Engaging Students E-Book

Phillip C. Schlechty

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 391

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

ENGAGING STUDENTS In Phillip Schlechty's best-selling book Working on the Work, he outlined a motivational framework for improving student performance by improving the quality of schools designed for students. Engaging Students offers a next-step resource in which Schlechty incorporates what he's learned from the field and from the hundreds of workshops he and the Schlechty Center staff have conducted since Working on the Work was first published. This innovative and practical book is focused on helping teachers become increasingly successful in designing engaging work for their students. Schlechty contends that rather than viewing schools as teaching platforms, schools must be viewed as learning platforms. Rather than seeing schools as knowledge distribution systems, schools must be seen as knowledge work systems. Rather than defining teachers as instructors, teachers must be defined as designers, leaders, and guides to instruction. Engaging Students also includes useful questionnaires that will facilitate discussion, analysis, and action planning at both school and classroom levels. Praise for Engaging Students "In Engaging Students, Schlechty boldly delineates why the focus on engaging students overrides the focus on test scores. Every teacher and administrator in my district will use this guide to transform our entire organization into one that is truly focused on student engagement." --KIM REDMOND, superintendent, Canton Local Schools, Canton, Ohio "This insightful book reminds us that every decision made in schools should ultimately benefit students. You will find yourself referring to this book again and again as a guide to support you in your role as an educator." --ALLENE MAGILL, executive director, Professional Association of Georgia Educators, Atlanta, Georgia "Here is a much-enriched framework for everything Dr. Schlechty advocates: well articulated curriculum standards, schools as a platform for learning, teachers as leaders and designers of engaging and meaningful work, and students becoming responsible for their learning." --NYANA SIMS, K-12 literacy and induction facilitator, Goshen School District, Torrington, Wyoming "By understanding and implementing the principles so thoughtfully articulated in this book, schools can become centers of highly engaged learners--and in that endeavor find again the joy of teaching and learning." --JOHNNY VESELKA, executive director, Texas Association of School Administrators, Austin, Texas

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

The Author

About the Schlechty Center

Part One : Engagement

Chapter One : Introduction

The Purpose of this Book

A Great Mutation

A Word about Context

The Issue of Redundancy

Chapter Two : The Meaning of Engagement

Engagement Defined

Involvement and Engagement

Compliance without Engagement

From Strategic Compliance to Rebellion

Retreatism and Rebellion

Superficial and Profound Learning

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Engagement and Effort

Engagement and Trust

Engagement and Entertainment

Assessing Engagement

Some Illustrative Queries

Developing a Classroom Profile

Where is the Research?

Part Two : The Framework

Chapter Three : Motives and Motivation

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Design versus Planning

A Language for The Design of Engaging Work

A Concluding Statement

Chapter Four : The Engagement-Focused School

Beliefs Underlying Working on the Work

The Engagement-Focused School: A Vision

Framing the Dialogue

Starting the Conversation

The Issue of Time

Chapter Five : Prototypes and Design Specifications

Prototypes and Prototyping

Prototyping as a Transforming Device

Creating Design Specifications

An Important Aside

A Disciplined Approach to Designing Schoolwork

A Concluding Comment

Chapter Six: An Alternative View of Teaching

The Teacher’s Dilemma

The Means of Doing the Job

The Nature of Work

Students as Knowledge Workers

Design Teams

Design Teams and Professional Learning Communities

The Design Process

A Coincidental Lesson

Part Three : New Roles in Our Schools

Chapter Seven : The Teacher’s Role

Engaging Work and Engaging Teachers

Knowing and Teaching The Right Stuff

Focus on Engagement and The Design of Schoolwork

Teachers as Designers

Teachers as Leaders

Teachers as Guides To Instruction

Top Down and Bottom Up

Families and Schools

A Concluding Observation

Chapter Eight : The Principal’s Role

Build or Join a Principal Support Network

Get Your Own Beliefs Clear

Involve The Superintendent and Relevant Central office Staff

Create Design Teams

Increase Awareness

Invest in Teacher Development

Be a Teacher

Find Time

Inventing the Future

Chapter Nine : The Superintendent’s Role

Shared Authority versus Delegation

Innovations that Require Systemic Change

A Point of View

The Wisdom of Others

The Capacity Issue

The Capacity Audit

A Concluding Comment

Chapter Ten : Rethinking Accountability

The Role of Standards

Sources of Resistance

Every Child Can Learn

The Issues of Time and Collegiality

The Standards Movement, The Testing Movement, and Accountability

A Time To Reassess

Government Schools or Public Schools

Conclusion

Appendix : A Framework for Reflection and Discussion

Bibliography

Index

Praise for Engaging Students

In Engaging Students, Phillip C. Schlechty boldly delineates why the focus on engaging students overrides the focus on test scores. Every teacher and administrator in my district will use this guide to transform our entire organization into one that is truly focused on student engagement. Years ago I read Working on the Work and it changed my teaching and leadership focus. This new work has extended my vision even more.

—Kim Redmond, superintendent, Canton Local Schools, Canton, Ohio

Dr. Schlechty has written another insightful book that reminds the reader that every decision made in schools should ultimately benefit students. Student engagement is explained in new and compelling ways and the book’s clear message is useful for anyone who truly cares about students and the future of our country. You will find yourself referring to this book again and again as a guide to support you in your role as an educator or policymaker.

—Allene Magill, executive director, Professional Association of Georgia Educators, Atlanta, Georgia

This book presents a much-enriched framework for everything Dr. Schlechty advocates: well-articulated curriculum standards, schools as a platforms for learning, teachers as leaders and designers of engaging and meaningful work, and students becoming responsible for their learning.

—Nyana Sims, K–12 literacy and induction facilitator, Goshen School District, Torrington, Wyoming

Not since the release of Working on the Work, Schlechty’s 2002 publication, have we had such an insightful guide to the transformation of our classrooms and student learning. Engaging Students embodies and reveals the learnings from countless hours of work with schools across the nation—pulling educators into new roles as designers and leaders. By understanding and implementing the principles so thoughtfully articulated here, schools can become centers of highly engaged learners—moving from compliant bureaucracies to learning organizations—and in that endeavor find again the joy of teaching and learning.

—Johnny Veselka, executive director, Texas Association of School Administrators, Austin, Texas

Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

A Wiley Imprint

989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schlechty, Phillip C., 1937-

Engaging Students: The Next Level of Working on the Work / Phillip C. Schlechty.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-64008-1 (pbk.)

1. School improvement programs—United States. 2. Academic achievement—United States. 3. Curriculum change—United States. 4. School environment—United States. I. Title.

LB2822.82.S344 2011

371.2'07—dc22

2010045736

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with all my books I owe much to many people. First and foremost I owe much to the entire staff from Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform, a not-for-profit organization I founded in 1987. The mission of this center is to provide school leaders with support they need to carry out the difficult task of transforming schools. The books I write are written in support of this mission.

There are twenty-six staff members at the Center and all have contributed to this book. There are, however, five staff members who I feel obliged to provide whatever special recognition an acknowledgment in a book might provide. First, I want to thank Tena Lutz, who has assisted me in my work since 1984. Without Tena’s assistance, I would not have finished most of the books I have written, including this one. Kim Vidrine, deserves a special thank-you for all of her tireless editorial work. She is both diligent and insightful.

Third, I would like to give a special thank you to Bob Nolte who has worked with me since 1990 and who always provides brilliant critiques of my writing. He always seems to know what I mean, even when I say it poorly. Fourth, I want to thank George Thompson, who is president of the Schlechty Center. One of the smartest things I ever did was recruit George to the Center and recommend that he be named president and chief operating officer. I can think of no person to whom I would rather entrust whatever professional legacy I might leave. His thoughtful critiques have been most useful to me.

I also want to acknowledge the very substantial contribution Lennie Hay, a staff member at the Schlechty Center, made to the development of this book. Among other things she wrote the first draft of all of the beginning sections of each chapter and identified the major concepts that appear in the box at the beginning of the chapter. She also made detailed comments on each chapter and helped me think through several issues with which I was having difficulties.

In addition to the staff members noted previously, I want to express my appreciation to a review panel that spent two days with me reviewing a nearly final version of this book. The members of this panel were Randy Bridges, superintendent, Alamance-Burlington (North Carolina) School District; Phillip Brown, principal, Whitfield County (Georgia) Public Schools; Angie Jacobson, teacher, Muscogee County (Georgia) schools; Gary Patterson, superintendent, Alamo Heights (Texas) ISD; Kim Redmond, superintendent, Canton (Ohio) Local Schools; David Reynolds, Professional Association of Georgia Educators; Nyana Sims, instructional facilitator, Goshen County (Wyoming) Schools; Kiara Wilson, teacher, Dayton (Ohio) public schools.

Finally, I want to thank the editorial staff at Jossey-Bass. I have written a number of books that that have been published by Jossey-Bass and have always been pleased with the help and support I received from the editorial staff. Those to whom I owe special thanks include Lesley Iura, associate publisher; Kate Gagne, acquisitions editor; Susan Geraghty, production editor; and Beverly Miller, copyeditor.

THE AUTHOR

Phillip Schlechty is the founder and chief executive officer of the Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform. He has been a teacher and public school administrator, as well as a university professor and associate dean. He established the Center for Leadership in School Reform in 1988; through this organization, he has developed a staff of experienced educators who are committed to transforming schools from bureaucracies into learning organizations. Schlechty and the center staff work with thousands of teachers, principals, central office staff, superintendents, and school boards, as well as with parents, civic leaders, business leaders, and others interested in the continuing health of public education in the United States. The center works with school districts across the United States.

Over the past forty years, Schlechty has written eight books and many journal articles dealing with issues related to the transformation of schools and school leadership. He has received awards from such diverse organizations as the American Federation of Teachers, the American Educational Research Association, and the National Staff Development Council. Most recently, his alma mater, The Ohio State University, honored him by inducting him into the School of Education and Human Ecology Faculty and Alumni Hall of Fame.

ABOUT THE SCHLECHTY CENTER

The Schlechty Center is a private, nonprofit organization committed to partnering with school leaders across the country to transform their classrooms, schools, and school districts from teaching platforms focused on compliance to learning platforms focused on engagement. The Schlechty Center provides educators with intellectual scaffoldings and frameworks to discipline action, training experiences, networking opportunities, disciplined discussions, dialogue, and advice on strategy and process. There are twenty-nine staff members who work every day to support educators in their efforts to transform education in America.

The activities of the Schlechty Center proceed from the assumption that if the schools are to be transformed they must be transformed by the men and women who are even now living out their lives in our schools. The goal of the Center is to provide ideas, support, and tools to those who are committed to this difficult journey. Many of these ideas can be found in the books written by Phillip Schlechty, but the Center’s work is not limited to these ideas. Indeed, much of the work the Center does is based on the work of many other authors and researchers as well as the hard-won insights provided by the clients with whom the staff of the Center works.

PART ONE

Engagement

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The metaphors we use to frame discussions reveal much about the mental models we hold regarding the subject being discussed. The metaphors commonly used to frame discussions about teaching almost always suggest the ideas that the teacher is a performer and that teacher performance is a key explanatory variable in the quest to understand what students learn in school. Indeed, the idea that the teacher is a performer and that the way the teacher goes about his or her work is a matter of central importance shapes much theory and practice in the study of teaching and the evaluation of teachers. Few educators have not heard of teacher performance appraisal systems, and few are unaware of the fact that a key element of such systems is the observed behavior of the teacher in the classroom.

Who the teacher is and what the teacher does is important to what students learn, and to suggest otherwise is foolish. I do, however, take serious exception to the notion that teacher performance is a cause and student learning is an effect. Teachers do perform, but it is not their performance that “causes” students to learn. Rather, it is the performance of the student that should be the assumed cause of learning. Instead of thinking of teachers as performers, I prefer to think of them as designers of experiences for students. I assume that the essential skills that teachers need are those associated with designing work for students that students find engaging. These skills include those that are essential to ensuring that the work is designed in a way that results in students’ learning what it is intended that they learn.

In my view, it is much more important to assess the quality of the experiences teachers provide for students than it is to assess the quality of a teacher’s performance. Indeed, I would argue that the assumption that the teacher’s performance is the critical variable in student learning does great harm to both students and those who teach them. Teachers are leaders, and like all other leaders, they are best judged by what they get others to do than by what they do themselves.

Even if the assumption that test scores are fair representations of student learning is granted, which I do not grant, much more is involved in the scores students produce than those things the teacher does or fails to do. Teachers do not produce test scores; students produce test scores. Much that students learn and much that shows up on their completed tests they likely learned outside school, including at home where students and parents may actually talk, or fail to talk, about what the student is or is not learning. Should the teacher who has the good fortune of having parents who educate their own children be credited for being so lucky, and should those who have fewer of these parents be blamed? Nonsense!

There are really only two things that have the prospect of having a direct impact on student performance over which the teacher has any real control. First is the relationship that teachers have with their students and the way teachers, as leaders, treat their students. Second is the work teachers assign to students or encourage them to undertake. These two things, rather than the teacher’s performance, should be central in our concern about the effect of teachers on student learning, for they determine what students do, and fail to do, as they carry out their lives in school. Effective teachers get students to do the right things, and they design things for them to do that are right for the students they teach.

Students do not learn from the performance of teachers; they learn from their own performance. The teacher’s job is then to ensure that the students’ performance optimizes the prospect that they will learn what they need to in order to participate effectively in American cultural, economic, and civic life.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

This book was initially intended to be a modest revision of an earlier book I wrote: Working on the Work: An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents. As I got into this task, it became clear to me that rather than a simple revision, what was required was an almost total rewrite, and thus a different book entirely.

Readers who are familiar with the earlier book will find much here with which they will be familiar. For example, in Chapters Seven to Nine, there are only slight revisions of three earlier chapters. Chapters Two through Five and Chapter Ten, however, contain much new material as well as elaborations and expansions of ideas I presented in Working on the Work.

This does not mean that I have abandoned the ideas I set forth in the earlier book. I have not. Rather, my experiences over the past decade have helped me to clarify what I once said and caused me to rethink how to position what I suggested in the context of school reform initiatives today. Two matters have been especially significant in shaping my thinking about the issues I address in this book. First, as the original Working on the Work framework has become more widespread (the original version of the book has sold nearly 150,000 copies), it has become clear that what I wrote and what some people think I wrote are not always congruent. As the author, I accept responsibility for these misunderstandings. As I often said to some of my students, “You never know what you have said or written until someone tells you. All you know is what you intended to say or to write. The message received is more important than the message sent.”

A second matter of considerable importance is the direction and development of the current government-sponsored efforts to improve education in the United Sates. When I wrote Working on the Work, the test-based accountability system that emerged out of the No Child Left Behind legislation was not yet fully developed. Standards-based accountability was being talked about, but standards had not yet morphed into scores on standardized tests. Clearly the standards that the early proponents of standards-based school reform envisioned (standards to which I had some attraction) are no longer the standards of concern. Rather than asking, “What should students know and be able to do?” we now ask, “What do students need to know and be able to do to reach a given cutoff point on an easily scored, relatively inexpensive standardized test?” The answer to this latter question becomes the standard of concern.

I have always believed that well-articulated curriculum standards are essential to the proper education of children. They both provide direction and impose needed discipline. Nevertheless, there is a difference between student performance standards—that is, standards regarding what students should be able to demonstrate that they know and can do—and curriculum standards.

Curriculum standards have to do with conceptions of the purposes of schooling and the ends of education. Student performance standards have to do with the immediate and the measurable. Curriculum standards and student performance standards are—or should be—related, but they are not synonymous. Curriculum standards have to do with the desired and the desirable. Student performance standards have to do with the observable and the acceptable.

We do need clear and powerful curriculum standards. Indeed, I do not see how a school faculty can proceed without some agreement on what the curriculum standards are and without some means of enforcing these. However, I do not believe these standards necessarily flow from some state or federal bureaucrat’s office and that the means of enforcement are the bureaucratic means available to governments. Standards, if they are to have meaning in a democracy, must be developed by local communities and enforced by them as well. Moreover, the means of enforcement must move beyond the formalized structures suggested by testing and into the arena of continuous examination of student learning outcomes and the work that students are provided in pursuit of these standards. If standards are to count, they must be embraced by people who count to students—and in the accounting of students, their peers, families, and teachers count for more than do governors, education bureaucrats, or even business leaders and foundations. To have standards-based schooling, therefore, one must seek as well a common core of standards in the community that the school or schools serve.

A GREAT MUTATION

In 1962 historian Carl Bridenbaugh, in a presidential address to the American Historical Association, coined the phrase great mutation to characterize a development he wanted to discuss. He said:

The Great Mutation, or historical change, has taken place so rapidly, and life has sustained such sudden and radical alterations (in the long course of time) that we are now suffering something like historical amnesia. In the present century, first Western civilization and now the entire globe have witnessed the inexorable substitution of an artificial environment and a materialistic outlook on life for the old natural environment and spiritual world view that linked us so irrevocably to the Recent and Distant Pasts. So pervading and complete has been this change, and so complex has life become—I almost said overwhelming—that it now appears probable that mid-nineteenth-century America or Western Europe had more in common with fifth-century Greece (physically, economically, socially, mentally, spiritually) than with their own projections into the middle of the twentieth century. Is it possible that so short a time can alter the condition of man?1

A member of the 1962 audience looking back over the past fifty years might well have said, “Carl, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” The changes that have occurred since 1962 make those that Bridenbaugh describes pale in significance.

Public schools as we now know them were established in the nineteenth century to fulfill for the masses an educational function that had heretofore been fulfilled by families, private tutors, and academies. The assumption underlying the early American school—usually referred to as the “common school”—was that the job of the teacher is to pass on the knowledge and lore of the “tribe.” In this view, adults control children and what they will learn because adults control the information children will receive as a part of their education. The teacher is the master of this information and the primary point of access to the information. The student is a supplicant and a subordinate. Students are obliged to comply with their teachers’ directives because parents, teachers, and schools represent the primary point of access to the collective wisdom of society. This view is deeply embedded in the tradition and lore that surround schools in the United States.

Such a view of the relationship between teacher and student has served tradition-based societies well. But it has become difficult to sustain this view in contemporary America where traditions are eroding and being replaced with new practices and new fads on a regular basis. And one of the most fundamental changes is that adults no longer control the access the young have to information. In the world of the Internet and mass media, students often learn things before their teachers or their parents are even aware of them. Sometimes what students learn is consistent with what adults want them to learn and sometimes it is not, but whatever the case, they do learn, and what they learn shapes the way they will live their lives.

Adults, whether parents or teachers, can no longer control the information students receive. (Even closed communities like the Amish are having difficulty in this regard.) Therefore, if schools and teachers are to continue to have a major impact on what students learn, teachers are going to need to learn to direct the learning of their students rather than attempt to control it. This means that teachers need to rethink the way they have traditionally related to students. They can no longer depend on the superiority of their knowledge and wisdom (which still may be quite real) to help reinforce the authority that tradition has bestowed on them.

One way to help reconceive this relationship is to think of the student as a customer for work and the teacher as the designer of that work. Properly viewed, customers are at the center of any enterprise. Without customers, businesses do not exist. As Peter Drucker has observed, the primary goal of any business should be getting and keeping customers.2

Similarly, students are, or should be, at the center of schools and schooling. Engaging students in work that results in their need to learn material that is essential to their education as citizens in a democracy and to their right to claim to be well-educated human beings is the primary business of schools.

Students do not volunteer to go to school; they are compelled by their parents and the law to attend. Like it or not, however, students do control those things the teacher needs from them to ensure that the students will learn those things it is intended that they learn. Students control the effort they are willing to invest and the attention they are willing to pay. Sometimes it is possible to bribe students to “pay attention” and to invest effort, and sometimes they can be coerced to do so. However, if the attention they pay and the effort they invest is to result in quality learning, they must do more than comply. They must be committed to the work they undertake—so committed that they will stick with it even when they fail on initial tries and experience difficulties along the way. This means that they must be engaged in the work rather than simply compliant with its demands, and that means that the work must have inherent meaning for them. I wrote Working on the Work in an effort to help teachers become increasingly successful in designing engaging work. This book pursues the same end.

A WORD ABOUT CONTEXT

I wrote my first book on schools and schooling in 1975 and published it the next year. Even then I had concluded that instruction could not be improved until schools changed in fundamental ways. These changes must occur in the boardroom as well as the classroom, in the statehouse as well as the schoolhouse. In the years since Working on the Work was published in 2002, I have become much clearer about the nature of the changes needed.

Between 2005 and 2009 I wrote and rewrote a manuscript for a now-published book, Leading for Learning, in which I describe in considerable detail the kinds of changes I believe are necessary. Leading for Learning, however, is about redesigning schools and school districts, not about designing work for students. That book does not enter the classroom door other than by inference. Instead, it is an effort to set forth a set of propositions regarding the type of system that needs to be created if teachers are encouraged to work on the work.

Working on the Work was written before Leading for Learning, but Leading for Learning provides the context for that earlier book and probably should be read before turning to this one. Indeed, I believe that reading Leading for Learning can relieve some of the angst teachers sometimes feel when they first see clearly the kinds of changes they are going to confront if they take seriously the suggestions I make in this book.

Indeed, as I have watched bureaucratically mandated school reform initiatives play out, I have gained a new appreciation for the pressures these changes put on teachers and principals. All of this has served to reinforce something I have long understood to be true: the way schools are organized affects what teachers do in classrooms. So long as schools are organized as rational bureaucracies, teachers who are committed to creating engaging work for students will find it difficult to operate in the context of schools, and students will suffer because this is so.

As a result of these reenergized appreciations, I am now more firmly convinced than ever before that if teachers are to design more engaging work for students, those who control schools and the way schools operate must be prepared to design schools and school districts in ways that are supportive of this activity. Principals, superintendents, and school boards need to understand it. Most of all, policymakers bent on improving education through bureaucratization of processes and bureaucratized forms of assessment and accountability must understand it and stop doing some of the silly and misguided things they are now doing. They must, for example, abandon test-based, punishment-centered accountability and embrace the notion that sound pedagogy is based on beliefs and that standards are best thought of as sources of direction rather than weapons for maintaining control.

Rather than viewing schools as teaching platforms, schools must be viewed as learning platforms. Rather than seeing schools as knowledge distribution systems, schools must be seen as knowledge work systems. Rather than defining teachers as instructors, teachers must be defined as designers, leaders, and guides to instruction.

Just as Gutenberg’s printing press made the role of scribes obsolete, e-learning and all that surrounds it are on the way to making the role of teacher as instructor obsolete. This most assuredly does not mean that teaching and teachers are obsolete or can be replaced by computers. Rather, it means that the role of the teacher as instructor is obsolete. But at the same time this information technology is creating an even greater need for teachers to embrace the role of leader, guide to instruction, and designer of work for students.

A personal story may make my meaning more clear.

My eight-year-old grandson is familiar with computers and how to access Google. One evening he and his mother were watching a television show featuring a trip to Belgium. After the show, Daniel went to his computer and looked up Belgium on the Web. Though it is not clear what he read, when his mother asked him what he learned, he responded, “Well, one of the things I learned was that the Belgians were very busy during World War II.” When his mother asked him what made him think that, he said, “Well, the article said that during World War II, the Belgians were occupied by the Germans, so I just figured the Germans were keeping them busy.”

Clearly Daniel had received instruction without the benefit of a teacher, but without a teacher (in this case, his mother) to guide him to understand what he had learned from his faceless instructor could well have been misleading indeed. Much of what I present in the pages that follow is aimed at helping teachers and those who work with them to think through the implications of this brave new world for teachers and teaching in the hope that that which is occurring even now will not result in an Orwellian nightmare and the loss of our precious democratic heritage.

THE ISSUE OF REDUNDANCY

For readers who are concerned about editorial matters, I want to point out at the start that this book contains considerable redundancy and that the redundancy is intentional. What I write in one chapter I repeat in a slightly different form in another. For example, in Chapter Two I present the Working on the Work framework and the language it suggests as a set of assumptions regarding the characteristics and attributes of work that teachers must take into account in the design of engaging work. In Chapter Five, I use the same framework as a structure for discussing ideas about prototypes and design specifications. Sometimes I discuss these ideas simply as design qualities, but at other times I move the discussion of these qualities well beyond that which will be known to those familiar with my earlier work on this subject.

There is a risk that in this way, I will add to confusion rather than bring greater clarity to my intentions. I believe, however, that the redundant use of some of these categories will better explain some of the subtle differences between designing work and planning lessons. Moreover, I am convinced that until teachers understand the difference between designing engaging work for students and planning interesting lessons, they are more likely to play at working on the work rather than work at it.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that I am aware that I make frequent and sometimes redundant commentary regarding the direction of government-sponsored efforts to reform schools. If I seem obsessed with this problem it is because so many of the teachers and principals with whom I work are so fastened on test scores that they find it difficult to think about working on the work and I want them to know that I understand the source of their distress. I am, however, convinced that unless teachers come to focus on engagement as much as so many now focus on test scores, there will be little improvement in our schools. Unfortunately, too many teachers believe that as long as they must contend with the ham-fisted use of standardized tests to ensure accountability, the expectation that they can also work on the work, though perhaps desirable, is unrealistic. I am not unaware of the problems my proposals create for teachers but I have confidence that much good can be done even now to change the course of school reform in this nation. One of the things that can be done is to help teachers articulate the problems they feel. I hope my commentary can be of use in this regard.

1C. Bridenbaugh, “The Great Mutation.” American Historical Review, 1963, 68, 315–331.

2See, for example, Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

CHAPTER TWO

The Meaning of Engagement

Key Ideas

Assessing engagementAttentionCommitmentComplianceEngagementHighly engaged classroomMeaningMotivationNoncompliancePathological classroomPersistenceProfound learningSuperficial learningTypes of involvementWell-managed classroom

Jane, a fourth-grade teacher, sits at her desk at the end of the day and remembers a recent discussion about engagement and compliance in a faculty meeting. Her class this year presents no behavior problems and her students are eager to submit their work for Jane’s evaluation. However, Jane worries that maybe most of her students are primarily interested in grades, winning a place on the school’s honor roll, and having their work posted on the “Classroom Stars” bulletin board. Today, Jane described a new unit to her fourth graders. The unit was to be a departure from the science textbook. It would involve science investigation requiring teamwork, collection of water samples from a stream near the school, a partnership with a high school biology class and use of their lab, research about water quality, culminating in a classroom science magazine written by the students about their investigation and findings. Although Jane anticipated that her students would be excited about this learning experience, the first thing they wanted to know was how they would be graded. Their questions had to do with “points they would earn for each part of the unit,” “number of pages each team would have to write,” “number of research articles required,” and the like. In frustration and disappointment, Jane spontaneously announced that the unit would be ungraded and the class would invite high school students, other teachers in the school, and, perhaps, some local environmental scientists to review their work and give them comments. The fourth graders were still not excited and asked if they couldn’t just get back to their science textbook with its clear assignments and chapter tests. Jane leaves her classroom that afternoon perplexed.

Engagement is central to this book, just as it should be central in the life of schools. It is important that readers be aware of the reasons I place engagement in such a central position in the constellation of my concerns about the future of public education in the United States. Because the term is now used in so many ways, it is also important for readers to have a clear understanding of what I mean when I use the word engagement. This chapter provides the information needed to ensure these understandings.

ENGAGEMENT DEFINED

Four components are always present when a student is engaged:

1. The engaged student is attentive, in the sense that he or she pays attention to and focuses on the tasks associated with the work being done.

2. The engaged student is committed. He or she voluntarily (that is, with-out the promise of extrinsic rewards or the threat of negative consequences) deploys scarce resources under his or her control (time, attention, and effort, for example) to support the activity called for by the task.

3. The engaged student is persistent. He or she sticks with the task even when it presents difficulties.

4. The engaged student finds meaning and value in the tasks that make up the work.

Sometimes on-task behavior is confused with engagement. On-task behavior indicates only that a student is attentive to a task. It says nothing of the student’s willingness to persist with the task when he or she experiences difficulty. It also says nothing about the value the student attaches to the task or the meaning he or she associates with the activity related to it. A student might persist with a difficult task simply because he or she places value on some extrinsic rewards promised for successful completion of the task—for example, a good grade, admission to college, or eligibility to participate in extracurricular activities. Take the promise of these extrinsic rewards away, and the student is likely to abandon the task since completing it has no other meaning or value for him or her. For example, students who aspire to enter highly selective colleges are more likely to do whatever it takes to get a good grade than are students whose college aspirations are less lofty.

Even when a student is attentive and persistent, there is no assurance that the student is engaged. Engagement involves commitment as well as attention and persistence. Attention can be focused through fear and the threat of punishment, but those who are attentive because of fear and threat are not engaged. Neither are those who pay attention and persist because they place a high value on some reward that is extrinsic to the work. Commitment, attention, and persistence must be present to justify the claim that the student is engaged.

INVOLVEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT

Students who are engaged are involved, but not all students who are involved are engaged. The most critical difference between students who are engaged and those who are not is the way they relate to the situation or tasks at hand.

In the past, I posited five ways that a student might respond to a learning task:

Authentic engagementRitual engagementPassive complianceRetreatismRebellion1

It has become clear to me, however, that these labels are sometimes misleading and confusing. Consequently I have relabeled some of the categories and have modified and elaborated some of the definitions. For example, I no longer speak of authentic engagement. Rather, I simply use engagement. Where once I spoke and wrote about ritual engagement, I now speak and write about strategic compliance. Where once I used passive compliance to indicate a response in which students do only the minimum required to avoid negative consequences, I now use ritual compliance.Table 2.1 summarizes these changes.

Table 2.1 Previous and New Terms for Student Responses to a Learning Task

Previous TermNew TermAuthentic engagementEngagementRitual engagementStrategic compliancePassive complianceRitual complianceRetreatismRetreatismRebellionRebellion

Compliance suggests the willingness to do what is expected or required by a task. Involvement requires participation but it does not require compliance. There are, in fact, many students who are involved in school and attend classes yet are also alienated from school life and the way schools go about their business. Some are so alienated that they drop out as soon as they can do so legally. More often, however, students who do not find personal meaning in the work they are expected to do in school and do not find the extrinsic rewards either accessible or of significant value seek to reach a compromise with their teachers and their schools.2

Sometimes nonengaged students adopt a retreatist posture. As long as the teacher does not insist on some evidence of compliance, the student causes no problems. More often, however, because schools and teachers have, and are perceived to have, considerable influence over the way coveted extrinsic rewards are accessed and distributed, students make strategic decisions to comply with requirements even if they do not embrace them or find them inherently compelling.

Students who highly value the extrinsic rewards may expend a great deal of effort and be willing to persist with the task at least until they attain the reward. Unlike students who find personal meaning in the work, however, those who are strategically compliant almost always have a conditional commitment to the work: they are willing to do the work only so long as the extrinsic reward is present. Remove the reward, and they withdraw the effort. (This is perhaps what is behind teachers’ frequent complaint that students are often “working only for the grade.”)

COMPLIANCE WITHOUT ENGAGEMENT

Recognizing that learning requires activity on the part of students, teachers typically seek to ensure that students are compliant even if they are not engaged. To some teachers, strategic compliance and ritual compliance are adequate. There are at least three reasons for this:

Raising students’ awareness regarding rewards and heightening their consciousness of negative consequences is a relatively straightforward task. Moreover, teachers generally have a well-developed set of understandings regarding the kinds of extrinsic rewards that students value and negative sanctions they are most likely to abhor. Teachers are much less certain regarding the causes and sources of engagement. Indeed, many see engagement as a responsibility of students, and they view students who are not engaged as remiss in their duties.The level and type of learning that standardized tests measure—which is increasingly the focus of teacher concerns—can usually be produced by strategic compliance and sometimes even ritual compliance.Many, if not most, teachers assume that student engagement has more to do with the sentiments and orientations of students than it does with anything over which teachers exercise control. In this view, good students are those who place high value on academic work done as academics would have them do this work. Students who are not as accomplished do not share these academic values, or so teachers sometimes argue.

It is certainly clear that extrinsic rewards and threats of negative sanctions can and do shape behavior. Most teachers also understand that the type of learning that occurs as a result of the systematic application of rewards and punishments may satisfy some short-term goals. However, it might not have the long-term effects that might be anticipated if students did what they were expected to do because they found the work engaging rather than doing the work as a result of calculative decisions regarding rewards and punishments. Indeed, teachers have been known to apply the label grade grubber to students who, they believe, work only for the grade.

The idea that engagement is more of a product of student attributes than of anything over which the teacher can exercise direct control also has some support in the experiences of teachers. Clearly some students find meaning, relevance, and significance in academic pursuits carried out in the manner that academics expect them to be carried out. These students have embraced and internalized the norms of the academy and are more likely than their peers to find schoolwork engaging. They have, in fact, become fully socialized to the idealized ways of the academy and find these ways morally compelling. They do what they must because they believe that they ought to do it and that it is just the right thing to do. They are, to use Amitai Etzioni’s term, “morally involved.”3

The type of involvement students have in school and the generalized meaning they attach to school experiences have an effect on the ease with which teachers are able to get students engaged. Morally involved students are easier to engage because they value the kind of work academics value. Traditional academic work, presented in traditional ways, can be engaging to such students. Indeed, it is the morally involved student to whom teachers often refer when they think of the “ideal student” or the student they would hold up as an exemplar. The problem, of course, is that many Americans do not find academic work, or the way academics go about their work, engaging. Thus we hear business leaders suggest that ideas are “only academic,” and books and articles are written about anti-intellectualism in America. Populist commentators and politicians have a great time poking fun at the so-called academics and the intellectual elite.

FROM STRATEGIC COMPLIANCE TO REBELLION

Just as alienated students can sometimes be brought into compliance through coercion, students who are generally positively disposed toward school, especially those who are calculatively involved,4 sometimes rebel. Indeed, one of the most difficult issues confronting teachers who are working in some high-performing schools (as measured by test scores) is that many of the students do not expect or even desire for their schoolwork to be engaging. What they want instead are certainty and predictability. They sometimes simply want assurance that whatever they do will pay off in grades and improved chances to enter the college of their choice.

There are, in fact, many examples of this phenomenon noted in the education literature. Edward Humes in his book School of Dreams notes one of my favorites. (Another is Elinor Burkett’s Another Planet.) Humes’s case is about a highly regarded physics teacher who decided to encourage his students to undertake a serious experiment that called on them to apply what they were learning to a concrete situation. The task required imagination and persistence and carried with it considerable likelihood of initial failure. The best students in the class—those who in the past did their assigned tasks with proficiency—rebelled. They insisted that the teacher return to textbook assignments and conventional tests because this was the world they knew and had mastery of and in which they were known “winners.” They were interested in passing tests and said so. They did not have time to do physics. What they did have time to do was cram for a physics test on Monday so they could then cram for a math test on Thursday. When the teacher designed work that encouraged them to go beyond the predictable routines that they were comfortable with and had mastered, they refused to do the work and negotiated with the teacher to return to a more conventional format.