An Investigation of Student Centered Teaching

Abstract

THE SUCCESS OF client-centered psychotherapy with individuals has led to its application in group psychotherapy. The methodology and nature of the process have been investigated and described by sev eral writers, including Axline (2), Fleming and Snyder (7), Gorlow(8), Hobbs (9), Hoch (10), Peres (12) and Telschow (16). Educational literature reveals several studies which have applied group-centered therapy methods to the classroom under the name of student-centered teaching. Axline (3) worked with 'poor' readers, Shel don and Landsman (15) investigated the possibility of helping students who had encountered academic difficulty, Faw (4) applied a combination of the method and a traditional teaching method as a form of instruction for general psychology, Albrecht and Gross (1) report positive findings when social studies were taught by the group-center method, Schwebel and Asch (13) used the principles in teaching a course in the psychology of adjustment, and Kell (11) and Shedlin (14) have also successfully em ployed the technique in teaching. From these and other studies, we may conclude that personal and social gains follow the application of student-centered teaching methods. Faw (4) and Schwebel and Asch (13) have indicated that their findings suggest that the learning of course content does not suffer from the student-centered approach, but neither of these studies was designed to reveal objective data upon which to base such a conclusion. The following study was designed to determine if students taught by a trad itional lecture-discussion method will differ in their understanding of the content of a course in general psychology from a group of students taught by the student-centered method.