Lived meanings: what teachers mean when they say they are learner‐centered

Abstract

While the term ‘learner‐centered’ is invoked in many curriculum standards documents, packaged curriculum materials, mission statements and criticisms of educational practice, there is little agreement on its meaning. Shallow understandings and conflicting practices abound. And rarely do the meanings ascribed to the term take into account the meanings of thoughtful teachers who live learner‐centered approaches daily in their work. Here we introduce lived meanings of learner‐centeredness found in the personal and professional histories of experienced teachers. Data were gathered in interviews that took the form of focused conversations which yielded elaborated stories and reflections that suggest that learner‐centeredness is a concept that cannot be captured in finite, static, unquestioned definitions. The teachers’ lived meanings are expressed in fine‐grained detail, are embedded in particular settings and the teachers’ own personal and professional histories, go beyond surface features of practice and are in motion and unfinished. Taken together, these lived meanings have the potential to challenge and deepen current understandings of learner‐centered practices. Further, they have the potential to bring humanity, humility and integrity to the work of those who engage in these practices and of those who would support or criticize them.

Keywords:

• Learner‐centered
• Teacher thinking

Notes

1. For this investigation QSR NUD∗IST 4 (Sage Publications Software, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1997) was used.

2. For example, one teacher described learner‐centeredness in terms of student choice, as in this quote: ‘so I think of the student‐centered stuff being the stuff that allows students choices’. Later she used the word ‘choices’ again as she told the story of a particular classroom event. She stated, ‘I started thinking about that, but that was really a way for them to make choices’. Although she did not use the term ‘learner‐centered’, she repeated a key idea from the previous excerpt, so we coded the text unit within the sub‐category ‘learner making choices’.

3. The names used here are pseudonyms and all details of their stories that might allow them to be identified have been removed.

4. See, for example, Snyder et al. (1992b, 1996); Aiken (1942); Bussis et al. (1976); Paris (1989, 1993).