Student Choice in the Classroom and Democratic Education
What seems to be essential for the success of open syllabus classes, a collaborative learning model, and transparent teaching in general, is student autonomy and choice in the classroom, and teaching practices and methods that foster that sense of freedom and independence.
As a way of appealing to students’ basic needs for:
Love and Belonging Power Freedom Fun
Jonathan Erwin (2004) advocates for incorporating choice into all aspects of the classroom environment and the learning process. Simmons and Page (2011), both high school English teachers, also agree with Erwin’s views on teaching and discuss their experiences giving their students more choice and control over their learning. They note that in their attempts to “motivate and work with adolescents to ask questions, create knowledge, [and] examine social issues,” they created a student-centered, highly motivating classroom environment (Simmons & Page 2011, p. 66). In the final project for the students’ unit on The Crucible, their task was to “reflect a theme” in any way they wanted, using whatever medium they wanted, which would later be evaluated according to a class-designed rubric (Simmons & Page 2011, p. 66).
During this project, students were broken up into small, heterogeneous groups and had to work together to select a prominent theme from the text and display the meaning and importance of that theme. In the project guidelines, Simmons and Page (2011) were primarily acknowledging their students’ need for power – “power within” which is “obtained when developing the knowledge and skills that increase the quality of [their] lives” and enables students to be successful academically, socially, and personally; and “power with” which is “achieved when working cooperatively with others . . . where the need for power and the need for love and belonging intersect” (Erwin 2004, pg. 14). Students were encouraged to both follow their independent desires and ideas, and also collaborate with their classmates to produce a more comprehensive, final product. Freedom was also an essential component of the project as Simmons and Page (2011) gave their students the ability to choose their topic of focus and how they would display their understanding of that topic, allowing the students to be more creative.
Throughout this process, Simmons and Page (2011) worked to motivate their students through collaboration, by letting the students work within small groups and with the entire class; creative freedom, by giving them the opportunity to produce something they found personally interesting and engaging; and equality, by ensuring that as teachers, they followed the same guidelines established by the class and made changes according to what the class decided.
This kind of project is an example of what advocates of student choice and power in the classroom work to support. Prior to Erwin’s, and Simmons and Page’s research on students having choices in their education, Alfie Kohn (1994) identified several overarching benefits to allowing students to have more power and control:
Student Choice, Power, and Control → Higher self-esteem Feelings of competence Sense of responsibility Higher performance Understanding of value in education
Students tend to have higher self-esteem and feelings of competence, as well as improvements in their overall well-being when they have some control over their learning; they gain a strong sense of responsibility; they perform at higher levels and are more likely to be able to apply their knowledge to a variety of contexts; and they learn to value the educational process and system, which enables them to more concretely express their opinions (Kohn 1994).
To achieve any of these benefits, opportunities for student choice need to be consciously worked into a teacher’s methods and lessons. Differentiation makes choice and freedom more attainable in a classroom and Kohn (1994) outlines the different avenues of differentiation as the what – what topics and texts will be studied, the how – in groups or independently, during class time or outside of class, the how well – how students’ learning will be assessed and evaluated, and the why – discussing the value of and rationale behind assignments. Sheryn Waterman (2008) takes this a step further in a model of teaching she calls “democratic differentiation” (p. 1). This varies from traditional differentiation in which “teachers adjust instruction to meet the needs of students” because in Waterman’s model, the teacher “shares that responsibility with [their] students” and helps them “discover their learning styles, interests, and ability levels so that they might make good learning choices” (Waterman 2008, p. 1)
Democratic differentiation or democratic education in general seems to be the end point for many of these educators as democratic education involves choice, freedom, opportunities for autonomy, space for student feedback and input, and constant open communication between students and the teacher. For these features of a democratic learning environment to be established, discussion, talking between teacher and students, and talking among students, is essential. For bell Hooks (2003), discussion is a key component of democratic education because “conversation is the central location of pedagogy for the democratic educator. Talking to share information, to exchange ideas . . . affirms to listeners that learning can take place within varied time frames . . . and that knowledge can be shared in divers modes of speech” (pg. 44).
With my inquiry, I wanted to explore one of the beginning steps of creating a democratic classroom: transparent teaching as a means of both opening communication between myself and students, and empowering students to consider the different choices they may have in the way they want to learn.
As a way of appealing to students’ basic needs for:
Love and Belonging Power Freedom Fun
Jonathan Erwin (2004) advocates for incorporating choice into all aspects of the classroom environment and the learning process. Simmons and Page (2011), both high school English teachers, also agree with Erwin’s views on teaching and discuss their experiences giving their students more choice and control over their learning. They note that in their attempts to “motivate and work with adolescents to ask questions, create knowledge, [and] examine social issues,” they created a student-centered, highly motivating classroom environment (Simmons & Page 2011, p. 66). In the final project for the students’ unit on The Crucible, their task was to “reflect a theme” in any way they wanted, using whatever medium they wanted, which would later be evaluated according to a class-designed rubric (Simmons & Page 2011, p. 66).
During this project, students were broken up into small, heterogeneous groups and had to work together to select a prominent theme from the text and display the meaning and importance of that theme. In the project guidelines, Simmons and Page (2011) were primarily acknowledging their students’ need for power – “power within” which is “obtained when developing the knowledge and skills that increase the quality of [their] lives” and enables students to be successful academically, socially, and personally; and “power with” which is “achieved when working cooperatively with others . . . where the need for power and the need for love and belonging intersect” (Erwin 2004, pg. 14). Students were encouraged to both follow their independent desires and ideas, and also collaborate with their classmates to produce a more comprehensive, final product. Freedom was also an essential component of the project as Simmons and Page (2011) gave their students the ability to choose their topic of focus and how they would display their understanding of that topic, allowing the students to be more creative.
Throughout this process, Simmons and Page (2011) worked to motivate their students through collaboration, by letting the students work within small groups and with the entire class; creative freedom, by giving them the opportunity to produce something they found personally interesting and engaging; and equality, by ensuring that as teachers, they followed the same guidelines established by the class and made changes according to what the class decided.
This kind of project is an example of what advocates of student choice and power in the classroom work to support. Prior to Erwin’s, and Simmons and Page’s research on students having choices in their education, Alfie Kohn (1994) identified several overarching benefits to allowing students to have more power and control:
Student Choice, Power, and Control → Higher self-esteem Feelings of competence Sense of responsibility Higher performance Understanding of value in education
Students tend to have higher self-esteem and feelings of competence, as well as improvements in their overall well-being when they have some control over their learning; they gain a strong sense of responsibility; they perform at higher levels and are more likely to be able to apply their knowledge to a variety of contexts; and they learn to value the educational process and system, which enables them to more concretely express their opinions (Kohn 1994).
To achieve any of these benefits, opportunities for student choice need to be consciously worked into a teacher’s methods and lessons. Differentiation makes choice and freedom more attainable in a classroom and Kohn (1994) outlines the different avenues of differentiation as the what – what topics and texts will be studied, the how – in groups or independently, during class time or outside of class, the how well – how students’ learning will be assessed and evaluated, and the why – discussing the value of and rationale behind assignments. Sheryn Waterman (2008) takes this a step further in a model of teaching she calls “democratic differentiation” (p. 1). This varies from traditional differentiation in which “teachers adjust instruction to meet the needs of students” because in Waterman’s model, the teacher “shares that responsibility with [their] students” and helps them “discover their learning styles, interests, and ability levels so that they might make good learning choices” (Waterman 2008, p. 1)
Democratic differentiation or democratic education in general seems to be the end point for many of these educators as democratic education involves choice, freedom, opportunities for autonomy, space for student feedback and input, and constant open communication between students and the teacher. For these features of a democratic learning environment to be established, discussion, talking between teacher and students, and talking among students, is essential. For bell Hooks (2003), discussion is a key component of democratic education because “conversation is the central location of pedagogy for the democratic educator. Talking to share information, to exchange ideas . . . affirms to listeners that learning can take place within varied time frames . . . and that knowledge can be shared in divers modes of speech” (pg. 44).
With my inquiry, I wanted to explore one of the beginning steps of creating a democratic classroom: transparent teaching as a means of both opening communication between myself and students, and empowering students to consider the different choices they may have in the way they want to learn.
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