By Jaya Carrier
I hope everyone has had a great week so far. As you will know, one of our T&L goals for 2021-22 is being more student-centred. This has lots of different facets, and so I was interested in the way it was presented by John McCarthy (a US based education consultant) as an Edutopia article written in 2015. In particular, his suggestions for strategies focus on student-voice. Objectives: To suggest strategies for one model of student-centred learning Summary:
McCarthy suggests some key strategies for enhancing student-centred learning:
- Allowing students to share in the decision making processes of the classroom (including showing the relevance of their learning to students, what topics or curricula to cover and what kinds of tasks or activities to complete)
- Give students leadership opportunities
- Make learning connect meaningfully to the real world
Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
- How often do I plan for opportunities or strategies like those listed above?
- What does ‘student-centred’ mean in my classroom? What will it look like if I have a fully student-centred classroom?
- What student-centred strategies is McCarthy missing?
This is great Jaya, thanks for sharing, and it resonates with much of what I discussed during my informal chat with colleagues last week about "What is an IB school?" It's important that no teacher feel pressured to do all of these things in every lesson. Hence, the importance of the question "How often do I plan for opportunities or strategies like those listed above?" and of the coordination of such opportunities across the curriculum (all subject areas and year levels) to scaffold relevant skills.
ReplyDeleteThanks Paul! Absolutely - some really interesting ideas. I find that student-centred learning can vary in definition, so I like McCarthy strategies as a starting point.
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