Why the classroom needs a student-centred approach

As the new academic year approaches, teachers look ahead with a certain amount of excitement and trepidation.
Students in higher education were born after 2006 or so, well after the Internet and digital devices became commonplace.
For schools, the demographics are even more startling, as primary school students are now part of a post-Covid era.
Both Gen Z and Gen A have become part of everyday parlance and recognising their unique needs and circumstances is essential in education.
For thoughtful teachers, these are important considerations. The traditional classroom is teacher-fronted, with the syllabus, the methodology and assessment being determined by teachers long before the actual cohort comes into class.
Such a style of teaching is now seen to be nearly defunct and incapable of addressing core issues that face a generation that will enter the employment market with multiple technological and demographic challenges.
This is where a student-fronted curriculum could be introduced. Essentially, this means that student needs and styles of learning are centred and that they also have a say in the running of a course.
It has been defined as 'an educational approach that shifts the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student. It recognises that each learner is unique, with their own interests, motivations, and learning styles.'
Such a learning system assumes that the teacher’s role is not to deliver information, much of which is readily available online, but rather to act as a facilitator and a “designer of learning experiences.”This form of learning system is impactful for a number of reasons. Firstly, it recognises students, or learners, as the actual stakeholders of education. This has been lost over the many years when education has been seen as an industrial tool to impart content.
This format recognises students as central to the learning process and empowers them to take ownership of their learning, in terms of content, pace and style.
Such a system also encourages collaboration and community development among a cohort as they decide on how and what is important to their specific situation and level. This adds to the stakes in learning while creating a shared goal in the classroom.
A major development in this system is the method of assessment. As students take ownership of how they would like to be assessed, there is added focus on real-world projects and tasks that will develop knowledge as a process rather than rote learning.
The advantages of student-fronted curriculum are clear: they offer personalised, competency-based learning that speaks to the learning styles of each student personally.
It also assumes that learners are engaging with topics and areas which are important to them and their community, raising their own stakes in learning while allowing them to determine their own pace.
A student-fronted curriculum is not separated from the traditional classroom. Neither does it shift the onus of teaching and learning from professionally qualified teachers to novice and young learners.
All it does is to make students be seen as individuals for whom the classroom has a life-long impact, not as a homogeneous, passive unit of similar faces.
Education is more than learning content. Today, it is seen to be a holistic path to the development of individual skills, interests and competencies.
A student-centred curriculum would give learners a ring-side view of the process of education and support individual strengths and needs.
In an age when the very purpose of education is being questioned, learners ought to have a voice in what and how that learning should take place, even if partially.