Student Centered Approach (Advantages and Disadvantages on the Teacher)

Among the greatest of all services that can be rendered by men to Almighty God, is the education. The learning style is one of the important concepts that deserve to talk about deeply. The term student-centered learning became widely used in the teaching and learning literature. But most of people, especially here in Bahrain, still do not believe in this approach and its effectiveness. This why, they rarely use it. In this reflection I will talk about some advantages and problems that the teacher may encounter when using this approach according to what I have learned in ICT2 class.

First of all, the teacher will have less traditional work to do in the class, so the teacher focus will be on building the student confidence, self-esteem, and strong relationship with the student. In addition, complains about unfairness will absolutely decrease since everyone in the class is involved in the learning process. Furthermore, teaching will be more interesting and fun for the teacher, because it is not going to be only passing knowledge but also student and teacher experiences are exchanged. On the other hand, there might be some problems that the teacher may face when using this approach. One of the most important problems is that the teacher might not be trained to teach the students the team skills. In fact, it is not difficult to overcome such problem. There are a lot of programs, articles or books that can help the teacher to be better in teaching team skills. Moreover, there can be some disruption in the class since it is based on student cooperation. To avoid such problem, the teachers must have the class management skills. In fact, this can be easily acquired even by observing other experienced teachers.

This is what I wanted to explain briefly about the student-centered approach and its impact on the teacher.