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By Karen Abrams, MBA, EdD 2025
The 21st century workforce has changed significantly. We now expect the workforce to reason dynamically and critically, make informed decisions, solve unknown problems, and work collaboratively to address unanticipated priorities. We cannot be certain which challenges will emerge and under what circumstances the workforce will need to adapt, it is therefore critical that formal educational systems prepare students to negotiate and resolve future uncertainties. Hence, the theory, Student Centered Learning has been touted as a needed alternative to traditional, teacher-centered instruction to develop the flexible, adaptive skills essential in the 21st century workforce.
The proponents of constructivist theory or ‘learning by doing’ refer to Piaget’s 1954 work analyzing cognitive approaches to education where he highlighted person-environment interaction or encouraging students to learn while working on tasks which allow them to explore, analyze, design, test and build. In this theory, the teacher may intervene by providing ‘scaffolding’ like rubrics and guidelines or by asking appropriate questions so that the student can develop hypotheses and test them. In constructivist theory, students do not passively receive and process information. Rather, they actively construct knowledge and skills and reorganize their understanding via interactions with their environment as well as other encounters and past experiences.
The article, A Design Framework for Enhancing Engagement in Student-Centered Learning” own it, learn it and share it, Lee and Hannafin introduce self-determination theory and suggest that individual autonomy enhances volition, motivation, and engagement which then helps to improve performance, persistence, and creativity in children. Lee and Hannafin assert that when students solve complex problems that require creativity and flexibility, intrinsic motivation and combined strategies tends to enhance performance more than externally-based performance goals alone. Essentially, when students make autonomous decisions, they assume greater responsibility for directing their learning, and become more personally engaged, which deepens their understanding.
In the article Web 2.0, Pedagogical Support for Reflexive and Emotional Social Interaction Among Swedish Students, Augustsson introduces the benefits of using web 2.0 tools as being well suited for supporting ‘learning by doing’. He posits that these tools improve collaborative learning, collective knowledge building, knowledge management, social networking and social interaction, which means that both course participants and teachers become more active and personally involved. Augustsson reinforces three propositions regarding the benefits of using web 2.0 tools to reinforce student centered learning (SCL) and collaboration in the classroom– 1)Support for students’ reflections on their own thoughts and emotions, 2) Strengthened identification and collaboration among students, 3) Support for the development of students’ self-awareness. The implication is that Web 2.0 technology can be used as a valuable supplement making students motivated and aware of themselves and the group they belong to, and partly by picking up on the conduct of individuals and groups.
In the article, Beyond Technocentrism, Supporting Constructionism in the Classroom by Karen Brennan, the author contributes to the body of work on constructionist theory by offering useful ways for thinking about how technology can be included in the service of learning in K-12 classrooms. Brennan shares that to support constructionism in the classroom, we need to focus on supporting teachers, who necessarily serve as the agents of classroom-level innovations. Brennan also shifts the focus from technocentrism; the tendency to give centrality to the technology tools in the classroom to constructionism; considering culture while learning with or through technology tools.
There is a rapidly growing and vast body of knowledge reinforcing the benefits of learning by doing or student centered learning. STEMGuyana leaders have designed all student programs around problem based and student centered learning. Migrating a traditional education classroom to this approach is not without its challenges but STEMGuyana’s programs are models which continue to be analyzed, refined and improved with the student as center in mind. The child who will lead in the 21st century will need to be confident, at ease with communicating at all levels, supporting collaboration and problem solving and with a strong basic understanding of maths and science. We believe that we are educating those future leaders today.
