Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side

When dancing with a partner it is important to dance in time to the beat of the music. A good leader is said to be a good follower and a good follower a good leader; at some times a follower can be considered to be the leader. (Mizenko, n.d.). The field of education has also experienced the same shift, a dance of change, as it shifts from teacher-centered learning, where students passively absorb what the teacher tells them, to student-centered learning, where students actively engage with the teacher and each other to solve problems and learn, and sometimes direct the learning process.

There has been some debate about whether the role shift for teachers from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” helps students. Some say that with teacher-centered learning, a teacher models genuine excellence in his or her field, whereas in student-centered classes, students may not be pushed to do their best work and may develop a false sense of self-esteem that makes them think anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. Policies emphasizing high student test scores also may not encourage classroom time for labor-intensive work with students (Darling-Hammond, 1996); since teachers are partially responsible for student test scores, they will also be held accountable if students do not do well.

Others say that compared to just getting information from books and lectures, students in student-centered classrooms will remember course material better when they relate it to their own experiences and teach it to others. It has been said that students remember less than 30% of what they hear, see, or read, and remember about 50% of what they both see and hear, but remember 70% of what they say, and 90% of what they say and do (Dale, 1969). In a student-centered classroom, the teacher also still presents the material, but the student interacts with it and manipulates it. The teacher helps students interact with the material by providing resources to learn, organizing the context of the way students learn, and asking questions. In this view, the teacher is not all-knowing but experiments and learns too. Indeed, learning theories support this shift from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side,” as the next section will show.

Learning Theories Supporting Shifts in the Teacher and Student Role

Behaviorist Theory

According to behaviorist theory, the teacher is a “sage on the stage” who seeks to transfer objective course content to students, often through lectures and demonstrations that teach the “right” answers and techniques for problem-solving (Windshitl, 2002). An important goal for students is to remember and reproduce the content set by the teacher. Students generally work alone on work that they submit to the instructor. The teacher reviews it for compliance with criteria that the teacher has set for excellent work. The teacher also largely sets the course content and criteria for assessment.

Teachers establish learning objectives and activities to help students reach these objectives, using rewards and punishments to manipulate students to participate in learning and achieve responses that the teacher considers correct. According to Driscoll (2000) the teacher conducts an experimental analysis and changes the classroom procedure, the reinforcers used, or both, to see if these improve student performance. In terms of classroom management, the teacher also rewards desired student behaviors and punishes undesired behaviors.

Until recently, behaviorism has placed relatively little emphasis on the individual student; however, Driscoll (2000) mentions a behaviorist personalized system of instruction where course material with learning goals is broken down into units that students study at their own pace.

Cognitive Theory

Cognitive theorists are interested in how students actively try to make sense of the material being taught and in how teachers can structure learning to make it easier for student to learn. According to Bruner (1973), teachers should understand what contributes to students being ready to learn, including understanding what they know already and their cognitive capacity to learn. A teacher’s job is to structure information so that students can understand it easily. Students should also learn how to apply known facts as starting points to draw conclusions about unknown facts or extrapolate to new ones.

Cognitive theory assumes there is an objective basis to knowledge, and that the teacher’s role is to present that information in a format that is not too cognitively complex, so that the learner can grasp it. Scaffolding is an important way in which the teacher can make information available to the learner (Vygotsky, 1978). Students are asked to imitate the teacher even if they doesn’t fully understand the material presented, and the teacher offers guidance during that period of practice. Eventually students internalize the task and no longer need the teacher to explain. However, the teacher may need to return to the material repeatedly in increasing depth or complexity until students grasp it fully, a principle called spiral organization (Bruner, 1973). The teacher might also ask students why they are carrying out an activity in one way rather than another.

From this perspective, the role of the teacher is to bring the student to the task, demonstrate it, keep the student on task, emphasize key features of the task, and reduce the number of things the student tries to those activities that are relevant (Wood et al., 1976). As students start a task, teachers may present many small steps to complete the task. As students progress, teachers may present progressively fewer steps until they have eliminated them, and students have learned the task. An important aspect of the teacher’s skill is to present material at a level that is not so difficult as to be frustrating but not so easy as to be unchallenging or boring.

Eventually, from this perspective, students become independent problem-solvers. They are encouraged to formulate questions that are important to them and that they are interested in, and to acquire more expert skill or knowledge in order to test hypotheses about their questions. Instructors provide structure for student inquiry by selectively providing information that may be useful for problem-solving (inquiry-based learning) and providing group learning activities.

According to this theory, the teacher might be thought of as “the guide on the stage.” The teacher is in front of the classroom as its principal source of knowledge, but the learning is not as teacher-centered as in a traditional classroom (for example, where the teacher lectures). Instead, the teacher serves as the guide who steers the learner in directions that are more productive.

Constructivist Theory

Constructivism theory builds on cognitive theory because it also assumes that students are actively trying to make sense of and solve problems. However, it does not assume there is an objective basis for knowledge but considers it important for students to take a variety of points of view into consideration to learn a subject. Jonassen (2000) points out that constructivist teachers accept that students may learn things other than the teacher had in mind so that learning may not be predictable. They think teaching involves facilitating learning, not controlling it.

According to constructivist theory, the role of the teacher is to be the “guide on the side.” The teacher provides the topic area and choices of learning activities; however, students are expected to figure out the material and its meaning themselves. In this approach, students often work on hands-on activities they have chosen themselves, and their discussion of the project helps them learn about it. The teacher is available for answering questions, conflict management, encouragement and reinforcement. The emphasis is less on students modeling the teacher than on the capacity for people to learn if they are given the materials for learning.

According to Jonassen (2000), a key aspect of student-centered learning environments (SCLE) is teachers giving students interesting, relevant and not too neatly packaged problem to solve and students looking for the information and theory they need to solve it. “Traditional instruction insists on providing all of the concepts and theory prior to applying it by solving a problem while SCLE assume that instruction is meaningful only in the context of activity” (Jonassen, 2000, p. 95). Where teachers use an SCLE approach, students could be presented with cases to solve that involve problems in a real-life context or could work on complex projects with multiple cases. As part of the task students would be given information about a problem’s context (its social and physical background), its presentation (a statement of the problem and events that led up to it) and the problem manipulation space (tools that students use to test their solutions and solve problems). Because this knowledge is not in the student’s repertoire, teachers need to give cues and scaffold activities to help students integrate the material (Jonassen, 2000).

Constructivism may be a useful approach for students for several reasons. Students may feel more relaxed about raising and answering questions among themselves than asking questions and posing hypotheses directly to the teacher. Working with other students, students also have a chance to see how other students solve problems. Further, individual students might be more inspired to work on problems if they are working with others whereas they might be more likely to give up if they are working on their own.

Although constructivist strategies may engage students, students are neither experts nor trained as teachers, and may not know how to teach the material. Students learning from other students might lack confidence in what they are learning, may receive misinformation, or may miss important points about what they are studying. Students may also have their own ideas about how the world works and may overlook or not seek out evidence to challenge their ideas. A teacher might point out the discrepancies but other students may not (Chinn & Brewer, 1993). Also, students may not be interested in seeking out the information that would help them learn best, but may only want to finish tasks quickly. They may also use group situations as an opportunity to quarrel, exclude other students, or fool around.

Land & Hannafin (2000) point out the crucial role of the teacher’s providing scaffolding in student-centered learning environments. For example, even if technology gives students access to a broad range of information (such as when they are surfing the World-Wide Web), if they have no structure as to how to use that information in context or develop tools for thinking, then they are not truly in a constructivist environment, the researchers say. During the course of a class, teachers need to evaluate how well the instruction is helping the students achieve the objectives, and, if necessary, add scaffolding or other lessons to guide the students. Elsmore et al. (1996) describe a “constructivist dilemma.” Even though constructivism encourages students’ directing learning themselves, students and teachers are both required to direct learning.

On one hand, it is the teacher’s responsibility to provide structure and guidance for students in ways that ultimately lead to their taking responsibility for their own learning; but on the other hand, the structures and guidance that teachers provide often prevent students from taking this responsibility. On one hand, teachers are supposed to understand in a deep way the content and pedagogical knowledge necessary to teach students; but on the other hand, teachers’ knowledge can overwhelm students struggling to understand for themselves (p. 210).

Two ways that teachers can help students absorb a large amount of information and take responsibility for learning are to design activities so that students have the time to reflect on the material learned and can solve problems together. Examples of student-centered activities using these strategies are described in the section that follows.

Specific Student-centered Instructional Strategies

Strategies for Reflection

Time for Individual Reflection

An important set of student-centered learning strategies involves teachers providing time and activities to reflect on material. For example, the teacher might pause during lecture and ask students to take a few minutes to think about or write about the material presented (King, 1993). This can give students a chance to reflect on the material, apply it and reorganize it to learn it better. These examples reflect the idea of cognitive constructivism—knowledge as “the result of the accurate internalization and (re)construction of external reality by an individual” (Doolittle, 1999, ¶ 2). However, opportunities for individual reflection in the classroom may work better for some students than others. While some students may indeed take the time to think about material presented, other students might use the time to chat or text on their cell phones.

Even when they reflect on the material covered, some students may continue to have an inaccurate understanding of the subject matter, reflecting the idea of radical constructivism that the knowledge people construct may not accurately reflect external reality (Doolittle, 1990, ¶ 2).. Group discussion and interaction with the teacher may help students learn about differing points of view and help in correcting mistakes.

Cases

Students may also be more interested in reflecting on what they learn in the context of real-world examples. In graduate programs in business, law, or education, teachers often ask students to apply basic principles to problems in those fields (Christensen, Garvin, & Sweet, 1991).   Students may value reflecting on questions that could come up in their careers, and may be interested in how situations influence the way principles are used.

Problem-Centered instruction

Another approach which is often used in medical education asks students not only to solve problems like real-world problems but to work collaboratively in the same way that professionals would (e.g., Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980) Duffy & Jonassen, 1992). Together, students define the problem, decide who will complete which tasks, collect data about the problem, find resources to understand the data, and then come up with a solution. They also talk with one another about the method by which they reach the solution, the way they gathered information about it, and how they interacted as a group. This kind of approach can bring together a wide pool of talent, a range of perspectives, and group knowledge of resources to address the problem that is better than the knowledge specific individuals have. It can also model real-world collaboration in professional life. Students can also be highly motivated when they are asked to research real community problems and present their solutions to experts in those fields.

Microworlds

Another constructivist strategy for instruction that can be engaging for students involves the use of microworlds (see Driscoll, 2000). These are small video or computer models of real environments that let individuals or groups to explore questions about those environments. They may be simplified to fit learner’s level of knowledge so that students are not confused by having too much information as they try to learn. For example, Tobin & Dawson (1992) described a microworld on a videodisc that let students conduct scientific experiments. Driscoll (2000) states that microworlds provide “rich, student-centered learning environments in which authentic activity is stressed” (p. 392).

Strategies for Collaboration

Group Activities

Students may also be drawn into material more deeply when they work together to learn it through such activities as group discussions, games, role plays, simulations, or think-pair-share activities (King, 2003). Use of collaborative teaching strategies is based in the idea of social constructivism, which proposes that people acquire knowledge through social interaction and language use, and that learning should involve shared experience (Doolittle, 1999, ¶ 2).

For example, in the activity think-pair-share, a teacher asks students a question. Students individually think about or write about the question first, then share their thoughts with a partner. Afterwards, the whole group talks about what was shared in pairs (King, 1993). From a constructivist point-of-view, this gives students the opportunity to think about their own answers to the question. Often when an instructor asks a question, one student gets to answer and then the teacher moves on to the next point; most students do not get to say what they think. When students talk in pairs, they have a good reason to explain their ideas in detail since they cannot assume other students understand them already. They also have the opportunity to give and receive comments that would not be received in a large group setting. When the group shares, students can see that others were thinking the same thing they were, or can hear new ideas. However, some people are too shy to share or will not pair up with others.

A related strategy for teaching asks students to integrate differing information or points of view. For example, using the jigsaw strategy (Aronson & Patnoe, 1997), the teacher divides up the material to be covered into five or six different sections. Each student gets a piece of the material and is asked to teach it to others. Because each student will be tested on all the material, students see that every person’s material is important. They learn to ask each other questions about the material, evaluate what they hear in order to decide what else they still need to learn, and synthesize information from their different perspectives; they may thus develop higher-order skills in synthesis and evaluation. Another jigsaw strategy, Co-op Co-op, involves students forming teams to work on group projects (King, 1993). Each student works on a different piece of the project but is accountable for all of the material. Again, students must work together to understand and integrate the material. In another activity, constructive controversy, teams of about four people take turns arguing the pros and cons of an issue and so become familiar with different points of view.

Collaboration Using Technology

Technologies can also be used collaboratively, for example, some software (known as group ware) is designed to help groups interact with each other. Technology applications can also give learners access to expert problem solvers online. As these experts explain their thinking and answer student questions, they can provide scaffolding for how to think about these issues. However, some people may prefer talking face-to-face to sitting in front of a computer and talking online. In terms of affective educational objectives of caring about the learning task (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1973), people tend to be less motivated to commit to learner relationships online (Preece, 2000), and these projects could be vulnerable to students disengaging from them.

Specific Assessment Strategies for Student-centered Learning

One way that teachers can motivate students to be accountable is by assessing them. Typically as the course goes on, teachers assess how students are doing on an informal basis based on quizzes, homework, class discussion, or class participation. This type of assessment, formative assessment, helps provide feedback to the teacher about what students are learning and how to modify instruction. Teachers also evaluate students formally at the end of the class through grades and test scores, a measure of performance called summative assessment. In designing assessments, teachers need to be sure that the information they expect students at the end of the class has been taught, and taught effectively, through the class. To that end, they may used a procedure called “backward mapping,” where they work backwards from assessment goals to design a curriculum that teaches what they expect to assess (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998).

Authentic Assessment, Including Student Assessment of Work

In traditional teacher-centered classrooms, a good teacher clearly lets students know what the grading system is, what information will be on the test, what is right and wrong, and what characteristics separate strong and weak students (Land & Hannafin, 2000). Good students learn what is expected and comply with what the teacher is asking them to do (Land & Hannafin, 2000). Even in learner-centered environments, the traditional method is so engrained that students will still ask if they have the right answer on open-ended tasks (Hill & Hannafin, 1997; Wallace & Kupperman, 1997).

In contrast, a constructivist perspective emphasizes “authentic assessment,” or performance on real-world tasks or using knowledge from real-world contexts (Wiggins, 1990). From this perspective, assessment focuses more on construction and application of knowledge than recall or recognition. Teachers ask students to report on active, authentic experiences, activities and projects: the emphasis is on assessing reflection, interaction and collaboration among learners. Assessment is integrated throughout the curriculum rather than in final products.

From the constructivist perspective, students as well as teachers can have an important role in assessing the student’s performance. The teacher still tests individual knowledge in order to be accountable to parents and the school system, but may also consider students’ own evaluations of their written work or a team’s evaluation of its project. Shepard (2000) argues that when students help design criteria for assessment that are clear and fair, it’s easier to ask students to do high-quality work. Pedersen and Liu (2003) also suggest that students assessing their own work should focus more on what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown than on their grades.

Portfolios and Journals

Just as teachers can assign activities that allow the student to reflect on and reformulate the course content, individual projects such as journals or portfolios can help students consider what they have learned and assess their development in a course (Barton & Collins, 1997; Glasgow, 1997). A portfolio is a collection of work that a student has gathered during a course, usually reflecting what a student considers his or her best work. When students review their portfolios during an assessment, they not only refresh their memories of the course content but have proof of the work they have done and the way it has changed.

Choosing their best work and explaining their choice to the teacher in writing can help students think about what the course is trying to teach, what their own knowledge about it and perspectives on it are, and what they don’t yet know or can’t yet do. The review can help students synthesize material in the course and evaluate the course content and themselves, to help develop higher-order skills in synthesis and evaluation. As students think about the nature of their own thinking, they may also develop metacognitive knowledge about how to think, as well as a greater sense of self-efficacy and a sense of challenges that remain.

In the elementary school classroom, students may not even know what it means to learn. When students review their class portfolios, they get to see what learning is firsthand—that they are using new vocabulary words, have learned new concepts, and write longer and more detailed papers that can better state a point of view.

Evaluation of Group Projects

Students can not only assess the quality of individual work but also rate the quality of group participation (Glasgow, 1997). For example, the individual’s contribution to the team effort could be rated both by team members and individuals themselves. The quality of a team’s project presentation could also be rated by the class as well as the team.

Students Write Their Own Tests and Assessments

Another strategy for student-centered assessment is to ask students to write their own tests. Lopa (2005-6) describes a project where he and his colleagues introduced students to ideas about test development, test models and questions before they wrote their own exam for the course; the process generated a rich discussion about the course content. When students write test questions, they can use such higher-order thinking skills as evaluation to decide what areas are important to focus on, or analysis and synthesis to decide how questions might address large areas of course content. Another project La Lopa (2005-6) described involved students’ designing their own assessments to be used for community leaders’ evaluations of group projects. In writing their own assessments, students can think about how knowledge might be applied and evaluated in a real-world setting, and can take a metacognitive approach regarding the way community members might rate the students’ knowledge, communication, or leadership skills.

Critiques of Student-Centered Assessments

Several critiques can be made of assessments done by students. First, whereas teachers have the big picture about what they are trying to teach and design assessments to reflect that, students may not have a good sense of what they don’t know or may consider some lack of information more important than it is really is in the big picture. Students may also not know how to evaluate content or depth in student work, or may be more impressed by style than substance. Also, teachers and students might not want to take valuable instruction time to develop student-centered assessments (La Lopa, 2005-6).  

Parents used to a traditional teacher-centered grading system may also not understand or value student-centered assessments. They may feel that these do not give them enough guidance about the progress their children are making. In public schools, students must also master grade-appropriate material. Otherwise, they will get poor grades or not be promoted. Teachers may feel that they need to give students grades that appropriately reflect their ability to master course material.

Another major problem with student-centered assessments is that students may give themselves and their friends high grades. When their friends do not do their share of the work (Huba & Freed, 2000), students may not know how to evaluate that or may not want to get friends into trouble.

On the other hand, student-centered assessment can give teachers a sense of what students think they are actually learning. They can also make teachers aware that even apparently small steps in learning may be important to a student. A good compromise solution may be for teachers to assign grades primarily based on their own judgments of how students are doing but also to review students’ own assessments. Additionally, if teachers are giving students good formative assessment of their work throughout the class, students are more likely to have a clear sense of the teacher’s view of their work as well as their own view by the end of the class. While teachers would use grades to assess and reward individual student performance, they should also recognize and commend the quality of group achievement. Deming (1982) also urges teachers to review their own teaching continuously to make sure that what teachers plan for the class and assess actually corresponds to what students learn.

Conclusion

Sometimes when people are dancing together they discover new ways of moving together in the course of the dance. The shift from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction has also generated interest in new forms of collaboration and social interaction.

Felder and Brent (1997) have summarized studies showing that in student-centered learning environments, students not only show improvements in school work, thinking skills, and attitudes toward subject matter, but also show improved teamwork and communication; and better interaction with peers and faculty. Slavin (1990) reported that student-centered activities can help students feel better about themselves; contribute to students’ being more tolerant of students of other backgrounds, including those who are handicapped; and help students enjoy school more.

Researchers and educators have also begun to inquire about collaborative learning in the context of online environments. Writing about one such project, Dillenbourg (2001) suggested studying such topics as the tasks students carry out in these environments, who belongs to the group and how it interacts, the way tasks are distributed, and riming of events in the group, Whether parents are as familiar with the internet as their children and go online, or whether there are differences between learners who are willing to learn with a computer simulation and those who are not are other questions that can be asked about collaborative online learning. In general, Reeves, Herrington and Oliver (2004) have discovered “a number of highly innovative and successful approaches that use the affordances of the online environment in ways that would be difficult or impossible if attempted in a weekly, face-to-face, on-campus mode.” Discovering new contexts for collaborative learning should provide exciting resources for educators, and exciting new opportunities for problem solving for students who may be eager to explore new possibilities for technology and interaction in the classroom.