A Balancing Act: South African Geography teachers’ Implementation of Teacher-Centered and Learner-Centered Instructional Strategies in Their Classrooms

Abstract

Learner-centered instruction fosters 21^st-century skills and must be implemented in geography classrooms. In this South African case study, most teachers predominantly implemented teacher-centered instruction. The analysis of the results established a moderate but highly significant relationship between geography teachers’ years of teaching and their implementation of teacher-centered instruction and a weak significant relation in the implementation of individual instructional strategies. Teachers with more years of teaching implemented more teacher-centered and individual learner-centered instructional strategies than early-career teachers. Teachers stated that learners and parents expected them to teach and that large classes hindered the implementation of learner-centered instruction.

Keywords:

• Constructivism
• geography education
• learner-centered instruction
• teacher-centered instruction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.