Chapter 4: Learner Centered Education

"…who can question learner-centered education, if by that we discursively mean that the learner is at the center of education? This consensus gets under our skin and becomes taken for granted." (Dahlstrom and Lemma, 2008)

What is Learner Centered Education (LCE) and why is it so prevalent in educational reform programs? What are the underlying principles and theories on which it is based? This chapter will help you understand LCE from multiple perspectives—psychological, philosophical, epistemological, and socio-cultural. We will also examine the prevalence of LCE in educational reform in developing countries, its critiques as well as the barriers to making it a part of the mainstream educational process of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Over the last two decades, major educational reform efforts in many countries have centered on what is variously called learner-centered education, learner centered teaching, learning centered education, active pedagogy, active learning, student centered learning, participatory learning and democratic education. Learner centered education is more than simply putting the learner at the center of educational processes. This reductionist interpretation of LCE does not help us understand the multiple meanings of LCE in different contexts or the underlying philosophical and educational foundations of the term. Further, as Dahlstrom and Lemma (2008) point out, the notion of learners at the center of education is taken for granted over time thus blinding us to its purpose and practice.

This chapter is designed to serve as a primer to LCE. As such, it will first describe some salient characteristics of LCE, followed by its cognitive/psychological and philosophical roots. It will introduce social and emotional learning as integral to LCE. The chapter will end with a discussion of some of the barriers that stand in the way of implementing LCE.

Characteristics of Learner Centered Education (LCE)

Learner centered education as Dahlstrom and Lemma (2008) put forth has become a common, and often misunderstood, mantra in ministries of education. So commonplace is the use of the term that often everybody seems to take the meaning of the term for granted. In this section, we will attempt to reach beyond the common sense notions of learners as "at the center of education" (Swarts, 2003) to other things that educational research tells us about LCE.

There is a large body of international literature on learner-centered education and some relevant literature is listed in the references to this text. For this chapter and throughout Professional Learning Communities in the Teachers' College, the instruction under LCE is that in which teachers:

• both provide support to and challenge students.
• value prior knowledge and experience of students and bring that into play in the teaching and learning process.
• provide opportunities for learners to make meaning of new concepts and processes through interaction with others (learners, adults, teachers), with concrete objectives, and the students' own inner reflections.

In LCE mode, the learners:

• are given and make use of multiple opportunities to express their own thoughts as a way of enhancing understanding and exchanging their ideas with others.
• feel safe providing multiple responses to the problems posed to them. The correctness of the answers supplied by the learners is ascertained through a process of dialogue and debate and not through the sole authority of teacher and the text.
• generate knowledge through interaction with others and their environment. LCE highly values innovative thinking on students' part as well as their efforts to make their thinking visible.
• make new information meaningful in relation to their prior knowledge and experience.

Sometimes, mere involvement of students in group work, discussions, and activities is erroneously taken to be a manifestation of LCE. It is important to note that these modes of organizing practices in classrooms cannot be characterized as LCE unless they embody the characteristics listed above. For many reformers, the inclusion of learner-centered education in educational reform packages represents an antidote to transmission mode of education. The latter focuses more on teacher talk, learner note taking, rote learning and learner recall of information. Among other things, transmission or teacher-centered models of education are also blamed for poor learner performance throughout Africa. Please recall that the transmission mode has its roots in behaviorist psychology, which regards the student, not as an active participant in learning processes, but as a passive respondent to external stimuli—a recipient of knowledge and skills. The transmission mode, which is the predominant one in African classrooms and teacher education colleges (Akyeampong, 2006; Dembélé & Miaro-II, 2003; Lewin & Stuart, 2003; Schwille, Dembélé, & Schubert, 2007), focuses on the presentation of subject content, covering the curriculum (as opposed to uncovering the curriculum) and expects little in the way of critical thinking from learners. The transmission mode of teaching, while somewhat effective in helping learners pass exams, does little to foster critical thinking, robust understandings or habits of mind. Unlike LCE, it sees the learner as the object of teaching rather than the subject of learning.

Additionally, transmission modes of teaching are steeped in unidirectional norms of communication. Learner participation in dialogue, asking questions, challenging the teacher and other students, active participation, multiple correct answers, problem posing, and the notion of teacher as learner are not common elements of the transmission mode. Some argue (Freire, 1970; Freire & Freire, 2004; Kumashiro, 2000) that the transmission mode embodies unequal power relations and even oppression of the learner by the teacher. Further, learner performance throughout Africa, despite widespread attempts at reform, continues to be poor (EQUIP2, 2008). This poor performance is in part attributed to the unchanging teaching practices that focus on the transmission mode of teaching.

A number of recent studies have pointed to the central importance of good solid teaching as the most important factor in achieving good performance of students (Carnoy, 2007; EQUIP 2, Undated; Stuart & Tatto, 2000). Other systemic supports are important and promote quality education, but it is at the level of the teacher and the child that rubber meets the road. If the teaching and learning process are not put right, then no textbooks, furniture, infrastructure, curriculum or other inputs will bear fruit.

What Are the Psychological, Philosophical and Socio-cultural Roots of LCE?

The roots of learner-centered education are embedded in the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology and education. This section examines the foundations of LCE from the perspective of advances in our understanding of intelligence, cognitive psychology, epistemology, social and emotional learning and indigenous knowledge.

Intelligence and LCE: From Unitary to Multiple

For many years intelligence was framed by the research of psychologists and psychometricians. Spearman's work in the early 1900's provided a breakthrough in thinking about intelligence when he was able to test for and quantify general intelligence called "g." Later IQ (intelligence quotient) tests, which measured a person's performance on tests that were purportedly free of culture bias, were widely used to measure intelligence. In education this often was used to stratify learners into more and less able groups and in some cases provide different educational options for different IQ levels. IQ tests were seen as fixed assessments of one's cognitive ability, and progress in reaching a higher IQ level was unlikely. Additionally, IQ was seen as a unitary measure of one's cognitive and other abilities. The mind, according to Spearman and others, had one unitary quality that could be quantified as the IQ. In education, IQ has been used to rank and sort learners, especially in regard to determining learner groups and educational options (e.g. vocational vs. academic streams).

Critiques of the IQ test in the 1960's focused on the notion that the tests could not be free of bias. Many IQ critics noted that tests were culture-biased in favor of white, urban children (in North America and Europe, where most of the IQ tests were used). The IQ was increasingly being seen as a stagnant measure which erroneously assumed that intelligence could not develop over time and that the tests for measuring IQ measured a narrow range of knowledge and skills.

In the 1980s, Howard Gardner, a Harvard University psychologist in the USA, wrote a ground breaking book that has had a powerful influence in education. The book, Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983), was based on Gardner's work with children and victims of stroke. Stroke victims usually have lost function in parts of their brain while other parts still function. This led Gardner to believe that intelligence is not a function of the mind working as one unit; the mind has multiple functions that are not always dependent on other areas of the brain. In synthesizing the results of his and others' work in the fields of neuroscience, biology, psychology, sociology, the arts, and anthropology, he came to the understanding that intelligence is not a singular quantifiable mental capacity. Rather, he proposed a theory which said that individuals may have varying degrees of multiple intelligences with one or more being predominant. For Gardner, a broader definition of intelligence more accurately captured the human continuum. The different intelligences identified by Gardner are outlined in Figure 4.1.

For educationists, multiple intelligences has led to teaching that is more holistic in nature, structuring classes to provide learning opportunities for all children, nurturing children's emerging talents and providing learning experiences for improving less dominant intelligences.

Cognitive Psychology and LCE

Advances in cognitive psychology of the last few decades have also shaped the way in which educators view teaching and learning. Like the work of Gardner on intelligence discussed above, most of these advances have provided support to LCE. Proponents of LCE usually refer to the work of educational philosophers like Rousseau, Dewey, Pestalozzi and psychologists and cognitive theorists such as Vygotsky and Piaget to ground their emphasis on both learners and subject matter. In an overall sense, these scholars provided the basis for an education that involved children in actively experiencing their world, building on these lived experiences and using language and other cultural tools to express their understandings of the world. Here we assume that the work of Rousseau, Dewey, and Pestalozzi are well known to African educators. For readers more interested in this work we will provide references to it at the end of this chapter. In this section, however, we will discuss the idea of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) by Lev Vygotsky. Described in more detail below, ZPD's importance to a discussion of LCE is grounded in its simultaneous focus on proficiency goals as well as the current level of knowledge and skills of a learner. When we associate ZPD with LCE, we realize that learner centeredness does not imply simply placing the learner at the center of educational process. Below, we will discuss ZPD and Piaget followed by a brief discussion of constructivism.

Lev Vygotsky and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed the notion of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to describe the learning process as hedged between two limits or skill levels, an upper and a lower. The upper limit of ZPD referred to a range of tasks deemed too difficult for the child to master without guidance and assistance by adults or more-skilled children. The lower limit of ZPD referred to the level of skill reached by the child working independently. The ZPD uses the child's cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing, and progress can be made only with the assistance of a more-skilled person. Scaffolding is a concept closely related to the idea of ZPD. Scaffolding is changing the level of support given to a student. Over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled teacher adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child's current performance. Dialogue is an important tool in ZPD. In a dialogue, the unsystematic, disorganized, and spontaneous concepts held by the child are met with the more systematic, logical and rational concepts of the skilled helper.

Learning in the zone of proximal development is a joint activity in which the adult simultaneously keeps an eye on the goal of fully proficient performance and what the learner, with assistance, is currently able to do. In the case of language development, the process is natural and almost invisible as parents encourage and support their children's increasingly competent efforts. For the teachers, ZPD implies neither turning everything over to the learner to discover, nor providing all knowledge for the child to receive. This approach respects, seeks out and takes into consideration the children's current knowledge and skills in order to facilitate a guided acquisition of knowledge and skills that a child must acquire in order to become independent. This is loosely analogous to the process of taking the crutches away from a person with an injured limb after the injury has been healed. This process creates an enormous challenge for teachers to find the right balance between encouraging children to experience the world and construct their own knowledge of it and providing children with the essential knowledge and skills needed for this to happen.

Jean Piaget and LCE

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist with a background in biology. His natural science background led him to explore cognition, mental processes, thinking and learning from a biological perspective. He wanted to understand how children learn. By studying thousands of children and young people, including his own children, in a systematic way, he was able to identify four main stages of cognitive development. The four stages: sensory-motor, pre-operational, concrete operations and formal operations, were important breakthroughs in understanding learning that had profound impacts on the design of schooling, curriculum, materials development, assessment and teaching and learning.

Piaget's work has been influential in shaping educational theories in two ways. First, his well-known ideas about the developmental stages—also sometimes referred to as genetic epistemology—have provided grounds for many claims about instruction and learning. One such influence is visible in the work of Jerome Bruner (Bruner, 1963). Bruner's account makes use of the idea of Piaget's idea of developmental stages to claim that anything can be taught to anyone at any stage in an intellectually honest but developmentally appropriate manner. As you may have noticed, developmental appropriateness has since become a touchstone for evaluating curriculum and instruction designed for children at various stages. The second influence of Piaget is more critical to the LCE and is referred to as constructivism. This will be discussed in some more detail in the next section.

Constructivism and LCE

The ideas of John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, and Jean Piaget also find expression in the educational philosophy of constructivism. Not surprisingly, therefore, progressive education as it is practiced in the 21st century is regarded by many as largely based on constructivism. Constructivism, as a "theory and philosophy of learning" implies that human beings construct new knowledge through linguistic, experiential and other interactions with the world and individuals (Windschitl, 2002). There are several strands of constructivism including radical constructivism and social constructivism. However, while there is considerable variation in its definition, all versions of constructivism regard students as active constructors of knowledge rather than passive recipients. For this chapter we use constructivism as an umbrella term for various forms of constructivism (For more information on constructivism, see Hausfather, 2001) that all share the principles of constructivism, namely that a) there are multiple forms of knowledge, b) prior knowledge plays a role in the construction of new knowledge, and c) knowledge is socially constructed.

What does constructivism look like in practice? According to Windschitl (Windschitl, 2002, p. 137), teacher and student activity in constructivist classrooms would be characterized as shown in Table 4.1.

When examining the table below, one can readily imagine classrooms that are somewhat chaotic or, at least, very busy. The role of the teacher in a constructivist classroom then is also one of assisting learners to think on their own by providing appropriately challenging learning experiences. This does not mean that the teacher leaves the learner to go 'discover' knowledge. Rather, the teacher has an ongoing challenge of determining just how much support to give learners without 'spoon feeding' them. At the same time, LCE requires teachers to provide learners with intellectual stimulation. Another dilemma for the teacher from the constructivist perspective is that there can be multiple answers to problems, and individuals hold different perspectives on knowledge since their prior knowledge and educational experiences are, to a certain extent, unique. While there are multiple solutions to a problem, knowledge construction involves validating those solutions through a process involving debate and interactions between students. Not all solutions are created equal, and some lose out in this process of knowledge validation. Knowledge validation through debate among the classroom community is different from
knowledge transmission through the authority of the teacher.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and LCE

How is Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) related with LCE? Clearly, learners exist in social settings and have emotional dispositions. So, apart from having a cognitive perspective, educators also need to be aware of learners' social and emotional learning needs to create a holistic approach to LCE.

Increasingly, teaching and teacher education has recognized the need for a perspective on the teaching of the role of social and affective qualities to learners. Teachers also must handle the demands of teaching, which involve managing a range of stressful situations and a variety of interpersonal interactions with diverse students, parents, and administrators. To do all of this requires good grasp of SEL. SEL is the process of developing the ability to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively. For teachers, social and emotional skills and capacity affects their ability to handle the demands of the classroom, which include managing their own emotions. Whether due to factors outside the classroom such as a fight at home, or inside the classroom such as disruptive student behavior, being able to appropriately recognize and respond to the social and emotional cues of others allows teachers to establish positive relationships with diverse students, colleagues, and parents.

What has been described above boils down to the following: 1) in learning situations, it is the job of the teachers to ensure that learners feel emotionally and physically safe. Being emotionally safe also means that people do not subject those who look different or are disadvantaged in some way, to ridicule and sarcasm; 2) learners often need emotional support, and, when in need of support, they must know where to find it; 3) learners need to learn to manage their relationships positively and be surrounded by peers who also have socially responsible behavior; and 4) children and youth need to be actively engaged in learning endeavors that are relevant to them and enable them to develop the skills and capacities to reach positive life goals.

These four conditions are interdependent and reinforce each other. For example, teachers who have positive relationships with students will find it easier to engage students and to develop their students' social and emotional skills. Similarly, social and emotional learning contributes to safe and challenging learning environments. The upshot of this discussion is that LCE requires a holistic focus on the learners which goes beyond merely learning subject matter.

Indigenous Pedagogies and Indigenous Knowledge

Some scholars in education and sociology argue that learner-centered education will not take hold in traditional societies because it counteracts the role of the elders and the community in mediating knowledge. Traditional pedagogies, they argue (Ngara, 2008), are participatory and collectivist in nature. African children come to school with broad knowledge derived from participation in communities where everyone is a teacher. According to Ngara,

In the African sense, a child is a child of every adult in the community. Teaching the child in traditional Africa was therefore not the monopoly of the biological parents. Every responsible adult could teach any child about the community's ways (etiquette, survival, welfare, etc). (Ngara, 2008)

Does this socio-cultural perspective necessarily work against implementing a learner-centered education? We do not have an answer to this question. It is important, however, for the teacher educators and teachers to attempt to discover what elements of cultural characteristics work for or against efforts to foster more LCE oriented reforms.

Summary of LCE

Learning to think, learning to be critical, going beyond the recall of facts and the miming of skills are all important outcomes of LCE. Opening up a world of knowledge to student teachers so that they are excited by learning and become passionate about teaching is more likely to be achieved when the student teachers are active participants in their education rather than passive recipients of knowledge. Education is about learning, and learning is a complex cognitive and emotional exercise that transcends mere recall of facts and information. Helping student teachers make meaning of LCE through their process of becoming teachers rather than receiving knowledge of LCE is an important component of quality teacher education.

What are the Barriers to Effective LCE?

So how is it that, according to a number of authors, despite widespread policy reforms and programs to promote learner centered teaching in Africa, the dominant modes of teaching in teachers' colleges (and primary classrooms) continue to be grounded in transmission modes of teaching? If one understands that learning to teach includes student teachers experiencing and observing models of learner-centered education, then what accounts for the persistence of the transmission mode (or lack of significant widespread implementation of learner-centered education)?

A number of factors may be involved stemming from a variety of contexts. Swarts (2003) argues that inconsistencies between the rhetoric of what LCE classes should look like and what they do look like are due to lack of a shared understanding among educational actors and stakeholders as to what the underlying theory and principles of learner-centered education are. Additionally, not all aspects of educational systems are aligned to support LCE in the classroom. Large class sizes, lack of relevant teaching and learning materials, school administrations that oppose innovation and lack understanding of the practice of LCE, overloaded curriculum content and exams which focus on the recall of information all work against LCE being fully taken up at the classroom level. Others argue that cultural norms regarding communication across genders and generations prohibit the types of interaction required in LCE classrooms (Akyeampong, 2006; Kanu, 2007).

A comparison of the forces driving, as well as restraining, LCE from becoming more mainstream in Africa is given in Figure 4.3.

Seminars

Seminar 1. Perspectives on knowledge and intelligence

Introduction

This seminar is designed to help you identify the examples of multiple intelligences at work and relate these instances to your work as a teacher or teacher educator.

Specific Tasks

Read the statements about intelligence in Table 4.2. Circle true or false to represent your view on each statement. When you finish, share your answers with a colleague or group of colleagues. Be prepared to share your thoughts on each of the statements. You may use the text in this chapter and the article by Brualdi (1996) on Multiple Intelligences and their implications for teaching as a reference for your discussion.

Some questions for further discussion.

1. As an education student what did you learn about intelligence and how has that shaped the way you view teaching and learning? Share your thoughts with others based on what you have gained from this chapter.
2. How does the college curriculum for pre-service teacher education treat the topic of intelligence? What changes, if any, do you think the college curriculum should undertake regarding teaching future teachers about intelligence? What might a new unit on intelligence look like? Make a draft outline including activities.
3. What are some commonly held beliefs on intelligence in your socio-cultural context? Are there any similarities with Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences? Explain. How will you, as a teacher educator, link new thinking on intelligence from the fields of psychology and education to traditional notions of intelligence?

Seminar 2. Understanding learner centered education

Introduction

Learner-Centered Education, as pointed out in this chapter, is often misunderstood and incorrectly reduced. The seminar will help raise questions that clarify, refine, and contextualize the ideas associated with LCE.

Specific Tasks

1. Prior to reading these articles (and this chapter), what was your perception of LCE? How has your understanding changed? Explain your understanding of LCE to some colleagues. Can you give examples of your own teaching that demonstrate the principles of LCE?
2. How does the conceptual framework for LCE described by Swarts in Namibia differ from LCE as described in policy and program documents in your own context? Can you create a chart showing similarities and differences? What accounts for these differences?
3. Based on the readings, present an example from your own classroom to a group of colleagues that is representative or contradictory to one of the articles. Be prepared to cite the article and its relation to the practice you present.
4. After the presentations, review your understandings of LCE. How has your understanding deepened? What are the ambiguous aspects of your understanding?
   In Dhalstrom and Lemma (2008, p. 39), the authors argue that learner-centered education…'becomes a way for teachers to escape their educational responsibilities … through meaningless group work that recycles ignorance." What do the authors mean? How can 'group work' not be learner-centered? Explain. What elements of 'group work' that would make it learner-centered? Give an example of learner-centered group work from your subject area. Share your example with your colleagues.
5. Plan a lesson with one or more colleagues. Teach the lesson with one or more of the colleagues making observations. Following the lesson, confer with the student teachers to gain their feedback on the methods and approaches you used in the lesson. Discuss the lesson and student teacher feedback with your colleagues. Was it learner-centered? What aspects were learner-centered? Why? Was the lesson appropriate for the content and the students? Were the students intellectually challenged? How could the lesson be improved?

Suggested Reading

Dhalstrom, L. and Lemma, B. (2008). Critical perspectives on teacher education in neo-liberal times: Experiences from Ethiopia and Namibia.

Hausfather, S. (2001). Where's the content? The Role of Content in Constructivist Teacher Education. Educational Horizons (Fall 2001).

Swarts, P. (2003). Learner Centered Education in the Namibian Context: A Conceptual Framework. Okahandja, Namibia: NIED (National Institute for Educational Development).

Seminar 3. African indigenous knowledge

Introduction

The prompts in this seminar will help you identify the local ideas and practices that work against or support LCE. The main text pointed out the need to understand the workings of indigenous pedagogies in relation to LCE. However, we left the task of fully developing this understanding to this seminar.

Specific Tasks

Discuss the following questions.

1. Ngara (2007, p.8) asserts that African elites have promoted the compartmentalization and neglect of traditional African ways of knowing and "measuring success in life by how far one moves from one's indigenous culture." She also argues that many African teachers who are disdainful of traditional African knowledge and ways of knowing ignore students' talents and gifts learned through the community that might be seen as outside of the curriculum. Does your college curriculum include perspectives on indigenous African ways of knowing? If so, how is that perspective framed? Does your college curriculum view indigenous knowledge as something to build on and value? Or is there another perspective on indigenous knowledge? Explain.
2. Owuor (2007), in her article on integrating African indigenous knowledge into Kenyan education, makes some claims about indigenous knowledge and indigenous pedagogy. How does she describe these? Are there any connections that can be made between transmission modes of teaching and learning and indigenous ways of knowing? If so, what are they? Explain. Are there any connections that can be made between LCE and indigenous knowledge? If so, what are they? Explain.
3. Kanu (2007) argues for incorporating the concept of 'Sankofa' into education as a way of retrieving African values and practices from the past to expand education and make it more relevant to Africans. Is this concept consistent with what you know about LCE? Why or why not? Sankofa comes from the Mende people in West Africa. Do you know of any concepts similar to Sankofa? Do you think it is appropriate to include African values and ways of knowing in the training of teachers in a globalized world? Explain. What is the Ministry of Education's policy on incorporating African values in education? If there is such a policy, how is it translated into practice in classrooms? What is the role of the teachers college in this?

Suggested Reading

For this seminar it is helpful if you read the following articles:

Ngara, C. (2007). African Ways of Knowing and Pedagogy Revisited. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education. 2 (2) p. 7-20.

Owuor, J. A. (2007). Integrating African Indigenous Knowledge in Kenya's Formal Education System: the potential for sustainable development. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education. 2 (2), p. 21-37.

Kanu, Y. (2007). "Tradition and Educational Reconstruction in Africa in postcolonial and global times: The case for Sierra Leone." African Studies Quarterly 9, no. 3: [online] URL: http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v9/v9i3a3.htm.

Seminar 4. Making sense of learner centered education within the context of your teacher education program

Introduction

This seminar invites you to reflect on your own teacher education program. The reflection here is not meant to be a mere contemplation on your program, but more as a tool to help you think about what changes you would like to see in your program to align it with LCE. Your reflections and responses are not expected to result in comprehensive plans for restructuring and revising your curricula, but to help you describe and explain the major challenges that you might face in recrafting your practice and programs.

Specific Tasks

For this seminar, please read Stuart, J. (1999). Primary Teacher Education Curricula as documented: A Comparative analysis. MUSTER. This comparative study of teachers' college curriculum and teaching in Malawi, Ghana, Lesotho, South Africa and Trinidad & Tobago found, among other things, that the teachers' college curricula and its implementation revealed that college curricula tended to follow a traditionalist approach with little adaptation to the local socio-cultural contexts. Read the excerpt below (p.18). Relate this example to what is happening in your college, or the context in which you work. Try to answer the authors' questions that are embedded in the text below. What are some other questions that these findings bring up?

An example from Malawi, where we have begun to look at the curriculum in action, illustrates one problematic area. Lecturers did not seem to relate the educational theories to Malawi generally, nor to the student teachers' own experience either at home or in school. It was particularly obvious in the unit on child development; many of the students are married with children, yet there was no discussion of whether these 'stages' correspond to their own understanding of bringing up children. For example, do Malawian children, in the village, engage first in 'solitary' and then 'associative' play, as European children are supposed to do, according to Piaget and others? What happens when 'the child becomes curious and asks questions' in a culture where children are not supposed to ask adults questions?

It seems there may be two parallel discourses going on: a theoretical one largely drawn from Western conceptual frameworks and another about the kinds of teaching, learning and socializing experiences that go on in real communities, both home and school, which the trainees 'know' at a different, more practical level. It is the latter which trainees are likely to draw on when they enter the classroom. This brings up such questions as: how relevant is this part of the teacher preparation program? What understandings do the new teachers take with them into schools? What kinds of knowledge are being acquired here?

References