Compare And Contrast Teacher Centered And Teacher-Centered Approach

Education: Teacher-Centered vs. Student-Centered approach
“Hi Jia, thank you so much!” A young man just thanked me after I did a good job about piano accompanying, then he gave me a big hug. At that time, my face turned crimson in embarrassment and stepped back a little because I was totally freaked out. In China, people barely hug each other because people think it is a very intimate behavior, and it only happens between lovers or relatives. A hug is considering as an indecent or improper act between different genders, and I had only known him for a few weeks. Therefore, we are not used to hugging around in Asia countries, and that is why I feel wired and rude when people give me a hug. After spending a few years in America, now I totally …show more content…
In American schools, the learner-approach is considering a very effective teaching approach. This approach is an advanced educational method for students because students are self-motivated to study on their own by nourishing the critical thinking. One of the essential features of learner-centered approach is communication among teachers and peers, and taking advantage of the discussion in the class. As Smithee states class discussion helps students to figure out what they have learned, and discover the content as much as possible by involving students’ perspectives and experiences (p.3). Put another way, only learning what professors have lectured can potentially sabotage the self-learning ability of students. For example, I have been taking the piano lessons with both American and Chinese pianists, who have two totally different teaching methods, and I feel a huge difference about being taught. When I met my piano teacher for the first time in China, I still remembered what he told me exactly. He said I would be fine if I fully followed what he said and corrected for what he asked. Later on, a lot of people watched my performance and said I became much better than before, so my parents and I so believed him and tried the best to follow his instructions every time. After a while, I got used to only listening to him and never doubted it. Honestly, …show more content…
student-centered approach. In the West countries, the learning-centered is the most prominent teaching method applied in schools, and helping the student to grow up as a critical thinker is the significant goals. On the other hand, in Eastern countries, it is the opposite way to teach the student, which is a teacher-centered method. This method totally depends on teachers how they instruct, and students are only strictly following by teachers’ instruction. In another word, the answer to the question is always unified, and there is not much room allowed for the student to freely discover. In this point, you may wonder whetherthe learning-centered approach is definitely better than another one because teacher-centered approach is not humanized, and it kills the creativity of students. Of course, it is very true that teacher-centered approach has its flaws, but I would never think this teaching method should be totally abandoned because I truly benefited from this method when I was young, and I am still grateful that I have experienced before. I appreciated those teachers who made me memorize a big number of Chinese poems and worked on my mathematics without using a calculator, etc. To be honest, I would never work on or memorize textbook if I don’t have to, and those skills eventually worked out at some point of my life, and I am grateful for