In the latest episode of the World Bank’s Teachers Podcast Elaine Ding, Analyst for the Teachers Thematic Group in the Educational Global Practice at the World Bank hosted a conversation on teacher-directed vs. student-centered pedagogical approaches with Lucy Crehan, an international education consultant, researcher, and author. Lucy is the author of ‘Cleverlands: the secrets behind the success of the world's education superpowers’, one of The Economist’s books of the year in 2016, as well as a book on teacher career structures for the International Institute for Educational Planning and UNESCO. Lucy has also advised foreign governments on education reform at the Education Development Trust.  

In this episode, Elaine and Lucy discuss the debate about teacher-directed vs. student-centered instructional approaches to teaching and learning. Lucy provides firsthand insights about some of the benefits and drawbacks of implementing and sustaining these kinds of approaches in different educational systems, and highlights insights that have emerged from large-scale international student assessments. She also shares her own experiences in high-performing classrooms and discusses how teaching and learning can be organized to be most successful.