3.4 Teacher-centred education

3 Pitfall of too much teacher-centred education

How do you fall into the trap of too much teacher-centred teaching? One possible cause is that you do not dare to really let go of your students for fear of chaos. You experience it as being too messy if all your students take their own course. This fear makes you cling to teacher-centred education. It may also be that you suspect that, if everyone takes their own course, you will no longer be able to manage the entire process properly; you will lose the overview.

A characteristic of teacher-centred education is that you determine the subject of the lesson and devise a corresponding lesson plan. You give instruction and choose exercises that fit your explanation. This can be a disadvantage. If you provide exclusively teacher-centred education, you thereby lock your students into a (by definition meagre) supply: in this type of instruction, you drop several topics because of time constraints and drop topics because you deem them unfeasible. By making these decisions yourself, without input from students, you are very decisive and limit your students’ room for own initiative and thus their freedom. This is the pitfall of teacher-centred education.

Another disadvantage of exclusively whole class teaching is that you are constantly controlling both your students and yourself. Always you work with the whole group and never really let go of the students. This can be oppressive for both your students and you. You can see this in the following two scenarios

1. Students experience teacher-centred as oppressive:
   In this first scenario of (too much whole class teaching), the question is always whether your students want to cooperate. Students sit back and decide how much they like your lessons. They decide how long they are willing to follow you and be cooperative. For you, the question may be until when your students are willing to cooperate with your plans. Problems with class control play an increasing role during your lessons and expected control problems play an increasing role in the preparation of your lessons.
2. You experience teacher-centred education as oppressive:
   In this second scenario, you manage to keep your students optimally engaged during whole class teaching. You have also overcome order problems. Nevertheless, the pressure of having to keep the whole group in tow troubles you. More and more it starts to gnaw at you that you do not really dare to let go of your students.

The same assignment

With teacher-centred education as a starting point, you have your students all working on the same assignment, level differences arise. Those differences are glaringly obvious. One student may find your assignment too difficult and another too easy. If, when preparing a lesson, you take these differences into account (because you want to be the assignment for everyone), you are forced to choose a middle ground as far as level is concerned, thus limiting the range of lessons you offer. You always look for an average that everyone can work with.

When preparing your lessons, you estimate the feasibility of an assignment. You look for an assignment that is neither too difficult nor too easy. As a result, you always end up with an assignment that is feasible for only part of the group. You don’t succeed in making assignments interesting for everyone.

What happens when, by necessity, you always focus the material on the middle group

Fast learners get too little challenge. They get bored and tend to disrupt the lesson.
Lagging students who struggle at the level get frustrated and disrupt the lesson.
If you succeed in your pursuit of uniformity (all students the same assignment), you will see uniform results.
Your students are less likely to help each other and do only the bare essentials.
Your students are introduced to only the (in your opinion) viable part of the subject you offer.
You are busy teaching. As a result, you don’t get around to supervising individual students.
With frontal teaching it is difficult to break the division of roles between teacher and student.

Ways of preventing this pitfall

In practice, lessons are never completely teacher-driven. To avoid the above pitfalls, you will quickly incorporate elements of student-driven teaching into your lessons. This description of the pitfall is intended as an impetus for you to immediately look for assignments where you let students determine their own course in a meaningful way.

In the practical example above, you do introduce your students to a topic but do not require them to all reach a certain level with that topic. What students do later (during independent work or at home – formally or informally) with your instruction depends on their motivation and commitment.