Teachers’ Adoptation Level of Student Centered Education Approach

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify how far the student centered education approach is applied in the primary, middle and high schools in Düzce. Explanatory design which is one type of mixed research methods and “sequential mixed methods sampling” were used in the study. 685 teachers constitute the research sample of the quantitative phase of the study and 13 teachers constitute the research sample of the qualitative phase of the study. The quantitative data were collected using “Student Centered Education Scale” and the qualitative data of the study were collected by semi-structured interview form. Mann Whitney U test was applied to determine if the level of adaptation of student centered education approach vary in terms of gender. Kruskal Wallis test was performed so as to see whether teachers’ adaptation level of student centered education approach vary in terms of seniority and the type of school (primary, middle and high school) they work at. Qualitative data were analyzed by means of content analysis method. The quantitative findings of the study present that teachers’ adaptation level of student centered education is “high” whereas the qualitative findings reveal that the teachers still adopt a teacher centered education in terms of “Planning”, “Application” and “Assessment”. The findings of the study reveal that teachers’ adaptation level of student centered education is not significant in terms of gender and seniority; teachers’ adaptation level of student centered education decreases from the primary school to high school, and the perception of teachers in terms of practicability of student centered education is not positive. Some suggestions were developed based on the result of the study.

Keywords: student centered education, student centered education approach, teacher perceptions, planning, application, assessment