Category Archives: The Choice Project

This is an inquiry project. My intention as a teacher is very much to promote autonomy and good choice making in the classroom, as well as to be inclusive of various funds of knowledge and ways of knowing. The question I am exploring here is, “If I provide choices for students in their work that spans a range of abilities and interests, will I see spontaneous self-regulation or engagement in students who typically appear bored or unengaged in the typical situations with less choice?”

03/27/14

Conclusion

Inspired post title, right? Well, it’s also a bit of a misnomer. While I wanted to give a sense of completion to this project which I’m going to attempt to wrap up here, both for my sanity and anyone who is reading this, I also would like to point out that this project has taken on a life of its own. I had originally thought that this would be where I handed in the link to my blog to my instructor and maybe got to move on in my life from this whole thing. However, it has proved to me to be incredibly important, and not even close to “done”. For those of you who like to read blogs backwards, this post might be a bit of a spoiler. OR maybe it will act as a hook. So let’s see what I can do to convince you to read some more.

So, have I answered my question? Yup! Sure have. But for those of you who like to have that one right answer, you might be a bit disappointed, because the answer is even more convoluted than I thought. So if you want it put simply, here it is: the answer to my question is… No. Choice is probably not enough to get disengaged students engaged. Now go away.

Still here? Okay. Here’s the real answer: Maybe.

What I’ve discovered is that choice is one of a whole bunch of factors that contribute to an engaging classroom environment. Choice is really important. In fact, it is necessary. However, it is not sufficient.

I’m not in the business of summarizing, but other factors include: self-efficacy, the physical classroom environment, belonging, cultural background and perception of choice, the kind of choice provided, and autonomy. None of these factors are discrete. In fact, they make up a big mess of things to consider when teaching students, but as far as I can tell the number one thing to consider when trying to get students to care about school is by creating an environment in which they feel respected, empowered, and safe. Easy, right?

I probably could have gotten right into the theorists that specifically talk about this stuff, but I didn’t know where to look till I started wading into all this. (Hint: Keywords = autonomy, Choice Theory, Self-Determination) However, now that my research and musings have led me here, these theories and models are all the more convincing.

 

Self-Determination Theory: Posits that the educator behaviours that matter most to student engagement can be clustered into this handy triangle: autonomy support, competence support, and relational support (Assor, Kaplan & Roth, 2002). As far as I understand, this essentially means encouraging students feel independent and empowered, helping students experience success by providing adequate scaffolding and direct support for learning, and promoting the social and emotional literacy of students. Some add one more important component to this model: relevance (Assor, Kaplan & Roth, 2002). It seems obvious that in order for students to care about what they are learning they need to see the point of it, and yet this is something that is often overlooked. Refer to my post on grades, motivation, and choice for some of the problems with replacing intrinsic motivation with an artificial, extrinsic motivator. As well, take a look at The Hands-On Learning Project for reasons and ways to infuse relevant, real-world learning into the classroom.

 

Choice Theory: While the title of this theory seems like a no brainer for where to start on researching choice, it is not all that the title might lead you to believe. While the root of this theory is choice, it is not talking about the kinds of choice that teachers provide, but rather identifies choice at a much more individual and philosophical level. It seems to me to be an academic-rooted defense for a worldview that has been around for millennia in Buddhist philosophy, and stoicism as seen through the musings of greek philosopher Epictetus, among others. Anyway, I think that Choice Theory is pretty important anyway, so I’ll do my best to outline my understanding of it here.

Choice Theory Cole’s Notes. Information corroborated by wglasser.com. (http://wglasser.com/the-glasser-approach):

– Four fundamental driving needs of humans beyond survival: Belonging, Competence and Power, Freedom and Autonomy, and Joy and Fun.

– Suffering is a result of a discontinuity between reality and an individual’s idea of what the world ought to be (their “quality world”).

– It is difficult to change how one reacts physiologically, subconsciously, but it is possible to change how we react behaviourally, which will eventually change the rest.

A wonderful book for explaining the power that we have over our own emotions and state of being to children is the book Which Way Should I Go? by Sylvia Olson with Ron Martin. I have a lesson plan for teaching about decisions using this book and the Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch here.

So, while this theory is definitely about choosing, the types of choices are not really within the scope of this inquiry. However, understanding that teaching students to be self-regulated, empowered, and autonomous is crucial to engagement definitely is important to this inquiry. Insofar as Choice Theory leads us there, it is one of many models that can help accomplish social, emotional, and competency goals that are oh-so-important to appropriate choice and resulting engagement in the classroom.

 

So, at the “end” of this project, I’m feeling like I’ve found an answer to my question, but am maybe not much closer to helping to re-engage my apparently dis-engaged students. What I know now is that just giving them choices probably won’t be enough. On the other hand, while I’m now swamped with new information and considerations, I can (hopefully) begin to weave these ideas and practices together into a classroom environment that accomplishes so much more than just a superimposition of choice onto a broken system. I’ve got a whole career ahead of me to figure out just how to do that.

03/25/14

The Cultural Value of Choice

I am prone to the siren call of procrastination. I sat down with a snack, ready to get working on this labour of inquiring, but decided that I’d better keep my guacamole-covered hands away from the keyboard while snacking. So, as I often do when procrastinating, I put on a TED talk. I never expected to find a talk that would so fundamentally challenge my paradigmatic assumptions on choice and free will.

Dear reader, if you have a half an hour in which to do so, I encourage you to watch The Art of Choosing on TED by Sheena Iyengar. She discusses the cultural assumptions around choice. In Canada and the US we are very familiar with the value placed on choice. Choice is intricately wound up with the consumeristic, democratic, and “free” society that we enjoy. However, Iyengar discusses how these choices may not always be the best for us. As well, while one culture places great value on choice, it is not necessarily so across cultures. Iyengar discusses a study with three groups of children. In group A, students are given a choice of activities. In group B, students are told that Ms. Smith (the adult figure in the study) has chosen the activity for them. In group C, students are told that their mothers chose the activity. Students’ cultural backgrounds had a great effect on their perceptions of these different choice situations, which in turn had a great effect on their productivity in the different conditions. There are some touching, illustrative anecdotes mentioned in the talk, which you should definitely watch. Iyengar sums up one of the possible problems when considering what choice to include in the classroom, or in our lives in general in this following quote.

“Choice no longer offers opportunities but delivers constraints. It’s not a marker of liberation but of suffocation by meaningless minutiae. In other words, choice can develop into the very opposite of everything it represents in America when it is thrust upon those who are insufficiently prepared for it.” – Sheena Iyengar

The availability of choice and the kinds of choices available clearly have social justice implications, given that cultural background may have a bearing on students’ likelihood to thrive in situations of choice. It is my philosophy that education of children should aim to guide students to be independent, critical individuals. It seems only natural that the way to accomplish this is by providing developmentally appropriate choices, and the scaffolding needed to become more competent decision makers. However, I am coming to realize how rooted this philosophy and method is in my own cultural bias. How can I reconcile this with the possibility that such practices are culturally intolerant? Is providing a choice to choose helpful, or is it just one more choice? Does choice still support autonomy if it is not an individual choice?

Perhaps it is a matter of providing meaningful choice, and not just “suffocation by meaningless minutiae”, but does that mean that it is good to allow students to choose a topic for an inquiry project, but give them direction in which pen to use (Iyengar, 2010)? I will speak from my own experience to answer this question. It seems to me that some students like to know which pen to use and to have the minutiae pre-determined for them. However, students who prefer this only prefer it when these decisions are made for the entire class. As well, students can tell when a teacher is giving them token, meaningless choices, and these choices are often perceived as not choices at all, or as unimportant choices. I believe that there is also a difference between explicit choices and implied choices. In a Montessori classroom in which students are planning their own work schedules to a large extent, choosing their task or their colour of pencil may not seem like a choice to them. It is implied. However, that same type of choice might be very differently received by a student from a very structured, traditional-style classroom. The culture of choice, then, may not simply be culturally based on a macro scale, but also between classroom cultures.

I wonder how these conflicting ideas of the value of choice fit into Anderman and Anderman’s collection of the types of choice. In their chapter on Autonomy, Anderman and Anderman claim that “student motivation is enhanced when students have opportunities to make choices during classes” (Anderman and Anderman, 2010, pg: 112). It would be interesting to explore this topic at much greater length… What are the cultural implications of choice? How do they play out in my specific classroom? Probably a lot of the implications from a classroom management, or social justice, or social-emotional perspective lean heavily on getting to know individual students. We can look at cultures and make assumptions and think in broad strokes, and while this is useful sometimes for identifying things to look out for, it seems to me that first and foremost it is best to get to know the individual needs and contexts of the students in the room.

I am reminded of an incident I observed in a Montessori classroom where a student was wandering aimlessly about the room. The teacher suggested a task that she knew the student needed to work on, but rather than demand that he do it, she simply suggested he work on that till he could think of something more interesting to do. In this way, the teacher was not removing the student’s choice, but she was acting as a guide, focussing the student back on his work. I believe this to be an exemplary illustration of the teacher guiding an individual student based on the needs of the individual student in a specific situation.

03/22/14

Math, Choice, and Sharing With Peers

This is an conversation that Lara and I had with each other regarding both of our inquiry topics. Her focus is the math classroom. What a lovely way to spend a sunny Friday afternoon!

 

What we chat about:

Motivation in Math: How do we keep students motivated when they’re working on drilling? This ties to the important notion of relevance of learning. Check out this tweet. It’s in response to an interview on The Current about how math is taught, specifically in regards to drilling.

#TheCurrentCBC The only reason to memorize the times tables is to add speed…no magic here. Concepts before facts.

— Kirsty Gourlay (@Stampgame) March 27, 2014

 

“Concepts before facts.” Relevance before concepts?

Self-Efficacy: How do students’ perceptions of their abilities in math affect their motivation? How is this different in math than it is in other subjects, for example with reading?

Differentiation in math: Should we do this? Can we? Montessori classrooms do this really well through the organization of time in the day, and through the set up of the classroom and materials.

Teamwork in the classroom: how organic/forced should it be?

How do we grade in the math classroom? Pre-Tests, Post-Tests, and Re-tests.

What does it mean to be “fair”?

03/19/14

SRL and The Physical Space

In speaking with practicing teachers, and in my own experience as well, I have come to understand that one very powerful way to encourage community and engagement in the classroom environment is to encourage that the students take ownership of their space. The classroom is their class. As a side benefit to encouraging closeness and community, this also is a great technique for keeping the physical space and materials in order. When students feel that they own their space, that they belong in it, I have come to believe that this will predict engagement, good peer relationships, and greater motivation to learn. I can encourage my students to take ownership in this way through a class constitution, daily jobs, and by making space for each student to work, and to have their work displayed. As well, the prepared environment is crucial, particularly in a Montessori context where students are working so independently of the teacher. Creating an inviting classroom full of materials and things to explore will encourage students to make choices for their learning, rather than the choice to disengage.

I’m of the mind that a good physical space will support learning, be that related to choice, to social and emotional needs, or simply by minimizing distractions. As well, what is essential for one may be good for all when it comes to student needs.

The Alberta Government has put together a wonderful go-to environmental checklist for classrooms. I was asked to complete one on two occasions during observations, and I found it to not only be potentially very useful to the teacher of a classroom, but also to guide my observation to details I may have overlooked.

The checklist can be found here, and asks crucial questions such as “Are signs and pictures at the eye level of students?”, and “Is a private, secluded space available where students can work quietly by themselves or use as a safe place to calm down?” I will definitely be referring to this checklist when I am setting up my classroom(s) in the future.

03/19/14

Grades and Choice

Grades are a big part of how we as teachers, and we as a culture do school. There is a lot of debate, particularly right now, about the merits of grades. It is something that I am wrestling with quite a bit, but I believe that grades are well worth mentioning when we want to talk about motivation and choices in the classroom.

I believe that grades are so entrenched in our system that it is now very difficult to change them or remove them, even at the early grades. Grades are a symptom of a much larger factory system of schools that ignores individual difference, apart from the “good student/bad student” dichotomy. Someone once pointed out to me in a very interesting argument against single grade classrooms that the only other place in life where you would ever see that kind of age stratification is in a conscription army. In many ways, our schools model a militaristic form. Grades act as a sort of ranking system. They are the classism of the education system, and are equally meaningless and powerful. This being said, I believe grades can be transformed. When we start measuring progress on an individual level rather than insisting that students all meet the exact same outcomes, we make grades more meaningful. When grades are allowed to evaluate and reward learning rather than simply product, we make grades more meaningful.

Alfie Kohn lays out an excellent, though not exactly new, series of arguments against grades in the article ‘A Case Against Grades’. One of the most compelling among them is that “grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they are learning” (Kohn, 2012: 9) This point is very much connected, I believe to the next, which is that students are less likely to take risks in their learning or to challenge themselves when they know that marks are on the line (Kohn, 2012). This has important implications for my question of choice. How do grades affect the choices students make? If there is a grade associated with a task and I provide my students with choices then perhaps the fact that I’m grading them will dissuade them from self-regulating and making the level-appropriate choices I’m hoping for. Are grades a hindrance to self-regulated learning?

Can we even measure the types of learning we dream of for our students? Kohn quotes McNeil in this article as saying that “measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning” (McNeil in Kohn, 2012: 11). Kohn mentions that “the imperatives of data collection seem to upstage the children themselves and the goal of helping them become more enthusiastic about learning” (Kohn, 2012: 11). While we are told time and again in our curriculum classes that we are never to compare students when assessing, in the assessment course we take as teacher candidates we are sent a truly mixed message. The focus is on “acurate” data collection. While assessment of whatever kind should be meaningful, I do not see the value in making it one-fits-all. For example, a teacher assigns a project on WW2. Emma went into the course knowing all of the battles and tactics and key figures in the war. Charlie knew almost nothing about it. How it meaningful to create a one-fits-all rubric that assesses the knowledge of the students at the end of this project? While Charlie may have worked hard to obtain this knowledge and could get an A, Emma is able to get an A without actually learning anything. This is a problem with testing, but it is also a problem with rubrics. Though we like to think that comparing students to a set standard is different and better than comparing them to each other, we are lying to ourselves if we think that the rubric model is necessarily fair, or is socially just.

Furthermore, let us extend the example of Emma and Charlie to question the very validity of many types of assessment for actually measuring the learning and understanding that we care about. Imagine now that Emma got an A for this term because of her great score on the test about WW2. Charlie worked hard, learned a lot, and while he came to understand many of the factors and consequences of the war, failed to memorize all of the names of the battles. He got a B. As they are both leaving class, Emma turns to Charlie and asks, “So, in WW2… who won?”. This is a real example. I won’t say of who. Granted, this situation could have been avoided by more careful consideration of the assessment methods, but it does illustrate one common and damaging problem with grades. We often assess what is easy to count, rather than what really matters. Many students are motivate by grades, and learn the material directionally to score well rather than due to a desire to really understand. I have come to realise that a combination of these two situations is extremely common. As long as grades are something that teachers are required to produce, we must do everything in our power to avoid this situation, as it makes grades not only meaningless, but dangerous. Fortunately, the PLO’s are changing in ways that will (hopefully) force our hands in this direction, putting the focus on skills and processes rather than facts and fragments of information. I wonder what this will mean for the provincial exam in SS11.

Kohn argues vehemently against the use of grades in their entirety. While I find this notion theoretically compelling, I am aware that as a new teacher going forth into the pre-fabricated school system I will have to operate to some extent within its confines. With this in mind, I wonder what I can do to minimize the detrimental effects of grades in my classroom on students’ psyches, on their peer relationships, and on their motivation to learn.

Drawing on some of the methods and ideas that I’ve gathered from other educators, I propose a growth attitude towards grades, rather than a set of standard outcomes. Instead of making our assessment tools express specific knowledge or understanding outcomes, we can use them to help us measure growth. For instance, in a classroom where students work independently on math plans, they may understand that completing 5 sections of the program within a term means that they get a B. In this way, a student who moved from multiplication to factorials in this time may get a B, while the student who shows progress from addition to skip-counting may also be eligible for a B. When we create rubrics or use grades to measure growth, we devalue them as competitive capital, and we make them mean something that better reflects what we actually care about as educators. This can also make grades less damaging to the motivation of students. While fixed-outcome rubrics and other assessments make risk-taking or attempts at more difficult material less enticing to students who fear a lower grade, if grades represent growth, students may be encouraged to try something new. Of course, this does not solve all of the problems of using extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation, but again, when working within the system, how can we best meet the needs of our students?

03/19/14

Empowerment and Greening the Bronx

 

Where do relevance, autonomy, choices, and self-efficacy intersect? At empowerment. Stephen Ritz, a teacher at a high school in the South Bronx has an inspiring TED talk on his classroom project-cum-movement to grow food in the classroom and the community. I created a Prezi to highlight the big ideas, which can be found here: http://prezi.com/xmurpwxnzeez/stephen-ritz-the-green-bronx-machine/. I saw the big theme in this talk as one of empowerment. The attendance rate went from 40% to 93% (Ritz, 2012). The community was a food desert, but the students took charge and altered their landscape to include beautiful and productive gardens. It becomes apparent in this talk that these students became empowered through this project, taking charge and making change in the areas of health, social-emotional learning, community geography and landscape, and their own learning. Not only are students given choice and an active role in this instance, they relevance of the work is clear. The students earn real money doing this work, doing this learning. They make a difference. They are engaged in real, hands-on learning of life skills. They get heard: politicians and media come to meet them and listen to them. This kind of empowerment is truly the intersection between relevance, autonomy, and self-efficacy, and it is clear that this is also one of the main ways in which self-regulated learning and social-emotional learning share common ground.

It is becoming clear to me that this multitude of factors is required to keep students engaged in self-regulated learning. I wondered though, when I watched this TED talk, how on Earth this was possible. I can see many opportunities to make this type of project cross-curricular, but surely it would cost some time that would otherwise be dedicated to teaching the mandatory curriculum. It would be foolish to say that what Ritz appears to be doing would be not worth some sort of trade-off, whatever it might be, as there has clearly been vast benefit to the attendance, engagement and learning-attitudes of his students. However, I wonder where the line is? When is it worth it to put the PLO’s on the backburner (for a moment or a month) in order to run with the emergent curriculum? I wonder if any of us new teachers will take a risk and launch a project when we have classrooms of our own. Will we give our students those choices, even though it may be more difficult for us as teachers?

03/19/14

Where Self-Regulation and Self-Efficacy Intersect

I am coming to realize that simply creating space for autonomy in the classroom is not sufficient for the development of it, or the subsequent benefits of it. I can provide choice to my students, but without sufficient scaffolding, those students may not experience success in their tasks. Cleary and Zimmerman describe the Self-Regulation Empowerment Program (SREP) which tries to nurture autonomy from a self-efficacy perspective (Cleary and Zimmerman, 2004). It is also becoming evident to me that choice and self-efficacy form a loop, for while success in tasks that involve choice require self-efficacy, self-efficacy is developed best by giving students the opportunity to succeed in tasks that involve choice. We are told that students who are not given sufficient academic and personal choices “may develop self-defeating cycles of self-motivational beliefs” (Eccles et. al., in Cleary and Zimmerman, 2004: 537). Ana is a student in the case-study outlined in this article. It is first established that Ana fits into the normal range in terms of her intellectual potential but that she had been using poor strategies (Cleary and Zimmerman, 2004: 545). Through the SREP, Ana graphs her grades and comes to understand that her success is determined by the ineffective strategies she had been using “rather than uncontrollable factors such as her ability, teacher difficulty, or test difficulty.” (Cleary and Zimmerman, 2004: 547) This graphing process strikes me as a particularly powerful tool because it attempts to prove to the student that they are capable without belittling them with meaningless (or possibly detrimental) praise. It gets to the core and with any luck influences the self-talk of the student. As well, this strategy puts control squarely back in the hands of the student: There is a solution to this problem, and it is within your [the student’s] power. It simultaneously promotes self efficacy and demands autonomy, tying the two together very tidily.

Along a similar thread, we look at how self-regulation and social-emotional learning in general are connected. Self-efficacy seems to me to be intricately connected to relationships and surrounding social conditions for many children. One interesting perspective on this topic that I have been reading about is that of Attachment Theory. Christi and David Bergin provide a highly informative and practical approach to supporting strong attachment in the classroom. While there is no way of ensuring that students develop attachment to you as a teacher, similar attachment encouraging behaviours can be used by the teacher to promote strong relationships that will encourages student well-being and success (Bergin & Bergin, 2009). Yet again, these authors demonstrate how important autonomy is in student learning, emphasizing that overbearing and controlling adult figures are counter-productive to strong attachments with children (Bergin & Bergin, 2009). On the flip side, secure attachment is associated with less dependency and children who are more willing to explore their environments, thus indulging their natural curiosity and learning on their own (Bergin & Bergin, 2009).

So. Take away message: Social-emotional learning matters. Feeling competent and feeling safe are also important in student engagement. Maybe choice isn’t all there is to it?

03/19/14

Where did I begin?

To begin to wrestle with any question of praxis in a classroom is to invite very foundational philosophical questions into the inquiry. In this exploration I ask the question, “If I provide choices for students in the classroom, will I begin to see spontaneous (perceived) engagement?” However, I need also to ask myself as an educator whether I believe already that providing choice is of value in itself. If this is to be a measure of my development of thinking, then I must figure out where I am beginning and plant my flag here. So, I present to you my underlying assumptions and beginning stances.

Full disclosure in a series of I statements:

  • I worry that by not providing choice to students we make our classrooms inauthentic learning environments.

  • I believe that curiosity is a natural human trait.

  • I believe that there is something dehumanizing about not promoting or allowing autonomy in human beings, in this case, students in a classroom.

  • I view much of the status quo in traditional transmissive education as a factory style, militaristic model of schooling, and I don’t like it.

  • In short, I believe that choice is a requisite for creating a respectful and meaningful environment.

Clearly, I am beginning with some large, foundational beliefs. That being said, I am willing and ready to have these assumptions challenged, shaken, and changed by my inquiry research. Furthermore, these beginning points do not provide me with an answer to my question. While I believe that choice in the classroom is important theoretically, I do not know whether it will help encourage my seemingly disengaged students, or provoke spontaneous engagement. I embark upon this journey entirely unsure of where I will end up.

I am taking this time to establish the first leg of my compass because where I end up will necessarily be related to where I began. These assumptions I have mentioned have come from somewhere, and so I’ll take this time to mention a bit about where I think they may have been seeded.

I approach this inquiry with a background in Montessori education, where the respect for students as autonomous human beings is built in to the very system, from students planning their own days, to choosing their own workspaces and projects. It is important to note, too, that allowing students to be autonomous human beings in our classrooms, to make choices, to self-regulate, is a matter of respect. It is dehumanizing to not allow space for students to make decisions about their learning. It has been enormously frustrating to me to be always working with an entire class in lessons, knowing that in that class there is such a vast range of interest in the humanities and topics we are discussing, and such a range in skills. Some students want more, be that deeper discussion and greater challenge or more support. Some students want different: They are not interested in the topic at all, and the skills being taught could be done much more effectively with different material.This is, as far as I can tell, a recipe for disengagement and boredom. So my challenge becomes, as a teacher, to superimpose space for difference through my lessons onto a structure that I believe to be sub-optimal. The best way that I can see to do that is through cooperative learning and choice. It is these beliefs and background that have formed my question for inquiry. This is a crucial question for me to begin asking, as I will likely end up teaching in many neighbourhood-program classrooms.

I always had a lot of choice, one way or another, in my own education. I consider myself an engaged, life-long, self-regulated learner. I believe that this developed in me in part because of the choices I had. This is where I begin.