Teacher-Centered vs. Student-Centered Active-Learning models of education

I confess that for the first 20 years of my 35 years of teaching I used the teacher-centered, knowing-all-telling-all model of education. However, in the early 90s I read the following book and tried to convert to the student-centered active-learning discussion model.

Christensen, C. R., D. A. Garvin, and A. Sweet. (Eds.) 1991. Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

I was never very good at the discussion approach and found it to be noisy and messy as Christensen describes it in Chapter 6. But I agree with Piaget and Whitehead. True knowledge cannot be told (Piaget), and for real learning to occur students need to be active participants in the learning process, rather than passive recipients of information. (Whitehead 1929). Although the student-centered discussion approach is much more difficult than the teacher-centered lecture approach, I found it to be much more rewarding for both teacher and students when it works. As a cautionary note, I believe the education system frequently makes it difficult to implement the student-centered active-learning discussion approach. The system promotes the lecture method in many ways and tends to punish those who try to change.