Bremner, N. (2021) 'The multiple meanings of 'studentcentred' or 'learner-centred' education, and the case for a more flexible approach to defining it', Comparative Education, 57 (2), pp. 159-186.

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Visual timelines have become an increasingly popular way of enhancing life history research. Most timeline-based studies have involved participants creating timelines “there and then,” usually in the presence of the researcher. This article proposes an alternative: the “take-home” timeline, which involved participants taking their timelines home and completing them in their own time. Seven English language teachers, who had participated in the take-home timeline method, were interviewed to explore their experiences of the process. Specifically, they were asked to consider whether the take-home element of the timeline method may have influenced the quality of the data. The teachers reported several benefits of producing their timelines at home, particularly in terms of helping them recall, organize and express complex ideas. Their experiences would appear to support cognitive science research on memory retrieval, as well as an increasing body of research on unconscious mental processes. The author concludes that increased time may be a key factor in enhancing the quality of data produced through qualitative approaches such as timeline-based life history studies, and suggests that the time element could be taken into account in a wider range of narrative studies. Key limitations of the study are recognized; in particular, that participants were only subjected to the “take-home” method and were not given the chance to take part in the “there and then” method.

This article provides a comprehensive descriptive overview of the implementation of learner‐centred pedagogy (LCP) in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Considerable time, money, and resources have been invested in LCP in many countries worldwide, and yet we still lack a comprehensive body of evidence regarding its implementation and outcomes. This systematic review aimed at going beyond the limitations of individual studies, confined by time, context and samples, in order to offer stronger applicability and generalisability to wider contexts. The dataset for analysis consisted of 94 journal articles published between January 2001 and December 2020, selected based on explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria. A team of three researchers utilised EPPI‐Reviewer and QSR NVivo to import, screen, and analyse the texts. The literature on LCP implementation was mapped by key variables such as country, educational setting, study participants, and methods. Firstly, the study found that despite LCP being explicitly promoted in numerous contexts, most classrooms were still predominately teacher‐centred. Secondly, the review identified a wide range of constraints and enablers of LCP implementation, spanning across the individual, classroom, school, policy, and wider society levels. Thirdly, although several positive and negative outcomes of LCP emerged from the study, the review found that the objective evidence on LCP outcomes was somewhat limited, indicating that there is an urgent need for additional research to evaluate LCP outcomes. A conceptual framework of LCP implementation is presented, and implications for policy and future research are discussed. The video abstract for this article is available at https://youtu.be/57EsnDUe_QQ. Rationale for this study Despite the worldwide spread of learner‐centred pedagogy (LCP), we currently lack a comprehensive body of evidence regarding its implementation and outcomes. Why the new findings matter The findings will help educational stakeholders decide whether and how LCP‐related reforms should continue, based on the enablers, constraints, and outcomes of LCP implementation identified in the review. Implications for educational researchers and decision‐makers Firstly, educational researchers will benefit from having a clear summary of existing research which identifies opportunities to further enhance our knowledge; in particular, there is an important gap in the literature in terms of research on the outcomes of LCP implementation over time. Secondly, educational decision‐makers will be better placed to decide (a) the extent to which they should continue to allocate limited resources towards the implementation of LCP‐related reforms; and (b) how they may learn from the cumulative findings of existing case studies to increase the chances of successful implementation.