What are the psychological assumptions and implications of ‘child-centred’ education?
Child-centered education has been a topic of debate and discussion ever since Piaget (1970) coined the term and the Central Advisory Council for Education published the Plowden Report (1967). This paper investigates the psychological assumptions and implications of child-centred education and suggests some recommendations to resolve these issues, by research on this topic. For clarity, the child-centered education in this paper focuses on the children in primary school and not on the other learners at the higher levels of education.
To understand the meaning of child-centered education, it is first pertinent to discuss the term ‘child-centered’. Most authors use the terms ‘child-centred’ and ‘learner-centred’ interchangeably, to denote the same meaning. However, it is important to note that while the word child-centered education only involves children in primary schools, the learner-centered could be extended to include all learners irrespective of their ages or stages of learning. And, consequently, the teacher in the primary school would use practices that are based on theoretical approaches that pertain to teaching children of that age group, but because the learner-centered theories for older students are different, a teacher dealing with adolescent or adult students would make use of different approaches accordingly (van Harmelen, 1998). This brings out the differences in the implementation of these two approaches.
The essence of the Plowden Report (Central Advisory Council for Education, 1967) runs thus: ‘At the heart of the educational process lies the child.’ The psychologists such as Martin Woodhead (2005) explain how the child has certain needs and the requirements of childhood involves those around him in fulfilling these needs. These caregivers include the parents and other family members, the school and the administration, the teachers, as well as the members of the community in which he lives.
These needs of the child in school have to be met by not only the teachers and mentors but also by the curriculum, content, and the method of pedagogy used to impart them. So, these must be particularly framed to fulfill these needs. And only then would education in this manner become child-centered. Moreover, the teachers and caregivers have to recognize these needs and adapt themselves and their lessons to satisfy these needs (Woodhead, 2005). The needs of a child are different from that of an adolescent or an adult and therefore the education of the child should be driven by meeting the particular needs of the child and his particular level (van Harmelen, 1998).
One of the common assumptions about the child-centered approach is that the whole child or all the aspects of the child are taken care of: the psychological, emotional, and social needs of the child have to be met as a whole to maximize and promote healthy learning, enthusiasm, and achievement in each child (Crick, et al., 2007). To be fruitful in this holistic approach, the teacher, the family and the society have to come together and play their parts in the development of the child.
Consequently, Piaget sees the teacher’s interventions as mainly in the form of offering the context of the phenomena to be studied, and not as instruction or control of the child (Burman, 2017). However, this means that there is no way to fashion the child into a responsible future citizen as any type of regulation would seem contradictory to the child-centered education model (Burman, 2017). However, this interpretation of the theory is incomplete. Child-centered learning only deals with the learning process and the methods of learning and teaching. However, there is also room for consolidation of the knowledge, practicing and improving the skills learned, and evaluating and reinforcing the learning.
It is an important point of argument that the teacher, with a classroom full of children, is also faced with the challenge of fulfilling the needs of every single child. This is despite the fact, that the needs and attitudes of each child differ from the other. Because of this, the educational environment must provide the most supportive and suitable context for the learning to take place without much interference from the teacher (McCombs & Whisler, 1997). This supportive context can be created through the framing of suitable curriculum and content and training the teachers in the most effective strategies to achieve optimum learning (McCombs & Whisler, 1997).
Deakin Crick et al., (2004) framed a learning profile that learners could evaluate themselves to have achieved the seven learning dimensions: changing and learning, meaning-making, critical curiosity, creativity, learning relationships, strategic awareness, and resilience. The child has to change first from his previous state that is conducive to learning; the child reduces the meaning of the learning, develops and improves a critical curiosity that is crucial for learning; creating ideas, schemes, and outlines that would bring out new initiatives; learning the relationships between phenomena and exploring the unknown by comparing with the known; awareness of the methods of strategies that can aid learning; and the flexibility that is needed to change preconceived and rigid notions and beliefs to explore new avenues and ideas and test their validity.
Not only can the learner use this tool to help him progress in learning and take personal responsibility for this learning, but the teacher can also use it to formulate learning strategies to foster the environment of learning. However, it is to be noted that the increase in the learning power of the child also depends on their unique temperaments, values, and attitudes, and the relationships that they form with the teacher, the others in their environment, and the content (Crick, et al., 2007).
As we know, each child’s needs and attitude to learning are different. In the same way, the type of family background also affects their needs and readiness to learn skills. For instance, children belonging to the middle class are already brought up in an atmosphere of motivation to learn and are more apt than children who come from working-class families. The teacher normally tends to gravitate or teach to the level of the more ready and skilled children. Erica Burman (Burman, 2017) explains this phenomenon to be the result of a lack of play between the mother and child in communities that belong to the subsistence class, whereas, in the higher levels of society, the children are made conscious of the need to learn and groomed to reach a higher educational level.
The learning environment that is supportive of child-centered learning would also consequently depend on the associations between the teacher and the learner, the nature and content of the curriculum, the overall emotional climate prevailing in the environment, the methods of pedagogy followed by the teachers, and also the excellence and characteristics of the school leadership. Therefore, the implementation of child-centered education would also mean providing a psychosocial ecosystem and re-structuring the environment of the school to meet these parameters, so that the child can carry out his learning successfully and efficiently (Crick, et al., 2007).
Despite all the aura and sensation that swept over the education system after the Plowden Report, there were also some critical views on the child-centered educational approach. For instance, the ‘William Tyndale Affair’ involving a north London primary school gave fuel to the spate of criticisms against giving freedom to children to study in their own way, with few regulations over their behavior. However, it was later found that the school had interpreted the Plowden report to suit their ideas, resulting in a chaotic situation that was the result of gross mismanagement (Gillard, 2004). Hence, it is evident that the approach to this system of education should be well-planned and a practical approach should be adopted to the implementation of the system. The teacher has to also include systems to practice, consolidate, and evaluate the skills that are learned so that the learning would be permanent and deeply embedded. Some children would need more practice than others and bringing them to the level is important. These reinforcing systems were also part of the Plowden Report as without proper supervision the learning would be short-term only and serve no useful purpose. It has to be remembered that the most basic and important skills in language and mathematics are learned at this stage and could impact their whole life.
From another perspective, schools, teachers, parents, educational authorities, and even government agencies tend to focus on student achievements, and evaluation practices to test these achievements and thereby grade the students and teachers and school. However, this practice has a detrimental effect on the child-centered approach. The punitive measures that can be expected by underperforming schools, students, and teachers lead them to dilute the child-centered approach with more regulated learning methods. Thus, there has to be planning and policies that can maintain the delicate balance between the drive for raising the level of achievement to a higher point each year and the need to nurture a child-centered learning approach that is important to the all-round development of the child and consequently, a higher level of scholastic achievements in the country as a whole.
References
- Burman, E., 2017. Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. 3rd ed. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
- Central Advisory Council for Education, 1967. Children and their primary Schools (The Plowden Report), London: HMSO.
- Crick, D., Broadfoot, P. & Claxton, G., 2004. Assessment in education, Developing an effective lifelong learning inventory: ELLI Project. Assessment in education, 11(3), pp. 248-272.
- Crick, R. D. et al., 2007. The ecology of learning: factors contributing to learner‐centred classroom cultures. Research Papers in Education, 22(3), pp. 267-307.
- Gillard, D., 2004. 'The Plowden Report', the encyclopaedia of informal education.
- McCombs, B. L. & Whisler, J. S., 1997. The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for increasing student motivation and achievement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
- Piaget, J., 1970. Piaget's theory. In: P. H. Mussen, ed. Carmichael's manual of child psychology. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 703-732.
- van Harmelen, U., 1998. Is learner centred education, child centred?. Reform Forum: Journal for Educational Reform in Namibia, Volume 8, pp. 1-10.
- Woodhead, M., 2005. Psychology and the Cultural Construction of Children's Needs. In: A. James & A. Prout, eds. Constructing and reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London: Falmer Press, pp. 61-73.
