Posted in EdTechReview, this article gives some background on student-centric teaching and provides six classroom practices for doing so. The flipped classroom, in my opinion, really allows for the better implementation of many of these practices.  Let’s take a look at the first one:

Make students do their tasks on their own: Teachers are involved in doing many tasks for student learning. They offer examples, ask questions, call on students, add detail to their answers, organize content and review. Any given day, teachers are working more than their students. Due to this, students get to practice less and fail to develop essential learning skills. Teachers should ask students to organize their own tasks, accumulate knowledge on their own, be a part of group discussions and collaborate with other students to develop their learning.

Time is something we never have enough of.  Students need time to practice and develop those essential learning skills.  The flipped classroom opens up time, as less time is required for direct instruction when students have, for example, viewed/previewed the lesson/concept/content the prior night.

Also, if teachers are formatively assessing that prior night’s work (which I love using Google Forms to do – especially being able to embed a video and ask the questions I would normally ask during a lesson), then the teacher already knows (or at least better knows) where to add more detail and provide the needed clarification.  All of this equates to more time for students to collaborate and develop their learning!

To close, I think the author of this article does justice noting that the student-centric classroom is not an easy task.  It may not be an easy task, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy!