Teaching with a student centered classroom is believed to be more difficult because it is hard to ensure that students will lead themselves to reach the targeted learning goal. It is hard to predict if they are capable of learning everything effectively on their own. It is thought to be easier if the teacher is in control of the learning because the teacher can control exactly what the children are learning and how they are learning it. It doesn't leave much room for unpredictable errors and the teacher can always monitor what is being covered and what still needs to be taught to the students.
In my field experience, the daily math lessons were completely in control of the teacher. The students were expected to sit and listen to the teacher explain a concept and then eventually follow along while she guided them through workbook pages.
I think that it was sometimes hard for the students to be motivated during their math lesson because they felt like they were not really contributing anything. They were just being taken step by step through the workbook pages and the lesson. It was very common for the teacher to have to stop and tell a student to pay attention.
The math lessons of my teacher were similar. He had full control, but he expected the students to transfer the information he was putting on the board into their math notebooks. Similarly, the students weren't fully paying attention to the teacher because they were too busy copying the information to their notebook.
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