Brief excerpts from Final Report of the Royal Commission on Learning, Ontario, Canada

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/abcs/rcom/full/royalcommission.pdf

...In seeking the best learning system possible for Ontario, we are not singling out or recommending any one of the countless reform thrusts and movements that are the rage in educational systems across the developed world - whether outcome-based education, site-based management, reading recovery, phonemic awareness, effective schools, amalgamation of boards of education, authentic assessment, or the like. In fact, we have avoided certain terms because their meaning has been so clouded by disagreement or misunderstanding that we consider them to have been
rendered useless; child-based learning, restructuring, and constructivism are good examples. It is obvious to us that if these, or a legion of others, were the panaceas many people believe are just waiting to be found, the world would already have discovered them...

...Almost every kind of reform has been ringingly endorsed and soundly condemned, in about equal measure and on the basis of equally serious research. While we single out and praise aspects of certain of these movements (not all, but some) - all change, it is worth repeating, is not progress - none seems to us to have the kind of paramount importance on which reform can be achieved.

...The central agent in the formal learning process and in the lives of students at school is the teacher. Well-educated and motivated teachers are the most vital component of high-quality education. Throughout their careers, teachers touch the lives of thousands of young people; without their commitment and participation, attempts to improve the school system are bound to fail.
"Learning is a full-blooded, human, social process, and so is teaching."
R.W. Connell, Schools and Social Justice

...Discussions about teaching are often framed as debates between opposing positions: child-centred versus teacher-directed, or student-centred versus subject-centred. According to the one position, teachers are to impart knowledge to students through direct, systematic instruction, focusing on skills and content. According to the other, teachers are to encourage children to take a more active role in developing their own knowledge, with less direct instruction on the part of the teacher. The educational pendulum seems to swing from one ideology to the other, with teachers, students - and, often, parents - getting hit as it sweeps by.

Such either/or choices, however, tend to misrepresent the complex nature of learning and teaching in the classroom: effective teachers use both approaches, as they direct student learning toward clear goals.