[quoting Norman, 1 Apr 96] What do you think of the initiative toward a learner-centered education, one that involves the students in a constructive activity more than is today traditional in the lecture-centered curriculum. Note that I am not asking whether this is a new idea: the question is whether it is a good idea.
In my humble opinion, a total "swing" toward learner-centered education is a big mistake. Granted, the students need more research, analytical, and problem solving skills and, most of all, they need to "learn how to learn"--whatever that overused phrase may mean. But, in my experience and based upon MY personal preferences, I need some clearly defined goals and structure in a learning experience. I think that "learner-centered" or constructivism must be balanced with a more structured approach. All of one approach or another is a mistake.
Exploratory learning methods (if they are as significant a part of your learner-centered premise as they appear to be) generally yield inefficiency (in terms of amount of learning per unit of time spent) and inconsistent results. When this is combined with the learners selecting what they need or want to learn, it can lead to gross inconsistencies and inefficiencies. Meanwhile the U.S. keeps their students in school (i.e., in a "learning environment" for a significantly shorter period than Japan and many (if not most) of our world counterparts. Further, I'm still trying to determine what "I want to be when I grow up" but I'm eternally grateful for an 8th grade English teacher who made me diagram sentences for a full year, as I am now also grateful for my liberal arts B.A., with heavy doses of philosophy, psychology, literature, etc., even though I lamented that it did not teach me "an employable skill" for several years. Bottom line is that I certainly wasn't capable of choosing what I needed to know in the 8th grade, and had I chosen a different undergraduate degree more slanted toward employment, I probably would not be a senior manager in a creative field now. In my humble opinion, adults should be HELD RESPONSIBLE for educating our young, and for any shortfalls that education may have--the children certainly shouldn't! And, we should be diligent and careful to "Teach your children well, their father's health will slowly go by... " (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, for those of a later generation)
And if it is a good idea, and since the ideas have been around for a long time (perhaps since Socrates, certainly since John Dewey), then how come they haven't yet taken hold?
I won't try to speak for classroom methods in general, but when exploratory or simulation methods are used in CBT or multimedia, they are VERY time-consuming and expensive to design and develop. Additionally, they are VERY difficult to design well--just as classroom lecture is easier to design and develop than role-plays or more interactive methods. That's why I don't use them more.
As a trainer, I believe in "learner-centered" simulations in CBT/MM absolutely, but I use simpler tutorials (equivalent to demonstrations or lectures) for most of the content. A typical skills training course might include:
50% "linear tutorials" presenting introductions, basic facts, background information, demonstrations, etc.
30% "path simulations" or "prompted simulations" (actually a complex, branched tutorial in most cases) providing guided practice as the learner begins applying the information, and
20% "free-play simulations" to provide the learner independent or unguided practice in applying the information, with a critique of performance at the end.
By the way, the second method costs roughly twice the amount of development time as the first, and the third costs roughly twice the development time as the second.
In my humble opinion, we as practitioners desiring to consider ourselves professionals should not limit ourselves to any one theory, strategy, method, or technique. We should select what we think is most appropriate from as large a "tool kit" as possible. To present one theory/strategy/method/technique as "universally the best, replacing all others," is both illogical (a faulty dilemma) and insupportable, knowing what little we know about how people learn (or what they should learn).
My two cents!