Reflection on Teacher-Centered and Learner-Centered Instruction

Personally, I believe the issue of teacher-centered and learner-centered instruction has always been a contoversial topic in Turkey. It is quite important to make a choice between teacher-centered and learner-centered instruction beacuse it makes up a dramatic portion of instructional objectives and also a teacher's teaching philosophy. The issue is arguable as there are teachers who favour teacher-centered instruction;on the other hand, there are some teachers who favour learner-centered instruction. In my high school, I had both kinds of these teachers.What makes them different is the importance they give to how much understood by students. For example,my English teacher always told us what we would be be able to do at the at end of the lesson or an instuctional unit. However, our history teacher always told us his yearly curriculum and how much we had progressed according to his plan. One thing I reliazed in history lessons was that even if we didn't understand an instuctional unit, he just moved on to catch up with his own schedule. It was quite teacher-centered. As a result,it wasn't any beneficial to our class. When we have come to talk about evaluation of these two types of instructions,I have more difficulty in teacher-centered instruction. As I have mentioned above, the teacher didn't care how much we understood. Especialy in written exams,I had no idea about what we were expected to study or know. But in learner-centered instruction, I was more enthusiastic and self-confident because I knew what I was expected to know and study. I am sure all students in Turkey go through the same problems!