1. What are teachers’ perceptions of student-centered education?

- In my opinion, I think perceptions of the majority of the teachers of today’s

generation are positively inclined to student-centered education because they
are motivated to adopt the change in the teaching approaches because they
believed that these approaches are more effective than the traditional teacher-
centered pedagogies. It is believed that the change of teaching methods move
the focus of instruction from the teacher to the learner thus, improve student
engagement to learning and cooperation to classroom activities. But the
teachers could also benefit to these since these enhance their professional
growth and teaching style. They need to do lesson planning ahead to better
prepare for the implementation of this approach. However, I also believed that
some teachers are still not adopting with these teaching strategies because they
are still not comfortable to this change especially to those who are already used
to implementing lecture-based teacher-centred approaches.

2. What types of activities keep elementary school students highly engaged

and retaining information?
- I believed each teacher have their own teaching styles and strategies to
capture students’ attention and commonly use classroom activities to make
them actively involved and highly engaged in the learning process and
retaining information. Some of the activities are class participation activities
like “Popsicle stick names”, “Think-pair-share”,“Wait time” and the like,
personalized learning activities like involving students in academic goal-setting
for themselves, giving students multiple opportunities to show their knowledge
and ideas, using flipped instruction strategies and the like, cooperative learning
activities like groupings, inquiry and project-based activities, brain-breakers
activities and others.
There are many types of activities that they can introduce to students but what
important is that whatever activity they use, it should respond to the needs of
the learners. It should make students active partners in the learning process by
making them feel supported and encouraged.

3. If/when teachers allow students to dictate the direction of a lesson?

- In student-centered approach, lesson plan is already prepared ahead before
the conduct of classroom teaching and basically, the teacher has already a
direction of a lesson according to plan from the reviewing of previous lesson,
introduction of new lesson, teaching methodology and assignment for the next
 day and I think most teachers will not allow students to dictate the direction of
a lesson, unless a need arises or any other valid reasons.

4. How can teachers create opportunity for choice in an environment of conflicting

demands?
We cannot deny the fact that our students came from different status, tribes,
race, cultures, views and with that, sometimes we cannot avoid conflicting
demands in the classroom. But what important is for the teacher’s strategy to
manage and handle conflicts to maintain the tone of your classroom learning
environment. Letting both parties heard their side and letting them also
involved in creating ideas to resolve conflict work out most of the time. Again,
teachers have each own unique style in managing and resolving conflicts. The
approach of the other may be effective to your own classroom but not so
effective to the other or vice versa. It may be different approach with the others
but the point is, conflict between students will be approached with
reconciliation as the goal to maintain the classroom learning environment.

Prepared by:

Emmanuel F. Magtanum
Aflek NHS-SHS Teacher