Tag Archives: choice

03/25/14

Autonomy (Anderman and Anderman, 2010)

Anderman, E. M. & Anderman, L. H. (2010). Classroom motivation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson (see Chapters 7 (promoting autonomy, pp. 111-129) and 11 (motivational classrooms for all learners, pp. 186-205)). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Merrill.

This chapter is a great overview of autonomy in the classroom: how to support it, and why we should bother. It also focuses quite a bit on the provisions of choice as a way of accomplishing that. One of the great things about this article is how it lays out the different kinds of choice that we should consider when planning our time and activities in class. Included are: within-task choices, between-task choices and the choice of where  to work. As well, it talks about using choice and autonomy to build a better classroom environment, such as by making choice a private matter so that students are not swayed in their choices by peer pressure, or by allowing students to build their own classroom charter.

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

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?