Putting It Into Practice: Student-Centred Learning

By Holly Youlden

At the start of term, we spoke at length about the importance of learning being student-centred. In this blog post, we are going to explore some of the ways you can put pedagogy into practice by looking at staff reflections, reading, and top tips! 

Staff reflections: 

Having spent a year exploring the topic of “student-centred learning” with their Professional Learning Community (PLC), Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara summarised what this meant in their CPD session during INSET. They summarised what student centred learning means and does not mean in our context in this table: 

What ‘student centred’ does mean in our context

What ‘student centred’ doesn’t mean in our context

Students are given lots of opportunities to talk to each other through pair or group discussion When group work does take place it is well scaffolded and structured Students are given opportunities to reflect on how they might approach a task before doing it Students work on tasks that are appropriate for their ability levels and needs Students have some sense of autonomy over their learning. They feel empowered.

It doesn’t mean there is no teacher talk - direct instruction is extremely valuable when teaching new concepts or modelling It doesn’t mean there is no scaffolding or structure to lessons  It doesn’t mean group work every lesson It doesn’t mean that different groups of students should always be doing something different from each other. It doesn’t mean that students are completely in control of the classroom It doesn’t mean students need to ‘discover’ new learning for themselves. We still need to teach them things.

(From C. Dunn’s “Student-Centred Learning” CPD, 1st September 2022) 

Reflecting on the training, Jenny Scott said her biggest takeaway was “the idea of using choice (which makes a task more student-centred) as a form of differentiation. For example, in the past I have commonly included a gap fill task followed by a stretch question, but what if the more able students could choose to do the more advanced question instead of the gap fill, rather than as an additional task? A consideration that was discussed around this was students choosing an option that wasn't actually the best task for their level, so this is something that I am excited to trial in my lessons in future and see how I can best overcome this hurdle.”. 

Similarly, Jojo Laber from Maths said that this session helped her realise that, “facilitating a student-centred learning environment is more natural than you'd think! Although at first impression it may seem like there's more work involved, it actually becomes a much less energy-demanding lesson when you're sure that the students know what direction to take their learning in for that lesson. It provides the opportunity for students to take ownership of what they're learning and therefore feel more encouraged to engage well throughout the lesson.”

How can I learn more?

Try reading…

• Blog post from Andrew Moore about student-centred scaffolding

• Blog post from Flo Rayner about group work

• CPD slides from Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara about using choice to make lessons more student-centred

• Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn R. Jackson (Professional Learning Library)

• Teaching Walkthrus by Efrat Furst, Clare Sealy, Dylan Wiliam, and Kate Jones (Professional Learning Library)

• Student-centred page on the Professional Learning Platform

Try speaking to…

• Charlotte Dunn- English

• Maya Amara- Maths

• Georgina Abbott- Expressive Arts

• Dipesh Patel- Science

Please share any great examples of student-centred learning with me at h.youlden@westminsteracademy.org.uk!