Scan
I’ve been thinking more and more about student engagement and the ways people talk about learners as they age, especially the transition from primary to intermediate and early highschool. There seems to be a loss of the ooh factor. It can seem like students become increasingly hesitant or avoidant of learning over time. Where is the ooh in learning going as students age.
Focus
There are a lot of factors outside of the educator’s control. As students age their brains develop, their social contexts change drastically, and their interests outside of learning change. This is a side effect of developing as a person and important to development for learners. If this isn’t happening there’s another more serious problem. Educators do have power over school and classroom communities, lesson structure, and the way learning is presented. The answer is going to come from assessment and motivation theories. The understanding exists but like all theory, implementation is the art of it.
Hunch
From observation and thinking back on my own teen learning experience I think there’s a few different factors at play.
- Agency/Responsibility disconnect. As students age they are often given more responsibility. This can come from home with chores, ets, younger siblings, extracurriculars, or even just catching the bus or walking home. In the classroom this often looks like homework, projects, deadlines, and summative evaluations that require studying outside of class time. This isn’t to say that any of these things are bad on their own, but rather that the amount of responsibility for students, as they move beyond primary, often increases faster than the amount of agency they have. This is difficult because duty of care often requires reducing agency in learners, because without a developed prefrontal cortex people tend to make riskier decisions.
- As we age, learning becomes higher stakes and social interaction becomes more complex. Students are wary of failing, especially in front of peers. This is a great place where assessment practices and growth mindset are important for learners.
- Academics may not be the most valuable thing to a student and as learning becomes less about play and more content heavy, it might be tempting to push it back in favour of other interests. How do we make space for the multifaceted nature of people, well making sure they are also able to meet curricular expectations.
Learn
The first things we need to learn are about students directly. What responsibilities and agency do students actually have? I’ve taught at a bunch of schools and grade levels as a TTUC and I wanted to make sure I was getting as much value out of this experience as possible for when I someday deal with the U. I found a lot of intermediate and early highschool students had responsibilities tied to family businesses or needs. Many students worked part time for a family business, often to help their families and learn from their parents. Many students I talked to considered one day taking over a family business. For rural students I talked to, responsibilities often revolved around livestock and agriculture. Students almost all had a responsibility to care for at least a couple of animals. There’s a wealth of research highlighting the benefits of this and it’s a mainstay of Montessori programs. I have a few stand out examples of this interplay agency and responsibility. I wanted to see if I could notice a relationship between agency and responsibility.
The learning about students was done by both listening to students when they wanted to share as well as information shared by classroom teachers familiar with the students. This information, like any information about students, was shared to help me understand and meet their needs.
Example 1 is an early intermediate student whose family is connected to a large ranch. This student once came to me at the beginning of class to excitedly tell me that last night he had pulled two calves. He explained that he was out riding his dirt bike when he came upon a cow struggling to give birth to two calves. Not only did this young student safely bring two calves into the world on a Tuesday afternoon, but the owner was pleased enough to give him $20 for his efforts. This is an extreme example but it highlights the relationships between agency and responsibility. This student has grown up around cattle his entire life. It’s likely he’s been doing largely unpaid farm work since he was old enough to move a square bale. He saw the health of the cows on the farm as a responsibility that he was up to managing. He also had enough agency to ride dirt bikes around a farm on a school night. This doesn’t necessarily mean that 4H or FFA like programs are necessary for student success, but it does suggest that thoughtfully given agency can give students the confidence to take on responsibilities.
Example 2 is a grade 7 student who spent some of his young life in a refugee camp before coming to Canada. This student is the oldest school age child in his family and is often responsible for translating for their parents. This student had a lot of agency because of some of their responsibilities. This sometimes created problems because this student would lie to their parents, usually claiming that it was a school holiday or that they didn’t need to go that day. This student was using their responsibility to increase their agency. This student was not disrespectful and was honest when caught or called out. This student struggled academically because of attendance. This is an interesting intersection of responsibility and agency because many immigrant students become key points of contact between schools and families. This student had to take on a lot of self responsibility, often around report cards. This had mixed success but it really seemed like a skill they were building. This may also be complicated by hunch 3.
Example 3 is a student who displayed incredible responsibility but struggled in school. For this student, due to family situations, they had become responsible for themself and a younger sibling much of the time. This student showed incredible responsibility in caring for their sibling and had good attendance when they had the agency to do so. This student was responsible, but due in part to an unstable homelife, did not have the agency needed to meet all of their responsibilities. They struggled to find continued motivation for classroom learning.
By learning about learners it’s possible to examine the interplay between agency and responsibility. It’s important to be mindful of when other motivations (hunch 2 & 3) can complicate this interplay.
Take Action
If You’ve noticed a focus on hunch 1 it’s because I feel that a lot of work has already gone into managing students disenfranchised from their learning. Motivation is a huge topic and so the focus on hunch 1 is where the spiral ended up taking me. The bulk of my teaching experience has been with intermediate students. A lot of the students I met have plenty of responsibilities even just within the classroom. One common practice that seems to really create responsibility is classroom jobs. These jobs vary in difficulty and sometimes include some sort of compensation. A few intermediate classes run room economies where incomes are tied to classroom responsibilities like setting the calendar or handing out assignments and materials.
The other thing I started to work on was noticing attempts at agency. When lessons aren’t working or student’s are overwhelmed, they struggle to meet expectations and they start pushing against decorum. This has been referred to as classroom management for decades. One could instead try understanding outbursts as an attempt at agency. Students rarely exercise the agency to walk out of a lesson. Students can’t simply walk out or go home. When they do it is usually behind a process that includes SBTs. If student actions during lessons that aren’t working are acts of agency, we can understand them with empathy and be receptive to this feedback. Losing the room is feedback and checking out is an act of agency.
For assessment I focused on projects as much as possible. Introducing artistic choice to a subject integrates responsibility and agency well. For feedback I left comments with suggestions for fixes or improvements. I took the responsibility to do good academic work and turned it into an optional chance for growth.
Beyond this the idea is to attempt to understand if students are balanced in both their responsibilities and agency. As educators the goal is to then introduce balancing factors. This could possibly be modelled with feedback loops and I might just have to give it a try during block 5’s practicum.
Check
How did the actions actually impact learners? I found every classroom I’ve been in with clearly explained routine responsibilities for students at the start of the day have students completing their routine tasks without complaint. I’ve even noticed students jumping at the chance to support tasks getting done in the face of an absence. Depending on the responsibility students consistently show an eagerness and willingness to complete their role in the classroom’s operation.
I’m working on noticing when students are trying to exercise agency. I spoke with more experienced educators who saw this back and forth as a form of communication between teacher and learner. They describe reading the room as a growable skill. For my own mindset I find that the mental space of viewing actions as agency rather than disobedience is a lot more positive and result oriented.
I found projects were mostly received positively. One thing I found interesting is that some students really struggle when given too much agency. They become almost paralyzed and unable to begin the task. So far I’ve had success supporting these students by starting together. The I do, We do, You do model might be a good way to balance fear (hunch 2) with the importance of choice. Overall i found that assessment focused on creating time to improve created an opportunity that the majority of learners over the 2 projects I assessed this way took advantage of for the benefit of their learning.
