Exploring Perceptions and Practices of Student-Centred Learning among Third-Year undergraduate Students and Teachers in the English Department at the University of Algiers 2

Abstract

Geared toward enhancing learning quality and fostering independent, active, and responsible learners, educational research has long stressed the need for a shift toward student-centred learning (SCL). Yet evidence from the higher-education literature, together with concerns about the realities SCL enactment, suggests that SCL is often endorsed in principle but implemented unevenly in practice, especially under institutional constraints and with limited research integrating both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. Addressing this gap, the present study investigated the adoption of SCL in Algerian higher education, focusing on third-year undergraduate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms at the University of Algiers 2. Drawing on Weimer’s (2002) five tenets of SCL, it examined how third-year EFL students and their EFL teachers perceive student-centredness and the extent to which these perceptions align with observed classroom practices. A mixed-methods exploratory design was employed with 220 students and 22 teachers, using questionnaires, classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and student focus groups. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data underwent thematic content analysis. Findings showed that most students valued SCL and largely endorsed Weimer’s tenets; however, their participation and autonomy were strongly context-dependent as they were more visible in student-centred classrooms and reduced in teacher-centred learning (TCL) modules, with a minority still preferring directive instruction. Teachers also reported favourable views of SCL, yet their practices fell along a continuum from traditional to blended to fully student-centred, indicating partial and uneven enactment shaped by structural constraints and perceptions of student readiness and teaching efficacy. The study concludes that advancing SCL in this context requires targeted professional development, greater curricular and assessment flexibility, and explicit role shift of teachers as facilitators who share authority, scaffold autonomy, and prioritise formative feedback, and students as agentic co-constructors who prepare, participate in decision-making, and engage in self and peer assessment so that conceptual endorsement translates into consistent classroom practice.