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Educational Framework - Student Centered Learning





Education has traditionally been Teacher-centric with the teacher being the source of information and all activities being driven by the teacher. In most cases, students worked in silos. This is however not conducive to the development of 21st-century learning skills like Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity. Today's student must be in a position to access information, link new information to existing knowledge and develop creative solutions. Essentially, they should be able to learn independently.

 Student-centred learning(SCL) inverts the traditional model and puts the student at the heart of the learning process. It developed from the constructivist learning theory. Constructivism views learning as an active process of constructing knowledge from information. New information is linked to prior knowledge and hence the learning is subjective.

 SCL is designed for the student keeping his or her interests, abilities and learning styles in mind. The teacher is the facilitator of learning. Several learner-centric instructional models are used in schools all over the world.  Some of them are - Inquiry-based(starts with a question), Discovery-based ( explore a topic), project-based, learning centre based(split a classroom into different activity zones and allow students to rotate between the different sections), case study based,game-based and so on.

 Over time, the following have come to be identified as the chief tenets of SCL.

  1. Personalized learning - This comes from the understanding that students learn in diverse ways. So, learning is customized to student's needs and interests. Learning is also paced to a student's comfort level.
  2. Competency-based - Students move ahead when they demonstrate mastery of content. Learning is not tied to age or number of study hours.
  3. Anytime, anywhere learning - Learning is not restricted to the classroom.
  4. Students choose their learning paths based on their interests. 

In recent times, 'Anytime, Anywhere learning' has witnessed great strides through BLENDED LEARNING - a combination of physical and digital learning spaces. This framework aspires to provide personalized practice and skills through the digital medium while the teacher focusses on building depth and higher-order thinking. Digital data is used to determine the child's learning path. 
As the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) transforms the education sector, hyperpersonalization has become possible. Machine learning can help determine the learner's style and provide customized material from the same core curriculum. AI will shift the role of the teacher to a facilitator, supplementing digital lessons, helping struggling students and providing human interaction where required.

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