Find a balance with student-centredness

If you’re attending an educational conference or reading a fresh paper on teaching, there’s a high probability that student-centredness will be mentioned at some point. It’s become popular in higher education over the past decade and some educators consider it a requirement of modern learning environments. Student-centredness can be described as emphasising learning rather than teaching, while at the same time enhancing student engagement and autonomy in the educational process. But what does it mean in practice? Do we always need to be student-centred in teaching? 

Why student-centredness?

There are several benefits to student-centred teaching. First, we provide learners with autonomy, known as one of the three factors for success, according to the self-determination theory of R. M. Ryan and E. L. Deci. 

Second, we can increase student engagement by involving them in decision-making about content, outcomes, activities or types of assessment. 

• A simple feedback strategy centred on a pedagogy of care
• Autonomy, fun and other benefits of student-centred learning design
• How student learning communities support professional development

Third, it helps to make the materials more relevant to every apprentice, resulting in increased curiosity for a topic and motivation to learn. 

Last, student-centredness facilitates the building of ownership and responsibility for personal and professional development in students. This is important to graduate lifelong learners. 

Through student-centredness, education becomes more tailored to learner needs and abilities. Our objective is to create a stimulating learning environment and enable higher achievements in studies. But does it always work perfectly in real life?

When does student-centredness play against us?

Despite the benefits of student-centredness in theory, there might be undesired consequences to applying it excessively. For example, certain schools or teachers provide students with complete freedom to choose the topics or even the learning outcomes. Free rein, resulting in increased engagement and motivation, might be valuable in supplementary courses. 

A degree is a different matter. Students could be wrong or biased about the requirements of their future profession. If they choose their educational experiences badly now, they may not be prepared for employment after graduation.

In my opinion, the best option here would be to provide students an opportunity to decide on certain elective components, but the core content and the outcomes must be agreed by subject experts.

Another example is related to student-centredness in assessment. There’s an assumption that, when assessing students of different abilities, we have to adjust exam modes to ensure everyone is tested equally. But this has the potential to undermine the standardisation of assessment.

It can be difficult to compare the data generated by different methods, and students themselves might regret their choice and complain that it’s unfair. In my view, the fairest system must provide a variety of different types of rather low-stakes assessments within the course. A student can excel in one test based on their strengths, balancing out their less successful results.

Not every student is ready to take ownership of development and education. They might see the task of making independent decisions about learning as an excessive responsibility. A lack of preparedness to take agency can potentially result in disengagement and unsatisfactory training outcomes. Before making decisions about the level of responsibility the students will take, refer to their previous educational experience. 

The safest strategy here is the gradual introduction of student-led educational activities with continuous evaluation, including student satisfaction and analysis of the achievement of learning outcomes.

How to apply student-centredness in higher education

To summarise the points described above, there are many benefits of student-centredness. However, educators must be aware of the potential implications of using this approach irrationally. Applying student-centredness in higher education must contain the following practices:

• explore the background of students in terms of their readiness to take ownership of their own learning
• offer elective components in a programme and in individual courses, but keeping decisions on core knowledge and learning outcomes to experts
• include a variety of methods in assessment plans, providing students with the opportunity to excel in tests that correspond to their strengths and to compensate for less successful results
• introduce student-led activities gradually
• continuously evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, including analysis of student satisfaction and achievement of learning outcomes.

I hope this list might help to preserve the benefits of the approach, while also minimising the potential for negative effects on learning and achievement.   

Arina Ziganshina is head of assessment at Dubai Medical College for Girls.

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