I think it is appropriate to link together discussions of student-centered
teaching and the broader discourse about lifelong learning. The object of
student-centered methods is, afterall, to foster skills for lifelong
learning. But let me play the Devil's advocate, Nate, and ask in what ways
and in what situations would it ever not be good to be a lifelong learner?
Who would be in favor of arrested learning? I suppose if your object was
to produce drones for mindless assembly line work, lifelong learning might
be seen in a negative light, but I can't see why anyone else would be
opposed (at least in principle) to the idea of fostering the development of
skills for lifelong learning.
>I am also seeing transformation in a particular way as a critical social
>consciousness. In an SOE environment that could be the "praxis" that Diane
>has shared about, but it seems to be beyond a conversation of being student
>centered or not. So often the student/teacher centered dichotomy can
>just be a diversion of tweedle dee and tweddle dum which gives us two
>different paths to the same destination.
I would argue that the development of skills for lifelong learning is a
necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the emergence of a critical
social perspective. By this argument, student-centered teaching has an
inherent subversive aspect to it---once you give 'em the tools for managing
their own learning, there's no way to control just what it is that they are
going to choose to learn.
---Tim