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?
