturally diverse student may be performing at a certain level or why they behave the way they do in class. I just want to have more knowledge about this aspect of teaching.

III.
There are many more aspects of LCT that I would not be able to incorporate into my teaching. There are a couple of reasons why LCT freaks me out; (1) I’m terrible at relinquishing control, and (2) I have a slight distrust in student’s ability to perform well on their own. The control thing is a personal issue. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of not having control over a situation, so it would be very difficult for me to give more control to my students, who can barely remember their own names some days.

The other part of this is trust. I don’t know if I trust students to not take advantage of me. I know that there are many students for whom this type of learning is great, but as a teacher I have my concerns about all of the students who might try to abuse the privilege. I think it will take a lot of convincing as well as trial and error before I adopt a LCT teaching style.