The Paradox of Student-Centered Instruction

William M. Jones

       My dad had a couple of firm observations he would make from time to time. He was a college professor cum university administrator, a true intellectual with a lot of experience negotiating human space. He always used to say, “You know you've had a good idea when you hear it coming out of the mouth of someone else.” He inevitably followed it up with “…and when that happens, you should smile, nod, and agree that it’s a great idea. Nothing more.”
        One could no better define a lot of what is being promoted in education reform today.
       This essay will be unusual for this space on a couple of levels.

        Although the presence of education technology has lent a great deal of support to some of the ideas I’ll address, the presence of technology tools is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for them. Hence this isn't about that. In addition, I will not attempt to plunge head-long to a conclusion, an answer to a question. Instead (Socrates would be proud!) I will merely ask the question, and hope that by posing it we can make some progress towards answering it.
        My dad’s remarks have two serious underlying assumptions which reveal two different, even conflicting, ideals in human behavior …

“…a good idea…coming out of the mouth of someone else…” Humans are almost desperate to own what they do and say. If an idea is good, it’s remembered, but our pride and focus often removes our ability to remember the source. When this happens in industry, it’s called advertising. After all, every company wants to be the inventor of their product, no matter how derivative it is. If it happens in academia, it’s called “published.” Although there are new ideas coming from academic research, such research is often the rephrasing and re-branding of a small variation on a preexisting idea.
        If it happens in schools, it’s called student-centered learning.
       That might sound cynical, but the research is out there – student-centered learning really does work. If you get students to own what they learn, they are motivated, engaged, and proud of their success. They will do better in school, and they will do better in life after they leave school, because their relationship with learning and success is an internal one, not dependent on the presence of celebrating teachers, grades, and other external motivators.

“….you should smile, nod…Nothing more…” My dad knew all too well that the best chance a good idea would become a program or policy required leveraging the enthusiasm and engagement of the person who just promoted it. Attempting to correct their mistaken ownership would simply cut off the engagement and enthusiasm, and, by extension, the idea itself. (As an aside, one could argue that that which we affectionately call “politics” is simply the process of inducing others to have and promote the ideas we hold as important to our own interests. That explains a lot these days!)

       To be a good teacher is to be a celebrator of a student’s ideas and work. After all, if a student is going to own her ideas, a teacher will have to step aside and allow that to happen. My dad proved that it worked in academic politics, over and over again. To encourage people to succeed, one should provide them the ability to create, and be celebrated in their creations as the owner, which, often, is quite different from true ownership, since most ideas owe a lot (sometimes everything) to previous work by someone else. There is a fundamental humility in the act of being a good teacher/mentor – the ability to set aside ones’ ownership of information, and one’s ownership of the learning or development process.
       So, we've defined a good teacher. The question I have is, if “fundamental humility” is the method by which we can induce others to succeed, it would seem to be a great human characteristic in general. (In fact, I could have spent volumes just on that issue alone.) So, how does one induce a “fundamental humility” in the mind of a student on the one hand, and celebrate their ideas as original ones they own on the other? From a somewhat narrower perspective, is this new education reform movement doomed to fail to produce the characteristics of a good teacher?
       I will admit to deliberately ignoring a few things in this discussion. Our students do learn a great deal from watching what we as teachers do (rather than what we manage to get them to do). And, of course, a “hunger for learning and information” has, built-in, a certain humble assumption – that one doesn't already know everything already. But I watch the rise of arrogance and self-centeredness in everything from politics to reality television, and I wonder whether there might be an inherent paradox at work here, a duality of messages.
        For us in educational technology, student ownership of the learning process is, one could argue, a logical partner to the presence and use of student-owned devices and information pipelines in the classroom. One-to-one computing and “Bring your own device” support encourage such an approach. So how can we have our proverbial cake and eat it too – have students engaged in owning the learning process, but with the selfless sense that, in fact, one’s place in the world of knowledge and learning is humble, connected, and dependent?
        There are several confounding issues which color this debate.

• The nature of technology adoption. People on the “front lines” of technology adoption are often very proud, even arrogant, of the choices they've made – the tools they've selected, the skills they've learned, and the implied behavior changes they have embraced. As has been shown over and over again in history, early adopters tend to become policy wonks and gatekeepers, maintaining their prime location at the head of the curve, and often forgetting the primary goals of the pursuit in the process.
• A teacher’s self-image. It might very well be that a humble, supportive facilitator isn't what the overwhelming majority of teachers signed on to be. If we bring access of external information and experiences to students (with it the change in instructional practice that implies), we may ignore or deliberately subvert a personal vision with which a teacher entered the profession. (This is, of course, separate from whether they should change – after all, reform movements often sort as much as they change, causing some potential teachers to leave or avoid the profession. Can we be sure we won’t simply create a teacher void, or a large number of unhappy teachers?)
• Process vs. information. Owning the process of knowledge construction can be viewed as quite separate from owning the information used therein, and the resultant product. Is this the hair we’re asking teachers and tech-driven tech reformers to split?
• Real vs. constructed engagement. Many of the advocates of information-access-driven education reform feel that this increases authenticity – students are able to use and interact with information sources and players who are actually doing what the students are learning. It’s the same for project-based learning, a movement sharing a great deal with the sorts of ideas we are discussing here. But the overwhelming majority of the learning goals of PK-12 instruction cannot, and should not, be truly authentic. After all, most students cannot write novels or symphonies, nor can they be empowered to do dangerous chemistry or physics experiences. Teachers routinely provide constructed (but safe) sandboxes for such experiences. What happens to student autonomy and ownership then? 

What do you think?