**3. Student-centered learning in contrast to conventional academic instruction**

In prior decades, student engagement in school and higher education has attracted considerable attention not only in research literature, but also in the general educational discourse, headlining educational conferences, meetings, and seminars across the globe [17–20]. As noted by Trowler [18], "a sound body of literature has established robust correlations between student involvement in a subset of educationally purposive activities and positive outcomes." According to Trowler [18], such positive results include enhanced "satisfaction, persistence, academic achievement and social engagement," making student-centered learning an essential aspect of a wide range of pedagogical debates.

Central to the concept of student-centered learning is the view that learners' engagement is a key contributor to students' success [20]. As such, student-centered learning can be described as the pedagogical approaches that prioritize the learner as the focal point of the educational experience. Where the learner is seen as an active contributor to the process of learning, the teacher assumes the role of a facilitator guiding the learner through a process of inquiry and discovery. Consequently, students are not reduced to the role of passive recipients of knowledge provided by the teacher; rather, they are empowered to take ownership of their own education, developing a deeper understanding of the subject matter, and sharpening their critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills [17, 18].

Characterized by its attention toward activity, interaction, and experience, the concept of student-centered learning has a lengthy historical background, including inspiration from behaviorism, organizational learning, and motivational theory. However, by acknowledging that engagement "is not just behavioral, but includes emotional and cognitive dimensions" [20], the socio-cultural perspective on teaching and learning has played a specific and important role in developing student-centered methodologies. As such, the approach to knowledge production in student-centered learning resonates notably with the works of classical education thinkers, such as Dewey [6, 7], and Freire [4, 5]. Although the problems that these theorists addressed in their writings were very different and the contexts for their writing varied substantially, their ways of framing education have inspired student-centered learning initiatives for decades.

In *Experience and Education*, originally published in 1938, Dewey [7] outlined a theory of learning based on a deep and practical appreciation of students' personal experiences. For Dewey, learning takes place when human beings interact with their surroundings. According to Dewey, education is essentially a social process in which students take an active part in the process of learning. This participation is seen as constitutive for gaining new knowledge and involves continuity and interaction between the learner and what is learned, formulated in the following question:

*Perspective Chapter: Enhancing Student Teachers' Professional Development through Active Learning DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112399*

"How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present?" [7].

The answer that Dewey gives to this rhetorical question is that schools should create a relationship between the students' histories and everyday lives and the school's curriculum [21]. Having their own histories and life-worlds mirrored in the school's teaching, in textbooks, and in the knowledge and skills that schools provide, motivates students to seek new understandings [7]. For Dewey, it is imperative that teachers "become intimately acquainted with the conditions of the local community, physical, historical, economic, occupational, etc., in order to utilize them as educational resources" [7].

Half a century later, Freire [4, 5], formulated a corresponding approach to teaching and learning. Sharing Dewey's idea that curriculum should correspond to students' previous knowledge and experiences, Freire emphasized that the turn from a teacher-oriented education to the inclusion of the students' experiences "must also include a global, critical dimension" [5]. Acknowledging the significance of students' experiences and active participation in the process of learning is more than a technique "simply to confirm the status quo or motivate students" [5]. Instead, taking students' life-worlds into account when teaching should also affect and perhaps even alter the students' experiences [4]. In this way, Freire laid the foundation for Young's [22] influential thinking regarding "powerful knowledge" and his argument that "the main purpose of school is to enable all students to acquire knowledge that takes them beyond their experiences" [22]. Thus, while Dewey emphasized the significance of context, Freire found that the contextual starting point also may create a space for action, intervention, and even transformation [21, 23].

Both Dewey and Freire developed their thinking in contrast to traditional education, where the role of the school is to pass a pre-defined and controlled body of knowledge to the learners. In Dewey's critique, traditional education has failed, as it overlooks the significance that real-life experiences have in the acquisition of knowledge. In a similar vein, from Freire's perspective, traditional education represents what he called a banking model of education [24], stating that teaching is the transfer of knowledge from someone who knows to someone who does not, thus isolating knowledge from practice and personal experiences. Dewey and Freire would agree that, within a traditional model of education, the roles of both the teachers and students are reduced. While teachers are seen as providers of a static body of knowledge, transferring what the curriculum prescribes as relevant information, students are pictured as "blank slates," or passive recipients, waiting to be filled with new knowledge. In Dewey's and Freire's view, traditional education created a sharp distinction between school and other arenas, for example, children's leisure time, largely ignoring the significance that students' own experiences have in motivation and transformative learning.

A common concern for Dewey and Freire is that teachers continue to play an active role within a learner-centered education [4–7, 24]. In both Dewey's and Freire's alternative, the teacher is responsible for selecting the content and building the curriculum that incorporates diverse perspectives. For learning to take place, it is the teacher's task to plan, organize, and facilitate spaces for interaction and collaboration. Engaged teachers take responsibility for relating their teaching to the lives of the students, responding to students' natural curiosity by providing adapted learning activities and integrating assessments that measure real accomplishments, and giving students a direction in which to proceed to raise their academic level. Hence, in Dewey's and Freire's student-centered models, the teacher activates the power of the

co-construction of knowledge and strategies that may occur when students' experiences are used as a starting point for teaching.
