Connecting Student Learning and Technology

(cont.)

On the surface, the difference may not be immediately apparent. Both classrooms cover the required curriculum, they both include reading from the text, and they both include teacher-led discussion. However, if we look closely we see that instructional strategies in the second classroom are based on what we currently know about the ways people learn.

The teacher asks the students to tap into prior knowledge, first by sharing their experience with the content ("What do you know about this region?"), then by the structure of the activity itself. The learners must use memories of a previous trip to plan this one.
With the trip as a guide for thinking about the content, the textbook becomes a source for relevant information that can be applied to the students' plans. They can assimilate the information that fits into that framework. If they discover information that does not match their understanding of the region ("I didn't know Chicago was on a lake."), they must decide to accommodate that new information, or reject it as irrelevant or wrong. Teachers must be able to uncover these internal decisions. While tests help teachers monitor student understanding, there are other effective methods which include encouraging explanations of student work or strategies, allowing presentation of student products, and listening to conversations in small groups or large group discussions.
Authentic sources (letters from correspondents in the region, information gleaned from interviews) supplement the content presented in the text.
Students actively pursue information about their destination and the journey along the way, and they also reflect on their efforts by keeping daily journals.
Presentation of the student portfolios allows a formal opportunity for social interaction. It lets the learner present the work and lets others discuss it. While not mentioned in this scenario, informal conversations are equally important ways of letting students talk about their projects. A teacher may want to structure small group activities that provide time for the students to share their work.
By putting students in charge of their projects, offering an interesting, relevant context for the work, and providing a recognizable structure to build on, the teacher has increased the likelihood that the students will connect with the curriculum. Since learning is internally controlled, the student must make the connections and build his or her individual understanding.

Looking back at the first classroom, we realize that most of the curriculum content is controlled by the teacher--the students are not participants, they are observers. A film, which can be an interesting way to present content, is still a passive medium. Games can be valuable tools for helping students explore content, but games that require only recall of simple facts and definitions (word search puzzles, trivial fact scavenger hunts) do not foster higher level thinking.

It has been said that the person doing the work is the person who learns. Teachers can structure lessons so they have done most of the work, and students are robbed of the opportunity to discover. Many of these teachers, exhausted at the end of the day, wonder why they receive so little response from their students. Truth be known, the teacher has done all the work and the students are a captive audience, waiting for the end of class.

There are brilliant lecturers who spark a connection with students by presenting content in ways that are relevant and rich. We have all experienced such teachers in our student careers. However, the majority of classrooms will be much more supportive of learning when students are allowed to pursue their understanding of content through discovery, conversation, and completion of intellectual products.

Students are the stars in learner-centered classrooms. They bring knowledge and information gained from past experiences, things they've read and seen, things they have heard and talked about. Their previous understandings are the foundation of whatever learning they will glean in the classroom. Just as detectives are responsible for solving a crime, students are responsible for solving problems. Detectives start with what they know and build upon these clues through a variety of sources--fingerprints, DNA evidence, and witnesses. Students undertake all sorts of research from a variety of resources--newspaper articles, interviews with experts, books, and videos--to solve their problems. Just as detectives need more than one type of evidence to solve a crime, students can use multiple tools (computers, text, interviews, etc.) to approach a problem. And like police detectives who work in teams, students need colleagues and mentors for discussion, reflection, and dispute to help them work through solutions to their problems.

Since most adults have experienced classrooms with the teacher as the lead instructor, it is difficult to envision the teacher's responsibility in a learner-centered classroom. If the student is a self-sufficient detective, what does the teacher do? In a short answer, the teacher serves as the class instructional leader. While the teacher doesn't provide all the answers or control all the content, she establishes the structure that launches student exploration. That structure includes setting and keeping curricular goals, assessing students to ensure that learning is occurring, managing classroom activities in a way that balances a variety of student abilities, and sparking the initial stages of exploration to start the students on their work. Teachers in these classrooms rely on skillful questioning, monitoring student discussions and establishing rules that allow conversation and collaboration. They model reasoning and thinking, identify and restate student beliefs and understandings, support student-teacher and student-student dialogue, and provide feedback.

Student learning is affected by many factors--the physical and social environment, the curriculum, personal understanding and initiative, and the teacher's style and skill, to name a few. A teacher's challenge is to create a classroom that supports, rather than hinders, students' inherent ability to learn. Teachers in traditional classrooms may find that change will be necessary in some key areas.

Since students bring personal knowledge to the classroom, how can teachers help them connect their experiences and understanding to lesson content? A thematic, interdisciplinary curriculum that presents a larger picture is more recognizable and more meaningful than are isolated facts. A complex, overarching theme (such as growth, revolution, native people, or community) offers a scaffold to support student contributions. If students are encouraged to construct relationships and create metaphors for their understanding, they are more likely to make personal connections to the content. Challenging them to use higher order thinking skills--asking them to analyze, create, or synthesize ideas--helps to broaden their view of the content.

Linking that broad view to direct student experience, however, can be difficult. How can a teacher lure student imaginations to the natural world if their interest is captured by video games? Skilled practitioners begin with their students' interests and build upon them. The social studies teacher in the previous example let the students choose a city for their trip. There is no assurance that all the students will want to plan a trip, but offering them an option gives them a start toward making the activity their own. If a current event has captured the class mind for the moment, the teacher may consider altering the day's lesson to follow that avenue of exploration.

One strategy for lesson or unit planning is to cast the intellectual challenge in the form of a problem for students to solve--this recalls our metaphor of student as detective. Individuals or teams of students may work through meaningful problems that reflect their interests or comment on their lives. How many problems presented in the first classroom example had any connection to students' everyday life?

A major idea in constructivist thought is that learning is affected by social interaction. Discussions, conversations, explanations, listening--all these are ways we learn by interacting with others. Encouraging social interaction among students is not common in classrooms--even classrooms of excellent teachers. If social intercourse is, indeed, an essential part of learning, our students need more opportunities for discussion to develop their understanding. Classrooms that reflect this concept allow the flow of ideas among the teacher and students. Furniture is arranged in ways that encourage students to work together; class discussions allow time for thoughtful responses and talk about answers; assignments are designed so students have interdependent roles for completion of the work.

Skillful questioning techniques are important teaching tools in these classrooms. Teachers allow enough time after questions so students can think about their answers and provide thoughtful responses. Some of the questions are open-ended and require higher level skills. Students are asked to comment on each other's answers and check for understanding. Misconceptions or mistakes are used as opportunities to present inconsistencies or contradictions that require further thinking. A learner who thinks through a mistake and understands its fallacies is more likely to construct a new and better understanding.

Changes in the classroom's curriculum and interactions demand changes in assessment. Assessment should be linked to student learning and relate to performance and understanding.³ Tacking a test onto every learning activity will not reflect the rich variety of work being accomplished.

Multiple forms of assessment provide opportunities for different learners to demonstrate their understanding. Classroom discussions offer recurring opportunities to check for understanding, but more permanent evidence can be captured in products from projects, papers, journals, photographs, drawings, and tests. These can be gathered in portfolios that let the students view their own progress. The importance of teamwork and dialogue in the classroom deserves attention as well, and student growth in areas of cooperation and interpersonal skills should be documented through teacher observation and products of teamwork.