In developing students to achieve standard success, they must possess critical thinking, good communication skills, collaborative attitude, and having creative minds (National Education Association, 2017).
There are several strategies that the teacher may use in delivering the lessons (Cox). However, despite of evolving educational styles that we have, still we cannot remove the traditional strategy that we have which is the teacher-centered approach. According to the Room 241 Team (2018), in teacher-centered instruction and education, students put all of their focus on the teacher, teacher talks and the students exclusively listen. Moreover, during activities, students work alone, and collaboration is discouraged.
In addition, this described as teacher direct all classroom discussion and activities. This set up basically has an advantage in the learning process of the students: (1) when education is teacher-centered, the classroom remains orderly.” and Students are quiet, and you retain full control of the classroom and its activities. Garett (2008) supports this statement adapting the ideas of (Dollard and Christensen, 1996) that teacher-centered classrooms, control is of primary importance and “authority is transmitted hierarchically”, meaning teacher exerts control over the students. (2) because students learn on their own, they learn independence and make their own decisions.
In addition, students conscientiously took notes, raised their hands to ask questions or respond to queries, and were tested on how well they understood the material covered (Sion, 1998), meaning they are responsible in their own learning process. (3) because you direct all classroom activities, teacher don’t have worry that will miss an important topic. Ahmed (2013) described that in teacher centered approach, teachers make all the decisions concerning the curriculum, teaching methods, and the different forms of assessment. With this, teacher can be considered as the planner, instructor, and assessor of everything, so students will catch up if ever they will be missed lessons. However, teacher-centered approach is not a perfect strategy and fit for all lesson or topic. Room 241 Team (2018), also stated some disadvantages of using teacher-centered approach. (1) when students work alone, they don’t learn to collaborate with other students, and their communication skills may suffer. .
(2) instruction can be boring for students it may happen that their minds may wander and may miss important facts. (3) doesn’t allow students to express themselves, ask questions, and direct their own learning. Ehlen (2018) supports these by stating that in traditional approach, relationship among students and instructors often remain distant. She also added that in this approach students may take notes during lecture and then leave. In relation to this statement, Huba and Freed (2000) described teacher-centered learning as: students passively receive information, emphasis is on acquisition of knowledge, and teacher’s role is to be primary information giver and primary and evaluator. There is no room for student’s personal growth, they also added.
