Existential relationship between teacher-centred learning and student-centred learning: Inauthentic solicitude as a necessary condition of authentic solicitude

Abstract

This paper adopts Heideggerian authentic and inauthentic solicitude to explain how the teacher-centred learning (TCL) approach serves as a possible necessary condition for the student-centred learning (SCL) approach through hermeneutic phenomenology as the methodological direction. The two approaches should be seen as sharing an existential relationship, rather than conflictual. For one, TCL can be characterized as more inauthentic solicitude by which teachers as authoritative sources of knowledge as “The They” dominate education discourses, leaping in for students as passive learners in the inauthentic mode. For the other, SCL can be characterized as more authentic solicitude by which teachers as facilitators enlighten and leap ahead for students as active beings who reclaim the grip of mine-ness to initiate self-directedness in learning and intersubjective interaction with others in the authentic mode. Students’ passive role in learning from “The They” lays a solid foundation for later authentic solicitude in active learning which necessarily emerges from accumulated tradition and experience. Existentially, TCL constitutes a pool of “The They” out of which SCL becomes possible.