Difficult decisions are the result of social pressure.

Looking at the facts behind our options will lead us into a clear answer.  When we include the feelings and opinions of other people the decision process becomes muddled. A selfish person will tend to ignore feelings and opinions of others while a spineless person will tend to not look at the facts of their options.

How do we find the happy medium?

Most people will try to find a middle ground.  There are so many factors to consider and so much information behind these factors that only you will know what choice is the best choice to make.

Forgive me for attempting to describe this but the following is an elaborated version of what I mean.

In any one decision there is an evaluation of choices.  For every choice we evaluate/rate the tangible and intangible pro as well as the tangible and intangible cons.  The tangible pros and cons are what I referred to as facts.  These tangible pros and cons for some reason are what we use to defend our final decision.  So based on the tangible criteria the final decision must make sense.  The intangible pros and cons consist of everyone we know.  The amount of effect that each person has on our decision is how much we care about them as well as the amount that they care about the decision that we are making.  We are not always aware of how much someone cares about the decision that we are making so we ask for their advice.

The next time that you are concerned about a choice that you have to make, make it with confidence.  You are not always aware of each step of this process but you do always take it into consideration.  Only you can know best.

Definition

Learner-centered education means putting students at the center of their own learning. Hence, the responsibility of learning is placed on the students while the teacher becomes the facilitator. In a learner-centered environment, students are actively engaged in creating, understanding and exercising control over their learning. Therefore, learner-centered education is grounded in a constructivist perspective where teachers center their planning, teaching and assessment according to the different capabilities of students. So, instead of the teachers being the sole instructors, they become collaborators with students in creating knowledge.

Origins of Learner-Centered education

Learner-centered education has a long history of development. Two of the first educators to put emphasis on the learner were Confucius and Socrates (5th to 4th centuries B.C.). Confucius stressed on character and good citizenship, and Socrates stressed the individual. Over two millennia passed before seventeenth century Englishman John Locke (1632-1704) introduced experiential education (the idea that one learns through experience) where he made use of the concept, “Tabula Rasa” or blank slate, proposing that at birth the mind is a blank slate, and the only way to fill it is through having experiences, feeling these experiences, and reflecting on them. The Swiss-born philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in his book ‘Emile’ recommended a type of education that at the time was unknown, an education that was natural, child-centered, and experience-based. His intent was to protect the children from a corrupting society and permit them to develop naturally. Another two hundred years passed before European educators Pestalozzi, Hegel, Herbart, and Froebel designed and popularized experience-based, learner-centered curricula. A century later, nineteenth century educator Colonel Francis Parker brought this method to America where he demonstrated learner-centered techniques to the teachers. By replacing drill with inquiry activities, Parker replaced memorization of facts with understanding. Twentieth century Russian sociologist Lev Vygotsky, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, and American philosopher and educator John Dewey, who believed the only way a child would develop to its potential was in a social setting, shaped the existing learner-centered education into a program called constructivism. This evolution of education shows that learner-centered education has been developing for over five thousand years, and continues to take on different shapes.

The need for learner-centered alternatives to teacher-centered
Teacher-Centered Education

• In the teacher-centered instruction, the teachers usually engage students in the learning process through formal lectures and instructions. However research demonstrates that note taking in class is often performed in a reflexive, mindless manner. According to Mackworth – 1970, ‘prolonged performance on any passive, repetitive task (such as continuous note taking) eventually results in that task being assumed by lower centers of the brain that control automatic-behavior, with limited involvement of higher (cortical) areas of the brain responsible for higher level thinking.’ Hence most of the time during lectures, students are often found daydreaming and thinking about things unrelated to the lecture content because students’ attention tends to drop off automatically after 10-20 minutes.
• The teacher-centered instruction makes use of the behaviourist perspective where learning is made through contiguity. Edwin Gutherie believed that this principle explained most learning – that is – if you do something in a given situation, the next time you are in that situation, you tend to do the same thing. For example, when students recite the names of states and capital, the next time they come across only the name of the state, they will remember the capital too. But this type of learning tends to be associated as rote learning and memorization and consequently does not put the learners at the center of learning.
• The teacher-centered instruction involves students learning through Ivan Pavlov’s – 1920 Classical Conditioning where conditioning leads to involuntary response such as salivation hence rendering students education automatic and unintentional
• The teacher-centered instruction makes use of reinforces and punishers in the control of learning. Success of students depends upon the skillful use of rewards and punishments to encourage and guide learning process. This method of encouraging learning is disapproved because rewards lead to competitive between students. A few learners may be encouraged by the reward, but many will be frustrated.

Learner-Centered Education

• In a learner-centered environment, education is experience-based. John Locke believed that the only way an individual can learn is through experience. Lev Vygotsky alleged that all learning involves tying new information to prior experiences. Bacon, Montessori, Rousseau, Froebel, and Piaget said that the best experience occurs when learners are manipulating objects and solving problems. John Dewey is known for his expression, “Learning by doing,” an expression used a century earlier by John Locke.
• According to Gardner’s theory, some students may be quick to master the course material while others take time to assimilate what is being taught and hence need additional help. Hence each individual learner’s own unique qualities and dispositions should be considered when planning a curriculum. John Locke believed that the planning of educational experiences should begin by focusing on the learner. Locke recommended that teachers observe their students to learn their dispositions. By doing so, the curriculum can be personalized to meet each student’s needs.
• The learner-centered environment moreover requires teachers to make an effort to identify each student’s capability and individuality and to develop an accurate perception of their past experiences. If students believe that teachers respect their past experiences and learning, they are more likely to pay attention to what they know and build on it. However if students believe that teachers use it as an opportunity to humiliate them about their past mistakes, learners are discouraged to ask for help with areas of confusion and tend to develop a dislike for the subject and the teacher. Consequently teachers who make no effort to adapt their instructional strategies to the knowledge and experiences of their students are implicitly dismissing what learners can contribute in the learning process.
• In the learner-entered environment, learners’ curiosity is fed and nurtured. Locke understood that curiosity is the engine that drives learning. He advised that teachers should always answer students’ questions and when doing so, should listen not to the learners’ words but to the learners’ thoughts.
• Learning is best when it involves emotions. Dewey wrote about “collateral learning,” or learning that involves the emotions. “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned.”

Hence in short, it is important for students to believe that their own learning needs and preferences are taken into account. A poor environment can undermine students’ desire to play an active role in their own education. Failure to respect students can promote an attitude of “learned helplessness.” In other word, students are discouraged to be at the center of the learning process and end up in relying entirely on teachers to tell them what to study and hence place a greater emphasis on memorization learning as it is done in the teacher-centered learning.

Educational Practices

While teacher-centered instruction makes use of drills, rote learning, memorization, individual work, contiguity, making use of reinforcers and punishers, etc, Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) saw that when students worked in small groups to solve problems, by discussing problems, the learners were able to talk each other through to the solutions, which is to say that by helping other group members, they collectively solved problems more efficiently than they could solve them when working alone. Hence in the learner-centered education, teachers make use of a process is known as “engaging pedagogy” where of the following instructional practices to create a learner-centered environment:

• Cooperative learning group
• Role play
• Pair work
• Individual student’s research and discovery
• Brainstorming
• Mind-mapping
• Making use of open-ended questions

In short through a learner-centered educational practice, each learner can construct his or her own understanding by tying new information to prior experiences while in the teacher-centered education, students merely become passive listeners and automated responders.

Learner -Centered Versus Teacher-Centered Education

Teacher-centered learning seems to be the most ineffective approach nowadays unlike student-centered learning, which appears to be reflective of today’s society where choice and democracy are important concepts.

But the main contemporary question asked is, do we really need to exterminate the teacher-centered approach? Learning through simple associations (contiguity) has its advantage at certain extent. For example if students have to learn the names of states to remember the capital during history class, then contiguity has its place in the learning process because students are learning by association. As for Classical Conditioning learning, teachers can help students to improve their learning by associating positive and pleasant events with learning, and helping them to recognize differences and similarities among situations so they can discriminate and generalize appropriately.

Making use of rewards and punishment in control of learning can encourage and motivate students at certain extent. In choosing goals for the learner, it may be possible to select those intrinsically related to the task rather than extrinsically related. A goal is intrinsic if it is natural or inevitable. The relation between a task and goal is extrinsic if it is arbitrary or arbitrarily established. Research shows that punishment is effective when it accomplished its purpose by forcing the individual to select an alternative response that my then be rewarded.

The use of rote learning and memorization can be effectual especially in situation where students have no other solution but to learn by heart for examples: multiplication table, formulas, important events and famous people.

Conclusion

Although learner-centered has a tremendous success, there will always be a place in education for the teacher-centered instruction where learned, knowledgeable instructors share their expertise with students and model thinking processes that students can emulate. Certain learning instruction in the teacher centered approach is seen as practical but research demonstrates that the these learning methods need to be augmented, complemented, and punctuated by learner-centered strategies so that students are empowered to take more active and responsible role in learning as it would be a mistake to keep on treating students as though they are empty vessels on which knowledge is poured on.

If you think back to childhood you might recall being curious about the world. You may have wondered why the stove was described as hot or why your parents were low on funds when there were still blank checks in the drawer.

Perhaps you were much like me and figured if those white plastic plates in the wall were capable of eating a metal prong, then it must be okay to stick the tip of a butter knife in them too.

Yes, right around the age of six, curiosity of those wide-eyed electrical outlets got the best of me.

I remember crouching to my knees and licking my lips. I held a steady hand as I pretended to be playing Milton Bradley’s game of Operation. Slowly I inserted the metal knife. Instantly a rush of steady current jolted through my arm.

The surging stream felt like heavy setting concrete burning throughout my entire body, and it connected me with its strong electrical force until I finally let go.

I’ll never forget the feeling.

I share this with you not to promote this event. In fact, DON”T TRY THIS AT HOME!! It was juvenile and dangerous, yet this electrifying lesson is a wonderful analogy to describe spiritual grounding.

The ground of the earth is a solid tangible surface full of energy and life. Just as lightning will not strike the earth unless certain conditions are met, spiritually speaking our Higher Power cannot make a connection with us unless we’re properly plugged in and open to receive.

In order to have spiritual grounding success, you must be mindful of the present. Praying or meditating with distractions leads to faulty connections. Heads fill with noise and minds short-circuit from too much chatter.

Do this enough times and your internal wiring will become so confusingly crossed that your chances of blowing a fuse are likely indeed.

And let’s not forget about resistance…

Just as a 60 watt bulb has more resistance than a 100 watt one, the amount of current we conduct always controls our spiritual flow. When we detach from our Higher Power whose charge is always present, we become less grounded and more spiritually drained.

“But, how do I re-charge?” you may ask.

Just follow three easy soul-felt steps:

1. Plug Your Self In: Find your center and focus on your breathing
2. Keep a Current State of Mind: Remain in the moment and let go of all else.
3. Be an Open Conduit: Create a pathway for divine messages and be open to receive.

If you’re feeling in the dark, turn up the current. If you need to re-charge, be still and go within.

It’s really so simple

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and ground yourself already, but not literally, of course.

When you take time out to become one with your energy source, you can “enjoy the experience” ™ come what may.