The Amelioration of Learner-Centered Instruction through Training: The Case of Iranian EFL Teachers

As an entrenched component of instruction in different learning contexts, learner-centered education (LCE) continues to feature as one of the major preoccupations of pedagogues and educational researchers. Though introduced to the field of applied linguistics more than four decades ago and researched by numerous investigators from a variety of vantage points, the concept of learner-centeredness appears to be in dire need of more organized probes, particularly the effect of training programs on boosted implementation of LCE and enhanced learning outcomes. Informed by this gap in the literature on LCE, the researchers in the current study aimed to examine the efficacy of LCE training for better application of learner-centered instruction on the part of teachers, in particular its two major components: advocating student agency/initiative and fostering interaction/collaborative learning. To this aim, 30 language school teachers from both genders were selected and assigned to two groups. To evaluate teachers’ performance in terms of LCE tenets prior to and successive to treatment (LCE training workshop), an adapted version of Shihiba's (2011) checklist, with a five-point Likert scale, was employed. As the findings revealed, the experimental group teachers who were exposed to LCE training outperformed the control group participants in terms of overall LCE measure as well as its two subcomponents, i.e., advocating student agency/initiative and fostering interaction and collaborative learning. The findings offer fruitful implications for teacher trainers and language teachers concerning the proper implementation of learner-centered instruction.