The Rise of the Individual Learner: Sociological Insights on the History of Student-Centred Learning

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research on student-centred learning lacks analyses of sociohistorical developments. This article contributes to this niche by developing a sociologically designed draft of its major upheavals. Drawing on Foucault’s genesis of governmental rationalities, it links the emergence of educational subjectivations to processes of structural change. Within this scope, the transition from feudal to liberal and neoliberal principles led to problematisations and idealisations of heterogenous grouping in schools. As part of the differentiation of selective and integrative requirements, the school system became the central authority for the realisation of the objectives of different educational requirements. As flexibilisation paradigms gained widespread attention, personalised methods started to function as harmonisation mechanisms of competing demands. Tracing these paths provides important historical insights into the embeddedness of student-centred learning in structural power relations. In addition, these findings can clarify complex dimensions of current potentials of and challenges in individual education.