Gangs, drugs, street racing, bullying, video game addiction. These are the typical negative headlines we associate with today’s youth. It’s really no wonder why young people disengage from a media that reinforces negative stereotypes and treats them as an entity to be seen, observed, critiqued but not heard. One of the things I’ve always told writing students is “if you don’t tell your own story, others will tell it for you - and it likely won’t be a very good story.” But give them tools, training and a forum and you’re going to hear the real stories. Take 16 year old Charlotte Lytton, who writes about discrimination in the workplace in Today’s Guardian:
“When are we supposed to learn all of these additional skills for the world of work? From reading the papers, it seems pupils are working their socks off at school to be met with disgruntled employers who sack them because they turn up for work five minutes late or their shirt isn’t tucked in. After a six-hour school day that can sometimes include double history and mathematics, when do they expect kids to learn the protocol of the work place?”
Continue reading ‘Youth making headlines in the UK’
Why do some students engage their learning while others disengage?
This is the most intriguing and difficult question I encountered during my teacher training last year at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The deeper I searched for answers, the more unwieldy my exploration became. I learned, for example, that engagement isn’t simply a matter of ability or attitude but a complex range of social conditions, policy, practice, individual learning differences and many other variables.
But one issue I didn’t see addressed is the role of shifting technological paradigms and the reality of a web2.0 oriented learner. Also notably absent from much discussion is the students’ perspective. Unlike the tech sector, education is not user-driven but largely top down. Like the older developer-driven models, educational stakeholders (academic researchers, teachers, administrators and policy makers) design metrics and methodologies that speak to their own research and policy requirements. Why not measure the efficacy of the system according to the sensory orientations of today’s learners instead of measuring the student against a laggard system? In the context of diffusion of innovations, our students are the innovators and early adopters - so why aren’t we listening to them? As a formerly disengaged learner, I find this lack of connection with the end user problematic. In my view, addressing the web2.0 learner is the path to crossing the chasm of student disengagement.
Continue reading ‘Wired students, wired approaches’
“To agree to learn from a stranger who does not respect your integrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is to not learn and reject the stranger’s world.”
- Herbert Kohl, from “I Won’t Learn from You”
American educator Herbert Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn from You” is a compelling essay about the complex relationship between a learner’s social context and their motivation to learn. This piece was one of the first, and most important, texts of critical pedagogy I read for my Bachelors of Education and I’ve come to believe it has far reaching application far beyond the classroom. I thought I’d share something of an introduction to Kohl and the enigmatic reasons why we sometimes choose not to learn.
Continue reading ‘Herbert Kohl and the enigma of not-learning’
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