Perceptions of faculty about student-centered curriculum

Abstract

Background: The term student-centered learning (SCL) is widely used in the teaching and learning literature. Student-centered learning, if implemented properly, offers benefits to all, including the institution, students and staff involved, higher education staff unions, students′ unions, and society as a whole. Materials and Methods: Present cross-sectional study was done to find out faculty attitudes and practice towards student-centeredness of curriculum in their own settings. Results: that learning environment (66.18%) is student-centered in most of the institute, followed by teaching and learning methods (57.65%), and the least student-centeredness was observed in learning outcome component (23.53%). All other components i.e. professional academic development (48.53%), student assessment methods (47.06%), mobility, recognition and prior learning (46.08%), social dimensions (44.12%), quality assurance (39.22%), consultation with students (28.43%) were student-centered in less than 50% institutions, indirectly suggesting practice of teacher centered curriculum. Conclusion: It has become clear from the study that, overall, there is practice of teacher centered curriculum. Particularly students need to be consulted in process of curriculum and in preparing learning outcome. Students should be part of quality assurance process.