The Application Of Student-centered Pedagogy In Science Teaching

Several previous studies have indicated that there should be ongoing calls for teachingbased on constructivist approaches since both researchers and teachers have noticed thatlearners have persistent shortfalls in understanding and retaining knowledge through passiveapproaches to learning across all the ages and grades of students (Gardner,1991). Thisresearch study is a case study of two upper secondary schools which are located in KandalProvince, Cambodia. The research was mainly conducted with the aims at investigatings about learning based onstudent-centered approaches. To teachers, it was looking into how often each instructionalapproach have been applied in teaching sciences and was also examining techniques teachersdeployed to enhance student-centered approaches. Meanwhile, the researcher attempted toexplorechanged in terms of attitudes, knowledge and skills after participating in student-centeredlearning. More significantly, this research study was mainly conducted with the aim at furtherlooking into the major obstacles in which both teachers and students are usually confrontedwith when they apply student-centered approaches.Methodologies of this research study involved triangulation which was employed togather data from different groups. The main instrument used for data collection was self-administered questionnaires. Meanwhile, lesson observations and telephone interviews wereadditionally conducted to supplement information obtained from the questionnaires. Theresearcher used both probability and non-probability strategies to draw out the sample sizesfor the study. The study involved2principals,45teachers and a sample of110students fromthe two target schools. Self-administered questionnaires designed for different target respondents were distributed and telephone interviews were made available to only9teachersamong the45teacher participants and the principals of the target schools. The SPSS V.17.0(Statistical Package for Social Sciences) was used to analyze quantitative data. Dealing withqualitative data analysis of this research study, content analysis was employed by codingclassifying or categorizing-ended questions.The findings have indicated that teachers in the research generally applied student-centered pedagogies in science teaching and actively engaged students in their teachingparadigm by using stimulating techniques to facilitate each approach. However, both studentsand teachers are confronted with the major challenge in terms of teaching and learningmaterials and laboratories and several minor challenges such as class size, failure ofclassroom management when they put students in groups to carry out cooperative learning;confrontation and much noise during discussions because of opposing ideas among groupinor obstacles. Through thecurrent findings, there should be more ongoing calls for effective constructivist teaching byenabling availability of sufficient materials for teaching and learning and promoting teacherknowledge base, practical of sciences by which teachers should be often provided with moreopportunities of being further trained on both pedagogical and subject area capacity.