 Reb's Digest: "Do Students Care About Learning?"
By Rebecca Nassar, Educational Technology Consultant
That's the title of September's Educational Leadership journal. Since this journal is a publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), I'm not sure how many classroom educators see the journal, let alone have time to read it. So as a public service I'm going to give you my digest of Carol Ann Tomlinson's article, "Invitations to Learn."
Tomlinson stresses that students absolutely care about learning "when they are invited to learn." She also asserts that environment and instruction work together to make the content important to the students. Students need an invitation, a method for meeting their needs. Tomlinson lists and describes five general needs (there may be more, since students are individuals) that teachers can meet to make students want to learn.
The Five Needs
Affirmation
Students want to feel safe, cared for and listened to. They want you to know how they are doing and they want to know that you want them to do well. Students want you to recognize them as individuals and as worthy to be in your classroom. If you assign generalized work that does not recognize who your students are and what they can do, they often disengage from the classroom environment and from the desire to learn.
Contribution
Students want to make a difference at school. They want to feel that their viewpoints and abilities are unique and valuable, that they help each other and that they are connected with the other students in the class. No matter at what level students function, there should be some way they can add to what is happening in their classroom. As an educator, you can create ways for even the slowest student to participate. Any student who does not join in discussions is not feeling as though he contributes.
Purpose
Students want to do significant work that relates to them and their world. They need to be absorbed in their work. One kindergarten student I know okay, it was my son was not doing all of his work. I asked him why. He told me that before he began a lesson he asked himself whether the lesson would be valuable at a later point in his life. If he saw no value, he did not do the work. After that, I realized that I needed to explain the purpose of exercises to my own students. I also asked myself what I could do to make the work my students did relate to their current point in life.
Power
Students want to believe that they are making choices that add to their success; therefore, they need to know what high-quality work is and how to produce high-quality work. To me this sounds like empowerment in the work place. As the teacher/guide, you can help your students set individual and class "learning goals for each topic and skills area."
Challenge
Although challenging work can create fear, students still want to do work that meets and then exceeds their ability. Your students should feel accountable for increasing their own knowledge as well as helping other students grow. How you establish accountability is part of your own teaching personality. No matter what, you have to find out where your students are so that you can take them farther on their learning adventure.
How do you get these messages, these invitations, to your students? Well, that's up to you. Invitations to learn can be "the way [you] address students, in the learning environment, in classroom procedures, and in student work that provokes both engagement and understanding." No matter what your verbal invitation to students is, the students' classroom experience completes the invitation.
Work Cited
Tomlinson, Carol Ann. "Invitations to Learn." Educational Leadership 60.1 (September 2002): 6-10.
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