Learner-centredness

The issue of learner-centredness will be discussed here particularly based on the case of Emily and her student, Candee, in the learning environment of blogging.

Firstly, how Candee engaged with the learning process through blogging was revealing in terms of the implementation of innovation viewed from the lens of learner- centredness. An evident feature of all entries on the blog is that commenting on the writings did not engage Candee in a visible way (for example, she did not reply to comments) and it thus appeared to remain an unfulfilled potential for expanding learning through this kind of conversation. The focus of all comments made by Emily and me was on sharing our thoughts with Candee through her writing and not on linguistic factors, which we believed would be conducive to the enhancement of her writing process and importantly her self expression, and also which was important to Emily as a learner mentor applying what she had learnt in Phase One of this project. From her point of view, Emily regarded this way of commenting as ‘a change’ for teaching writing, something she would apply in her future classes, as she remarked in an interview:

I had so far just focused on correction of grammar and linguistics in student writing papers but not on what I could understand from their writing papers.

144 Through this project, I have changed. In my future classes, I would focus on the issue of self in student writing.

However, whether or not the new practice of commenting could connect to the learner is an issue. That Candee did not reply to any of our comments was a sign that she did not engage in the new practice of commenting to a visible extent. Discussing the implementation of educational innovation from the viewpoint of the student, Fullan (2007, pp. 170-171) claims “Engagement [original italics] is the key word. All successful education ends up engaging the hearts and minds of students.” While Emily and I believed that way of commenting would benefit the writing process and, hopefully, the discovery of self, we failed to establish any return communication from the learner. The so-called “meaningful personal connection” between the learner and the mentor, which is primarily responsible for learner engagement (Fullan, 2007, p. 171), did not seem to be obtainable for us. From the lens of learner-centredness as relevance and responsiveness (White, 2007a), this experience of innovation, which had limitations according to Candee’s comment, speaks strongly for the significant role of learner engagement, which was not achieved as we were not able to establish a meaningful personal connection between the two parties.

Another issue arising from this experience of blogging is fluidity of the learner’s needs, expectations, and beliefs, which helps complexify the notion of learner-centredness in terms of relevance and responsiveness. It is evident that the environment of personal blogging was favourable for the student: Candee metaphorised the blog as a book of her own, in which she could write with little constraint and the topics of her own choice would tell who she was, what she was concerned with and interested in, and that was a reflection of her identity [paraphrasing Candee’s words]. In contrast to class writing, which limited and constrained her in terms of content and organization, and which was stressful for it often put her under pressure of evaluation, Candee, as shown in one of her interviews, preferred blog writing this way for the ways in which it enabled her self- expression. She particularly remarked that the focus of our comments on sharing our thoughts and not on language forms brought ease to the writing process. However, some issues emerged from the process of writing. As Candee repeatedly emphasized in the interview she had endeavoured to be creative in different entries, in terms of organization of ideas, for a rich image of who she was as a writer: from this a message for the mentor was that the learner aspired for both recognition and appreciation.

145 Candee explicitly mentioned a mismatch in terms of her learner expectations: “a disadvantage was that you only commented on how you felt but not on how creative I was in writing the entry” [Candee, interview]. In addition, as the writing proceeded, Candee was concerned about the appropriateness of language forms in her writings, something she expected to see in the mentor’s comments but she did not. To her gradual realisation, Candee believed that while the focus of content in writing helped her discover herself as a person, language appropriateness, if it was the focus of feedback by the mentor, would help build her confidence as a second language learner: this would in turn be conducive for the construction of her second language learner identity. If the relevance and responsiveness dimensions of learner-centredness involves “considering learner needs” and “knowing learners, their expectations, beliefs and so on” (White, 2007a, p. 323), then it totally makes sense to complexify the notion at a higher level that accepts fluidity of learner needs, expectations, beliefs, and other dimensions. In this regard, the nature of the learning environment, for example, personal blogging, can offer insights for an understanding of how fluid the learner dimensions in terms of needs, expectations, and beliefs can be.

5.6.3 Construction of and negotiation for professional teacher identity in