Teacher and Student Centered Learning: A Philosophical Investigation

Abstract

This article seeks to principally investigate the philosophical roots of teacher and student centered modes of learning. This mode of investigation allows us to better understand and acknowledge the intellectual movements and paradigm shifts through the ages that necessitated one or the other learning methodology at any given time. By demonstrating that the teacher centered style of learning fundamentally serves the premodern and modern intellectual movements, the article effectively makes a case for student centered style of learning as it better corresponds to and caters to the demands and dictates of post-modernism- the dominant intellectual movement of the modern times. The article is especially critical of the relentless pursuit objectivity, as typically advanced by the modern and premodern traditions. Instead, it argues that the scientific discoveries in recent times have brazenly exposed our otherwise complex and multifaceted reality and in order to account for these new realizations, it is increasingly becoming necessary to reevaluate our objectivity-obsessed learning practices.