Leaner-Centered Teaching is teaching focused on learning, not on content as such. What students are doing is the central concern of the teacher: how do they operate on the content?
Students learn to solve the kind of authentic problems they are expected to encounter when they return to their job.
The teacher designs the challenges; next the teacher coaches the students in learning to solve these challenges. The teacher’s job is done when the students have reached the competence to solve these problems on their own.
How does this focus on learning work out? It is teaching that …
- engages students in the hard, messy work of learning;
- motivates and empowers students by giving them some control over leaning processes;
- encourages collaboration, acknowledging the classroom (virtual or real) as a community where everyone shares the learning agenda;
- promotes students’ reflection about what they are learning and how they are learning it;
- includes explicit learning skills instruction.