What is student-centered? No, seriously, what is student centered? How does a teacher or administrator know he or she is making decisions that are truly student centered?
Simple Answer: by examining narrative - both the teacher's and the students'.
Explanation: Narrative is the complex interconnection of experiences, categories, and influences that make up the individual. Experiences range from where people are raised, how they are raised, where they went to school, who they learned from (formally and informally), social integration or isolation, and more. Categories are those labels that connect to identity - gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation.
So with it being so complex and individualistic, how can we truly be student-centered? When we look at a top down hierarchy in an educational institution and start at the bottom, with the student, it should be easy. As we move up the ladder to the pointy point at the top, where standardization is key to organizational continuity and capacity, it gets more difficult.
The answer is to develop a number of ways for students to be heard. In courses we teach student exit slips, surveys, and opportunites for feedback about the course and activities is necessary.
Programming needs to rely on more than just the one-off survey that a student may or may not take. Student advisory groups, information portals or emails that grab immediate feedback, a "how did we do today" dropbox.
Narrative means having open-ended discussions. It centers on how individual is navigating a course or a program. Hearing beyond institutional guidelines and limitations can open the way to innovations and programming that centers truly on the student experience.
