Teacher-Centered Curriculum

Teacher-centered curriculum refers to a body of assumptions about the purposes of education, beliefs about knowledge, learners, and learning observable in teacher behaviors and classroom practices. Teacher-centered curriculum embraces an orientation toward education as a venue for socializing students toward enacting their roles in society through mastery of particular skills and traditional values. Beliefs associated with teacher-centered curriculum focus on specific knowledge, including official curriculum and core curriculum. From this orientation, knowledge becomes a commodity transmitted from teachers to learners who are presumed to be receptive vessels. Teacher-centered curriculum is most effectively and efficiently transmitted through methods that impose curricular order and is characterized by pedagogical methods that presume teacher as authority, learning through repetition, and learning as a quantifiable outcome. Teacher-centered curriculum is usually presented in contrast with the concept of child-centered or student-centered curriculum.

Teacher-centered curriculum does not have a history of its own separate from its contrastive connection with student-centered curriculum. Accounts of teacher-centered curriculum most often appear in the research literature as a contrast for descriptions of student-centered, constructivist, or project or problem-based approaches to curriculum. From as early as the 1800s, this has been the way curricular theorists have labeled curricular practices where the teacher is in the active role with students in passive roles. Teacher-centered curriculum has such an intractable quality in that despite prolonged efforts to displace it with student-centered curriculum, it continues to be an accurate description of the curricular practices of most teachers regardless of grade level. Because of the resilience of this approach, one wonders whether curricular theorists might not examine more carefully why such a curricular approach endures.

As early as 1920, educational research explored the question of whether teacher-centered or student-centered curriculum produced greater learning in its students. This question did not emerge because there was a tradition of excellence in teacher-centered curriculum, but because researchers were trying to promote a discussion approach to curriculum to combat lecture methods that were already in place. These researchers labeled any kind of instruction employing lectures as teacher-centered, whereas the new improved discussion approach they were promoting was labeled student-centered. In the literature and research on curriculum practices in the schools, this continues to be the case. Educational researchers develop new techniques and practices that involve more student input and interaction, which is contrasted with more traditional practices. The approaches using more student input and interaction are labeled student-centered, and all other traditional practices are identified as teacher-centered. Currently, teacher-centered curriculum is represented in essential schools, direct instruction, or educational practices that emerge from belief systems, which promote schools as sorting mechanisms. Teacher-centered curriculum often emerges as the culprit in arguments about social reproduction, hegemonic practices, and social inequality.

When teacher-centered and student-centered curricula are contrasted, the differences between the two are often characterized by instructional practices or pedagogy rather than in curricular terms. Yet, when one considers them from a cur-ricular rather than a pedagogic approach, it becomes more difficult to distinguish between them. A teacher might have a teacher-centered [Page 849]curriculum yet practice student-centered pedagogy. Conversely, a teacher who embraces a student-centered curriculum may enact teacher-centered pedagogy. For example, based on research, which indicates that poor and minority students perform better in highly structured and orchestrated classroom environments, some school districts may mandate forms of teacher-centered pedagogic practices. Yet, teachers within such schools might embrace students as co-learners, enact their authority more as a responsibility than control, take inquiry approaches to content, and create a culture of democratic practices in their classroom. Although the teacher-centered pedagogy might be more immediately observable, the curricular practices of the teacher are actually more aligned with student-centered curriculum. Teachers' pedagogic practices typically reflect their curricular orientation. Therefore, teacher-centered curriculum usually involves a classroom culture in which the teacher is the singular authority, students are passive, and curricular content is nonnegotiable and is visible in both the curriculum and pedagogy.

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