{"id":461,"date":"2011-06-21T10:49:14","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T17:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=461"},"modified":"2011-06-21T11:13:16","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T18:13:16","slug":"the-elements-of-learning-2-0-students-as-the-real-workers-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=461","title":{"rendered":"The Elements of Learning 2.0: Students as the real workers in education"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Most education reforms start with the premise that adults need to work harder so students will learn more.\u00a0 But ultimately, maybe quickly, that premise is self-defeating.\u00a0 Regardless of the pedagogy used, who governs the school, or how long teachers toil, students are the real workers in the system.\u00a0 Building around that reality is one of the five key elements to bring about Learning 2.0<\/a>, <\/em>the next full-scale version of public education.<\/p>\n

Thinking of students as education workers invites us to consider them as producers rather than consumers of education.\u00a0 In truth, of course, they are both.\u00a0 Outside of education, and particularly in medicine, the system has recognized that good outcomes depend much more on what clients do than what professional practitioners do.\u00a0 The \u201cprosumer\u201d relationship, as futurist Alvin Toffler called it, is built into integrated health care systems.<\/p>\n

Health maintenance organizations provide their clients with handbooks and web sites for self-diagnosis and treatment.\u00a0 The standards of professional care are available to clients and their advocates.\u00a0 Rather than threatening professionals, building client knowledge allows a more productive and deeper relationship to exist between patient and professional.<\/p>\n

If students are the real workers in the education system, those who design public education need to ask what sort of responsibility is it reasonable to ask students to take for their own education, and how the system should be constructed to best motivate students to take such responsibility.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201cstudent as worker\u201d was popularized by the late Theodore Sizer to counter the common perception of a teacher as a deliverer of instructional services.\u00a0 In Sizer\u2019s Coalition of Essential Schools<\/a>, student-as-worker is associated with a coaching or guide-on-the side kind of teaching in which students themselves grapple with projects and problems.\u00a0 But the notion of student-as-worker extends beyond the always-charged discussion about coaching versus direct instruction; it asks how student motivation can be increased in design of schooling.<\/p>\n

Motivation and the equation of learning<\/h2>\n

Motivation is the third element in the equation of learning:<\/p>\n

Learning= \u0192(Content, Motivation, Time)<\/p>\n

and the most under utilized of the three in education policy.<\/p>\n

Students understand that their \u201cjob\u201d is to go to school.\u00a0 They come to school because they are required to, and in most communities the behavior is socialized, but in a great many cases the job that students are trying to do in school does not involve education. \u201cThe job\u201d may be seen as having fun, hanging out, socializing.\u00a0 After a two \u2013week tour of a western country\u2019s schools, a Chinese educator reported: \u201cI understand now; school mostly social.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, at the core, students want to be successful in something.\u00a0 If they can be successful in school, they\u2019ll take that.\u00a0 Success in education will be the job that they want to get done, but there are always attractive alternatives, which puts a premium on the design of education.\u00a0 Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn<\/a> ask: \u201cHow do schools fare against these competitors as something that students can hire to be successful and have fun with friends? \u00a0Miserably in many cases. \u00a0The primary mechanisms in most schools for doing these jobs are explicitly separated from education. \u00a0Activities such as athletic teams and musical and dramatic arts performance groups, which are mechanisms for feeling successful and making progress, are \u201cextracurricular\u201d activities rather than \u201ccurricular\u201d ones, which speaks volumes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chinese educator tells students a story: study hard, succeed in school, and you will have a better life.\u00a0 Guaranteed.\u00a0 That guarantee is much harder to sell in an affluent country, and it is becoming much less sure, so the meaning of success needs to be embedded in doing a meaningful job in school.<\/p>\n

The task of schooling needs to be rewarding in itself.\u00a0 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi<\/a>, who studied the psychology of optimal experience, which he calls Flow<\/em>, \u201cthe state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these psychological highs are the rewards for concerted effort. “Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times…. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to the limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.\u00a0 Optimal experience is something we make <\/em>happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Educators have sought the holy grail of creating motivating experiences for more than a century, but the batch process structures of schooling make it difficult to build in flow.\u00a0 The bones and muscle of schooling believe that it is their job to deliver instruction rather than build an education system that will motivate students to choose education as the reason they come to school.<\/p>\n

Consider the three conditions necessary to create Csikszentmihalyi\u2019s optimal experience:<\/p>\n