Why it Matters

Every school and classroom transmits messages about learning:  what it looks like, how it happens, what is worth learning, what it means to be good in school, to be smart, and so on  (30).  These messages get transmitted through the behaviors, actions, and structures that we put in place. The messages we send through our actions become our story of learning or what Larry Cuban and others call the grammar of school (4).  This grammar shapes the way we organize schools, conceive of the curriculum, and importantly the roles student and teachers are expected to play.  For much of history, this has meant teachers as the authority and control figures delivering information to students as receptive vessels expected to follow directions and comply (22, 29, 9, 10).  Schools remain the way they are partly because students and teachers have become socialized in the established ways of doing things and have come to see established practices as “necessary features of a ‘real school’” (38).

To tell a new story and reshape the grammar of schools, we need to examine the role of the student and teacher (see Exhibit 1).  As the Canadian researchers Berierter and Scardemalia (1) so eloquently note:  The [cognitive] skills a student will acquire in an instructional interaction are those that are required by the student’s role in the interaction.  Thus, we must constantly be aware of the roles we are setting for our students. We identify four important dimensions on which this might happen:  1) toward more student agency and empowerment and away from total teacher control, 2) toward more student talk and more teacher listening, 3) toward more student problem solving and initiative and away from teacher rescuing, and 4) toward co-construction of curriculum and assessment.   It is important to note that while this narrative is a departure from traditional school, it is not new.  We see threads of all these ideas in the teachings of Socrates, the work of Freire and Malaguzzi, and the writings of Dewey and Foucault. 

Toward more Student Agency and Empowerment and away from Total Teacher Control

Schools have traditionally focused on producing compliant and conforming learners within a power dynamic where teachers exert control and authority.  While this system may make students easier to manage and schools more orderly, it has its cost when it comes to learning.  When teachers hold all the power and make all decisions in the classroom, students’ levels of engagement decrease significantly (39).  In addition, such environments don’t provide students the opportunity to develop as independent, self-regulating learners, capable of decision making and critical thinking (8, 35, 37).

In a culture of thinking, we envision students as more engaged and empowered learners (Exhibit 2).  To accomplish this, teachers must share power.  This is accomplished as teachers gradually build students’ capabilities and provide them with opportunities to exert greater control and choice over the direction and form their learning may take (3).  Gradually releasing control to permit greater agency and choice to students helps students develop as responsible, independent learners (14).  Thus, sharing power is not a zero-sum game.  The teacher does not need to lose power for students to gain it.  It is more a matter of developing students’ capacity for self-direction, trusting them, and allowing them to take responsibility for their learning.  When students have more autonomy over their learning processes, they develop a strong sense of “personal meaningfulness in the process and content,’ resulting in increased engagement (12).  Furthermore, having choice and being able to set one’s direction is associated with positive feelings of “autonomy, motivation, and healthy functioning,” which enhances one’s intrinsic motivation (27, 31) as well as increasing “effort, task performance, and perceived competence (27).

Toward more Student Talk and more Teacher Listening

On average, teacher talk takes up 70 to 80% of all the talk done in classrooms (17). Teachers may dominate classrooms with their own talk for fear that a lack sufficient explanation on their part could lead to misconceptions among students, while others talk to ensure that students have all the information they need in order to complete a task or assignment (6).  When teacher talk dominates in the classroom, students are “swiftly disenfranchised by hierarchical models of education” which “inhibits their curiosity and initiative” (25). Without opportunities to talk, not only are students unable to clarify their understanding, but also teachers lose out on the chance to monitor students’ learning and intervene appropriately (7).  The process of articulating one’s thoughts facilitates the learning process. As a result, in many classrooms, teachers, rather than the students are doing most of the thinking (7).  Through classroom discussions, students learn the norms of discourse and develop the skills to explain their reasoning, provide evidence for their claims, and respectfully critique arguments, all of which are the part of the democratic discourse in civic life (23). Increasing the amount of academic discourse in mathematics classrooms has been shown to improve learning outcomes for ELL and low-income students (18). When the learning environment promotes classroom talk, students are consistently explaining and justifying their thinking, encouraging deep learning that mere didactic instruction cannot achieve (13).

When teachers really listen to their students; students feel heard, cared for, and valued as individuals (32).  Listening allows us as teachers to better understand who our learners are, their passions, and what they are curious about (26). This gives us information that could be useful and important for designing and delivering deeper learning experiences (26).  “Listening is the zone in which inquiry happens, in which questions arise and tug at us and the seeds of ideas germinate” (Gillian Parrish  in (34).  When teachers listen, we are modelling “dialogue, collaboration, creativity and compassion” (34).  When teachers take on the role of the listener they shift the ownership of learning to the students, allowing them to engage in deeper learning and develop the skills needed to become active members in the community (23, 28).

Productive Struggle

Princple #7 talks extensively about the importance of challenge to our learning, but the idea deserves mention here as well with regards to teacher and student roles.  In order for students to develop a sense of initiative, self-efficacy, and resilience they must be given roles in the classroom that require those skills (1).  By the same token, we as teachers have to be careful of assuming the role or rescuer in which we rob students of the opportunity to develop these attributes.  Too many students today find themselves ill-prepared for the rigors of college and professional life as they have grown up in a culture of “safetyism”, which has led to them becoming more fragile and less resilient (16). Very often, when teachers notice a student stuck midway through a task or assignment, they are quick to dive in to “rescue them” (36). This is because of a fear that students may perceive the “struggle” as a lack of support and the frustration they experience could push them to become completely disengaged (7). While it is true that teachers should create a supportive environment where learning is scaffolded within a zone of proximal development, overly protective practices or “helicopter teaching” is “counterproductive to building independent, confident, and creative students” (20) and may produce learned helplessness  in which students lose their sense of agency and competence (Seifert, 2004).  While students may perceive that they learning more from “hand-holding” or “spoon feeding” by the teachers; this is not necessarily true. Students often misperceive that they are learning more from didactic instruction, when they actually have a deeper understanding of the material when they are active participants in the classroom (5).

Toward co-construction of curriculum and assessment

Curriculum and assessment are two areas in which students—and sometimes even teachers—can feel disenfranchised by mandates and controls from outside the classroom. Often these are viewed as an immutable aspect of the grammar of schools put in place to perpetuate the status quo. Indeed, they can be quite effective at doing so.  A different perspective is to view curriculum and assessments as flexible structures to which students can add their voice rather than as immutable scripts to which both teachers and students must adhere (15, 19).  The idea of co-construction implies that both students and teachers contribute their ideas and evaluations to both the form and content of curriculum and assessments in a dynamic, creative interaction (21).  Although some might refer to this as providing voice and choice (24), co-construction involves entering into a true collaboration with our students.  By placing students in this new role of co-constructors, they have the opportunity to develop imagination, creativity, and originality.  While the roles of students and teachers in co-creation are similar in that both bring ideas and meanings to the enterprise, they are different in that students’ ideas may not always be directly contributed.  Instead, they may come in the form of clues about the kinds of learning students are ready for.  The “clues received from students help a teacher to be a mediator, an agent between curriculum and students” (19).  Thus, teachers are still in charge of major decisions about the curriculum but are doing so based on clues they receive from students.

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no one way that beginning to change traditional students and teacher roles will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to add their own creativity and stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

• Provide opportunities for students to learn from one another and to teach others.

• Allow students to lead discussions with their peers through structures such as Leaderless Discussion, Reciprocal Teaching, or The Harkness Method.

• Actively build the foundation of skills students will need to direct, monitor, and control their own learning and then look for occasions when you can step back so that students can step forward.

• Plan for occasions when you will actively listen to your students so that you can learn from their conversations. At times, this may mean refraining from interjecting and conversing so as not to change the conversation that is happening. Document and reflect on what you learned from the listening.

• Pay attention to the clues students provide about their interests, passions, and questions. These do not always directly announce themselves, particularly with young children.

• Use protocols and routines to help structure students’ discussions with each other such as the Micro Lab protocol.

• Treat the curriculum not as a contract but as a guide. Look for opportunities to connect the curriculum to students’ lives and interest while still achieving prescribed objectives.

• Invite students into the assessment process by engaging in meaningful self and peer assessments focused on feedback and continuous improvement.

• Use student-led conferences focused on students’ learning as a reporting mechanism to parents and families.

• Scaffold learning by using questions, prompts, or cues to guide students rather than providing them with direct explanations, which can discourage engagement, reduce exploration, and limit innovation (2).

• Employ a flexible seating strategy to allow students more self-direction, greater collaboration, enhanced sense of community, and ability to determine and fulfill their needs.

• Create time for student self-directed learning such as genius hour, choice time, or 20% time.

• Make time for student questioning of themselves, ideas, and you. Expect questions by asking: “What are your questions?” rather than “Are there any questions?”

• Work with students to find out how feedback can be useful for them by asking, “How are you using the feedback I’m giving to help you learn better?” “If they are able to answer the question well, the feedback is probably effective. If they are not able to answer the question, ask them what they would find useful.”

• Enlist students in helping you curate, design, and organize the learning space of your classroom so it belongs to them as well as to you.

• Create tasks that are sufficiently complex to earn student attention and effort. If tasks are not complex, with little chance of productive failure, students will divide and conquer them. If tasks are more complex, students tend to talk with one another as they attempt to solve the problem (7).

• Avoid stepping in to rescue students by solving their problems, making their decisions, or doing the thinking for them. Allow students to struggle a little; gives students tasks that allow them to experience productive failure. Allow them to wrestle with a problem, fail and try again.

• Teach students what good discussions and productive group learning looks like by using techniques such as the fishbowl or by sharing videos of productive group work from previous years. Do this repeatedly over time and with practice, students will start to incorporate these behaviors.

• Teach students to use accountable talk that focuses on listening and their own connecting ideas to others.

• Move from teacher-centric language (I want you to do…) to student-centric language (Our goal here is for us to…).

• Shift the teachers’ desk away from the front of the room, as the teacher’s desk is often seen as both a symbol of authority and a point of surveillance. Placing it in the front of the classroom (even if offset) can be symbolic of the teacher as transmitting knowledge rather than it being constructed together.

• Use a flipped classroom model to change the role of teacher and class time is about the delivery of information and instead becomes focused on the discussion, exploration, and questioning of ideas.

• Involve students in the direct communication with their parents about their learning, its progress, challenges, and plans rather than shouldering all of this burden yourself.

Reflecting on Your Teaching

These questions are meant to push your thinking beyond where you are currently. Perhaps they might even make you a bit uncomfortable. Pick a question or questions that will help you better understand the effects of your actions, critically reflect on them, provoke additional questions, and/or help you think about future actions and possibilities. If you find yourself merely explaining what you currently are doing, chances are you might be reporting more than reflecting. Consider selecting another prompt that might take you deeper into examining your practice.

• How am I soliciting, reviewing, and incorporating students’ input and feedback when trying to improve my practice?

• Where do students have a voice in meaningful shaping their experience, lives, and learning in your classroom and at your school? To what extent allowed to be decision makers in this process or are all ideas and suggestions subject to veto?

• When was the last time a discussion in your class was mostly student-led? How did that go? Where do students need more supports, structures, language, or tools to take on even a greater role in leading the discussion? How will you do that?

• In a typical class period with your students, how many minutes do you estimate are spent a) you talking to students, b) students responding to you, c) students engaging in meaningful dialogue with each other, or d) students working on their own? How might you get a more accurate measurement of these times?

• How much of the classroom real estate is controlled by you versus your students? How might you give them more control and ownership in terms of classroom organization and displays?

• How effective is the seating arrangement in your classroom in terms of facilitating both productive learning and student self-direction? Do you use seating charts to control students or have you developed guidelines that permit effective and organized flexible seating as an option for students in the classroom?

• How do you engage students in creating classroom procedures, policies, norms and/or ways of being in the classroom? Do these play a meaningful life in the classroom or were they merely a beginning of the year exercise? Are these guidelines evaluated, reviewed, and discussed with regard to their effectiveness?

• How are you explicitly teaching your students how to prioritize, organize, and manage their learning or are you doing most of this for them?

• When a discussion isn’t taking off during class, what strategies do you use to move the conversation deeper, to elicit more voices, and to get students talking to each other rather than through you?

• How are you helping students to improve in their self and peer assessments? How often do they have an opportunity to practice these skills in a meaningful context?

• Is it difficult for you to allow students to work through a challenges on their own? How might you offer support and encouragement through your questioning rather than by stepping in solving things?

• Do you find yourself physically holding the text, turning the pages, and pointing to difficult parts as your reader(s) sits back, physically uninvolved?

• Where and when was the last time you found yourself just listening to your students without intervening? Where was a time you wish you could have a “do over” so that you could be a listener rather than an interjector?

• When you go over to a group of students working/discussing, is your first instinct to listen or to question?

• At the end of your last class, who was working harder during the lesson, you or your students?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

Use Conversation Mapping to create a visual snapshot of the flow of conversation in a discussion, capturing who participates, when, and how often. Begin by creating a diagram with all students’ names as they appear in the seating arrangement (a table, circle, or rectangular arrangement is likely to work best and facilitate mapping). Be sure to include yourself on the map as well. When the discussion begins, you, a colleague, or even a student will draw a line inside the circle from the first speaker to the second speaker. Next, draw a line linking the second speaker and the third speaker, and so on. Gradually, you will create a continuous web of lines that show the flow of the conversation. If possible, you may want to number each contribution to show you the order in which people spoke. This process can also be done using various tech tools such as Equity Maps for the iPad or the Meeting Hog app for the phone (let’s you track how long individuals talk). You might also want to consider making note of different conversation moves (connecting on, respectful disagreement, raising questions, bringing in new perspectives, ans so on) that students use or their use of accountable talk.

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

Interactions. Through our interactions with students we establish roles for ourselves and for our students. The skills a student will acquire in any instructional interaction are those that are determined by their role in that interaction (Scardemalia). If student role is compliant worker and answer giver, they acquire the skills of compliance, work completion, and memorizer. If on the other hand, the students role is a curious, self-directed, reasoner, they will acquire the skills of questioning, self-manager, and evidence provider. Our interactions with students can also reinforce a traditional power dynamic or share power by developing students capacity to self-direct and manage their learning.

Time. We teachers frequently use up a lot of the air time in classrooms with our talk and questioning (up to 80%). As we listen more, invite student voices in, and encourage student ownership of discussion, teacher talk will become a less dominate force and a more equitable balance of time will occur.

Modeling. Many of the skills of self-direction and organization are taught through our modeling of how we do this. Some times this may be modeled in a think aloud, through a fishbowl demonstration, or in the way we organize a class.

Language. Our language of praise, feedback, community, and initiative all contribute to helping students take a more active role in the classroom, seeing themselves as capable learners, developing skills in self-direction, and promoting community. Accountable talk helps students learn how to converse in a community of learners.

Environment. Walking into a classroom, the physical arrangement of the furniture can sometimes tell us a lot about the power dynamics in the class. Where is the teacher’s desk? How are desks or tables arranged? Are seats assigned and fixed for the entire day? Are materials accessible to students?

Routines. For students to take more control of their learning, they will need tools and structures for doing so. Protocols such as Leaderless Discussion and Micro Lab help students develop skills in listening and directing their own conversations. Uses structures for peer feedback such as SAIL and the Ladder of Feedback, help students become better at self-assessment.

Opportunities. When students have opportunities to direct and manage their learning though personal inquiry, genius hour, 20% time, or some other avenues they learn to become more self-directed, passionate learners. As do opportunities for self and peer assessment.

Expectations. As teachers, we must have expectations for engagement in learning and empowerment as learners, expecting that students will develop these abilities during their time with us.