Helping Learners Find Their Place as Agents in Their Own Learning
I understand why many are doing this. I want you to know that copying someone else’s work is always plagiarism. Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as your own. I realize that you do not know what else to do – and that is not your fault. You have not been given the tools and experiences you need to understand what it means to do research and write a report using more than one source. So here is where we are going with this: We are going to learn how to write an original report over the next two months, and the topic of this assignment is something that you will decide. You are going to be asking a question of your own. If it is your own question, it should be a question that really interests you. We are going to learn how to do the research needed to address your question using multiple research resources.
I was enchanted by the opportunity Mr Don presented to participate in an experience that connected work in his class to learning in other course disciplines. He told us that he had created a curriculum experience to give his students tools to learn how to take actions, take notes and organize a research paper of our own. His efforts and the concern and caring for our learning that was behind it stand out so vividly in my memory of that year. He provided experiences that enlivened my
This book reflects research and teaching themes that originated in these experiences. These themes have permeated my lifework in Education as a student teacher, elementary/junior high school teacher, teacher educator and researcher. Like my teacher Mr Don, colleagues and I have worked to help change aspects of the culture of learning. These new learning structures and routines of engagement are designed to help students develop the experiences and skills needed to ask and answer questions of their own in learning. It has also meant the need for new and appropriate research approaches and frameworks such as those described by the authors of this volume. My own research goals are organized to build understanding of how learners engage in and contribute to their own learning. This work also explores the ways their teachers strive to impact the social and cultural structures of learning settings ((Shapiro, 1996, 2015; Shapiro & Kirby, 1998).
The first opportunity to work with some of the ideas Mr Don presented, emerged during my student teaching experience. I requested permission from my partner teacher to organize a series of lessons to guide the work of the 11–12 year old children I was working with. The goal was to help them learn to gather and organize information using three different sources as they created reports during their studies of animal families. My partner teacher strongly voiced her scepticism, saying, “I don’t think this will work. These kids will not be able to understand what you are asking them to do. You can try, but I don’t believe this will work with them.” The school, located in an economically impoverished area, was well known for its generally poor results on standardized tests administered annually in the school systems. I felt so fortunate that she was willing to allow me to try something new. I found the children bright, interested in learning and excited to be working with a student teacher. They were receptive yet it was indeed, very challenging at first for them to learn to take notes as they read about their animals using a variety of sources. It was a completely new way of engaging in learning in the classroom, as it would have been for any class of 11–12 year olds. I began by sharing my own project, a study of Elephants, showing them how I used many reference resources and the steps I followed to bring the project to completion. During the experience, I found that the children did grasp the value of changing the ways they had been previously writing reports by moving away from copying from
As a teacher in my own grade 5 classroom (ages 11–12), I involved students in original research during our studies of insect life cycles. Following extensive observations of mealworms, students posed questions of their own. They gathered data to answer their questions and shared their results during our Classroom Scientist Roundtable afternoons. What emerged for me was recognition and admiration of the remarkable levels of competency in some of the youngest of learners. Engaging in their own research meant creating new routines and structures for learning in Science. This way of learning in science was completely new to them. One day, as I went around the room asking students to share their questions with me, one of my students, Raylie, asked, “Which surfaces do mealworms prefer to walk on, rough or smooth surfaces?” ‘What a wonderful question!’ I exclaimed. She looked at me quizzically for a moment, then asked, “But you do know the answer… don’t you?” I replied, “No, I don’t know the answer – I have never studied this particular problem before. I am looking forward to hearing what you find out!” Clearly, for Raylie, the idea that her teacher did not know the answer to all of the questions the students were about to pursue was something very new to many of the children. I hoped that my response represented me as a learner, to be the same kind of learner I hoped they would be. Suddenly I was not the teacher-as-fount-of-all-information. I became teacher-the-inquirer, one who posed interesting, testable questions. This broke unspoken rules about the expectation many children had about their teacher, as someone who held all of the information. I was curious and learning along with them. They learned that I was trying to help them have greater control over aspects of their own learning. I included information about our project and the outcomes of the children’s learning in our regular classroom newsletter to parents. This was a teaching approach that was new to parents also, and many expressed the same surprise as Raylie. Encouraging the children to learn to ask their own questions was met with excitement and many more questions! How far would I be taking this experience? Would all of my teaching for all subjects in the curriculum be addressed in the same way? A description of this project and some of its successes and challenges became the subject of my first academic article for the profession, titled, Science: Learn with them (Shapiro, 1979).
Later, during university research studies, I continued to pursue understanding of how children take action to build knowledge of their own. My book, What children bring to light explores patterns of individual children’s natural actions to learn during study of the topic, Light in their elementary science class (Shapiro, 1994). The research approach was based on extended engagement in the classroom and involved regular conversation with children as collaborators to build understanding
Creating Environments to Support Help-Seeking and Help-Giving in Learning
Working with children and student teachers demonstrated the need to create new ways to assist my students to engage in their own research. I discovered the vital importance of providing opportunities to allow students to speak regularly with me and with one another about their research. This inspired a new direction in the Program of Research described in Chapter 7 in this volume – a focus on the ways learners take action to seek help in learning, when needed, and the ways educators create environments that support help-seeking and help-giving (Shapiro, 2016). This line of research explores the ways culturally constructed features of learning settings, define and structure the ways learners behave in and experience those learning settings. The physical and social structures of learning environments provide supports that help students take action to seek help in learning. On the other hand, institutional structures may also create obstacles that keep students silent when they need help, or discourage students from taking an active role in their learning. The restrictions of such settings must be researched, understood and challenged (Shapiro, 2011, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2016; Shapiro, Richards, Ross, & Kendal-Knitter, 1999).
There have been many wonderful educators like Mr Don, who often with little structural or system support, have worked to change the rules to help learners develop
Perspectives on Actions of Their Own in Learning and Research
Current research designed to understand the contributions learners make to their own learning is having an influence on the construction of many new learning environments worldwide. Emerging understandings of researchers’ connections and commitments to the concerns of the subjects of their research have also inspired new ways of thinking about research engagement, in particular, the development of more agentic ways of working with research participants. In this volume we explore the potential for the design of research and learning environments rooted in a conception of learning that embraces ideas about the vital connections between knowledge, agency, personal meaning and identity. Five perspectives about what it means to take actions of our own to learn run through our chapters:
1 Taking Actions to Build Knowledge Involves the Whole Person in Specific Contexts
Each individual engages in his or her own unique and highly individual ways of moving through the world in an effort to understand it and their place in it. Knowledge-building involves the whole person. Individuals use the mind and also the body to learn. Engagement in the process of building knowledge also involves acting within specific relationships and in specific contexts. Each person does so with resources that they bring to the experience of knowledge-building such as: prior knowledge and life experiences; natural inclinations and habits; unique abilities; physical, intellectual and emotional states; economic, social, religious and cultural backgrounds; personal interests and questions; feelings, hopes and desires; widely ranging political views; and differing social and communication skills.
2 Students, Teachers and Researchers, as Individuals, Are Learning Persons Who Take Actions of Their Own in Ways Similar to Those Involved in Formal Research Activities
Researchers identify questions about a topic of study, then gather information to build understanding about the subject they are studying. In these ways, researchers are acting as learners. They make their research processes explicit, presenting them to a community of others interested in the same questions. Learners engage
3 The Construction of New Knowledge Takes Place Both Individually and Within Communities
This perspective extends the view that just as knowledge-building relies on unique and individual efforts and contexts, it also develops through the emergence of meanings as participants engage as members of a community. Knowledge-building is therefore both unique and individual, and it is also constructed communally. Learners often engage collaboratively with others, exploring and testing ideas using all of the skills and resources at their disposal. Similarly, researchers pursue sense-making in unique and individual ways, constantly developing new skills and approaches to gathering knowledge. They share insights with the research community, and in many cases, also with their research subjects. Research subjects can often be effectively engaged in collaborative research efforts to build understanding as noted by Sarah Pink (2009).
4 Structures and Settings for Learning and Research Are Influenced by Cultural, Social and Political Values and Discourses.
One of the most important tasks of education must be to create structures and environments that help educators offer opportunities for learners to frame and ask questions about the world in ways that reflect the relevant and authentic interests of the asker. Learning environments, curriculum materials and routines of interaction should be thoughtfully constructed to provide the kind of assistance needed to develop research skills and information gathering activities. These structures and environments should also be informed by recognition that the physical environments within which we work represent deeply rooted, and sometimes traditional social and cultural values that may present obstacles and constraints that must be addressed and disrupted. Researchers, educators, curriculum leaders and learners are the products of learning environments. They are also producers of social and cultural environments offered to learners (Shapiro, 2014b, 2015). We will benefit from striving to more deeply understand the social and cultural environments we inhabit and how they influence our knowledge-building practices. Recognition of the traditional values and perspectives that are embodied in the practices and physical structures we create helps consider which structures must be challenged and changed as we create new and more relevant settings and practices.
5 Greater Attention Is Needed at Institutional Levels to Create Environments That Build Experiences That Develop Learner/Researchers’ Skills and Views of Themselves as Capable and Effective Knowledge Builders
Self-Knowledge, Self-Confidence and the Development of Learner Agency
As noted above, the research and writing in the present volume is rooted in the view that human beings engage in knowledge-building using prior knowledge, life experience, unique abilities, widely ranging personal and political views, social and cultural backgrounds, ideas, curiosities, questions, feelings, hopes and desires, and emerging social and communication skills. These are resources used by individuals to engage in learning in their social world. Learners also build emerging understandings of the extent of their abilities to serve as active agents in their own learning. These views influence the development of self-confidence and interest in taking actions to persist as agents in their own learning.
Social cognition theorist, Albert Bandura (2001), describes the social and structural influences that impact the psychological mechanisms of human agency. He defines human agency as the capacity to act in the world and exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life (p. 3). Bandura argues that human beings are able to exert control when engaging in experiences that offer opportunities to make choices and build action plans. He asserts that “monitoring one’s pattern of behaviour and awareness of the cognitive and environmental conditions under which it occurs is the first step toward doing something to affect it” (p. 8). Further, human beings are “not only agents of action, they are also self-examiners of their own functioning” (p. 10). This kind of self-examination can help learners build positive images of themselves
Dweck’s (1999, 2006, 2012) research on self-theories suggests how people develop ideas about themselves and their abilities to make decisions about their learning. Self-theories reveal ideas about personal abilities that can either encourage learners to work harder or that may contribute to the development of discouraging views of self as incapable of learning well. Ideas about the self as learner are often rooted in socially constructed ideas and metaphors that characterize human qualities such as intelligence. Dweck points to two very different socially constructed perspectives relating to intelligence: a “fixed” versus a “growth mindset” view. The “fixed mindset” perspective sees human traits like ability, intelligence, or talent as innate and unchangeable. High intelligence is possessed only by some individuals. Dweck suggests that a “growth mindset” or incremental view of intelligence, in contrast, asserts that most basic abilities and skills are malleable. They can be developed by anyone who has the dedication to achieve, energy and passion for learning, and the motivation to work hard. These qualities combined with a deep interest in the topic of study can lead to unexpected accomplishment. Dweck (2006) notes how traditional learning environments often perpetuate a fixed mindset perspective, and because of this, many students come to believe that when they do not succeed it is because they lack innate intelligence or are not “smart enough.” She suggests that students instead be encouraged to develop a growth mindset view, so that they might develop the personal theory perspective that with persistent strong effort, they can accomplish any task undertaken. Hart et al.’s (2004), resource, “Learning without limits”, suggests approaches for the creation of learning environments that help children build more positive self-theories. Their recommendations support the creation of environments that allow children to be involved as co-agents in learning. Dweck’s work is foundational to Peacock’s (2010) award-winning work with teacher colleagues to bring dramatic change to a school previously known for its poor academic and social ranking. With colleagues she created a school built on the growth mindset view where both children and the adults who guided them successfully worked together to build the confidence “to challenge themselves.” Their well-known success at Wroxham
Absolutely. All the time. They have the most current information about everything, whether it’s computers or what’s going on in new environmental science discoveries. Every time they come home and say, ‘This is what we learned at school today,’ it influences us in some way or another. They are bringing home the most current information.
Interviews with both children and their parents showed insight into the complex set of social and personal factors that impact the extent of parents’ willingness to
Toshalis and Nakkula (2012 propose a developmental framework to describe the language and information organizing skills learners exhibit as they progress in their abilities to become problem solvers and take actions of their own to learn. The framework presents a set of categories of “learner-voiced activities.” In their view, one of the most important foundations to facilitate academic achievement is helping students feel that they have a stake in their own learning. They believe that youth, like adults, perform best in an activity when they “have a voice in how it is conducted and an impact on how it concludes.” This means that learners should be helped to articulate their positions as stakeholders in their learning, then develop skills and the autonomy needed to participate in data gathering activities that allow them to participate in higher level conversations. By beginning with support for the abilities to articulate and express ideas, learners can be guided to move to “partnership, activism and leadership roles.” Toshalis and Nakkula’s framework may be useful for curriculum designers interested in creating experiences to provide developmentally appropriate experiences to help build agency and voice in learning. As Wilson, Winkler, Dasho, Wallerstein and Martin (2008) also suggest, students can learn to take on the challenges involved in making decisions and ultimately to engage in responsible social action. Educators will find this work useful to guide the design of curricula and programs to help learners and researchers build higher level skills that lead to becoming problem solvers, decision makers and activists for change.
Helping Learners Design Research to Explore Their Own Questions and Present their Research Findings – Opportunities and Challenges
Von Duyke (2013) points to the importance of understanding the variety of ways educators employ conceptions of student autonomy, personal agency, and research. Much of this work is inspired by a concern for the loss of personal agency in traditional and dominantly outcomes-based, standardization-oriented learning programs. She points out that simply increasing learner autonomy by giving students the opportunity to learn independently does not automatically lead to an increase in the development of personal agency, the ability to make choices, and the ability to take control of one’s learning. Kellett (2005a, 2005b) writes that considerations of children taking action of their own to conduct research requires the development of a “new research paradigm for the 21st century” (p. 1).
Many authors note that just as there is significant value in learners’ engagement in independent and collaborative research activities, there are obstacles to their full participation that must be addressed (Bucknall, 2012; Kellett, 2010; Shapiro, 1996). Learners must develop knowledge about the strategies of research. New teaching approaches are needed to help learners identify a question or problem
Semiotic Understandings and the Design of Structures to Support Active Participation in Learning and Research
Designing Learning Settings That Teach
The research and writing in this volume advocates for greater support for the kinds of personal and collective agency needed to disrupt traditional structures that have focused on ‘pre-formed’ or formal, static views of knowledge. As Hopkins (2010) notes, traditional educational structures present learning goals that are typically prescribed and pre-determined. Structures for learning and research designed to build skills to help individuals take actions of their own to learn must incorporate learning goals and build meanings that are also dynamic and emerging. Research questions may be developed and explored with fellow students or in collaboration with research subjects who may also become co-authors. Space, time, and a conception of research must be in place in a way that allows research questions to evolve and change. Research projects may require ongoing modification and should allow learners the kind of intellectual space needed to present unexpected outcomes that challenge existing knowledge.
Semiotic Readings of Learning Environments
Semiotics is the study of these sign and symbol systems. Like a golden key, semiotics reveals the ways cultural values are embodied in physical and social structures (Shapiro, 2014a, 2014b, 2015). These messages are also represented in the “unwritten rules” of classroom communication and behavior. This is particularly relevant for the kinds of structures available to support self-directed learning. Lemke (1990) noted that such cultural views and values are available for study in two ways: (1) through activity structures that portray sequences of actions and expected behavior in learning settings and (2) through an examination of the functions of these patterns of actions (p. 49). Learners experience the ways the physical and social structures of learning settings, free or constrain their movements. They learn the social rules of the classroom that direct the kinds of interactions that are possible and acceptable in the learning setting. They learn how learning will proceed, what is rewarded during the classroom session and what is not, what kinds of questions may be asked, who may ask the questions and how they may be asked. Individuals interact with others as they build new knowledge within communities and cultures. Learning how to learn is dictated by the values and rules of one’s environment and the ways those who guide learning interpret those values. When educators begin to view such everyday cultural practices as learning resources, they can engage in critical reflection on the ideas and messages they convey, and consider how to introduce new ideas about how learning will proceed. This points to opportunities for the creation of new physical and social structures and new curriculum materials. It also shows the importance of teacher professional development and the design of resources to specifically support learner agency and the skills needed to engage in self-directed work (Shapiro, 2015; Vaugh, 2014).
Personal agency operates within a broad network of social and cultural and structures. Semiotic interpretive studies help build understanding of the ways learners read the messages of these structures. Armed with knowledge of their impacts, educators may disrupt discourses that represent obstacles to learning and environments that work against the development of the skills needed to build the confidence and ability to take self-directed actions to learn (Shapiro, 2014a, 2015). Involving
Moving in Emancipatory New Directions in Research and Learning
Awareness of the cultural messages also conveyed in research approaches can lead to the design research strategies that allow more authentic collaborative engagements with research participants. The chapters in our book describe our work and thinking to create structures that support fresh new values to guide learning and research. Authors have explored possibilities using a wide range of theoretical frameworks and foundations:
Activist and agentic emphases in research in environmental education (Paul Hart & Catherine Hart)
Ethno-autobiographical studies in environmental education (Peta White)
Transformative learning in parks education settings (Don Carruthers den Hoed)
Enactivist studies in mathematics education (Jo Towers and Lyndon Martin)
Guiding the design of research on original questions asked by physics education students (Emily Hanke Van Zee)
A personal construct theory approach to understand the help-seeking strategies of children in science education (Bonnie Shapiro)
Building theoretical foundations to support student led learning for altruistic actions (Larry Bencze)
Creating a new school culture built on trust, equity, empowerment and expertise for students and teachers (Dame Alison Peacock)
Online learning experiences built on knowledge of the lives and needs of learners in a nursing and health education program (Sherri Melrose) Using photovoice to engage social work students in social action research (Kathy Sitter)
Exploring features of a new educational paradigm to support the creation of participatory learning environments (Eugene Kowch)
Helping educators build semiotic interpretive understandings as a resource for the design of learning environments that support active participation in learning and research (Bonnie Shapiro)
To move in new emancipatory directions means helping individuals build the skills of self-direction while at the same time developing the collaborative skills needed to make contributions as a member of a learning community. The concept at the heart of this book, ‘actions of their own to learn’ with its focus on the central role of agency, expands ideas about traditional definitions of learning and research, valuing both as components of knowledge-building processes. In this way, learning is a form of engagement in research and research is viewed as a form of learning.
There have been some excellent efforts to describe innovative new practices, settings and their implications worldwide (Wolner, Hall, Higgins, McCaughey, & Wall, 2007; Hampson, Patton, & Shanks, 2013). Learner outcomes in many cases are still reported in terms of achievement scores on standardized tests, grades, or other objective measures of performance. Such measures compare student achievements to those of students who are learning in traditional settings. They do not necessarily assess the stated goals and achievements of innovative programs designed to teach more than subject matter content. Measures are also needed to understand the extent to which educational practices are also helping learners develop autonomy, voice, choice, and confidence in their own learning abilities. More collaborative research and evaluation approaches are needed that build insight into aspects of the nature of the experience for the learner that are not typically captured, such as (1) the development of connections between cognitive and emotional growth, (2) the ways new programs build habits of mind that sustain learning effort and achievement, and (3) the extent to which such programs nurture focused and enduring interests that go beyond school to impact learning in everyday life. Other questions about learning and research that support self direction and taking action to learn must also be asked:
What are and learners’ and educators’ experiences in these settings?
How might educators be best supported as they learn to place control of learning in the hands of learners?
How effective are programs created to provide guidance for learners as they engage in open-ended, sustained actions to learn?
How well do these opportunities enable learners to have a voice in and control over important aspects of their own learning?
What new criteria are needed to define effective learning in these settings?
How might we best evaluate and improve the design of structures created to offer such environments for learners? How might the design of collaborative research studies more fully involve learners, educators and other stake-holders in the design of research?
There is a dramatic increase worldwide in new kinds of learning settings that seek to offer innovative new structures and experiences that support learners’ efforts to take actions of their own to learn. These include traditional, formal settings such as those found in school classrooms, learning commons and learning communities, as well as informal learning environments such as Maker spaces, Science Centres, Nature and Conservation Centres, Parks, Zoos, University Camps, Pre-schools and Community Activity Centres. New curriculum and resources are being created for use in these settings as educators strive to build new understandings about learner capacities that in turn, require rethinking the nature and purposes of learning spaces (Jonassen & Land, 2012). We need to know more about how learners, educators and researchers are incorporating knowledge about learning as they create these settings (Marquez-Zenkov, 2007; Wang, Cash, & Powers, 2000). There are many wonderful teachers who, often with little support, strive to help learners develop their creative and intellectual capacities in their learning. The stories of the devoted work, deep thinking and successes of such educators are represented in many of the chapters in this volume. This work is about striving to understand what it is that educators do to create environments for those who are learning in this new world with all of its opportunities and great challenges.
Recent collaborative research designed to support these new goals provides accounts of teacher efforts and activities to engage students in new ways as they are given voice and learn to make choices in their learning (Drummond, Hart, & Swann, 2013; Hart, Dixon, Drummond, & McIntyre, 2004; Lowe, 2005; Peacock, 2010). New approaches to the reporting of insights are contained in the comprehensive and influential Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013) document, Innovative Learning Environments. The Innovative Learning Environments document also describes the “vital importance” of including youth voice as part of the ongoing formative cycle to more deeply understand what happens “when learners are engaged in decision-making” (pp. 124–128). What is needed are continuing studies such as these that generate rich accounts of learner experiences in environments where students are given the tools and resources to take greater control of and therefore more responsibility for their own learning.
Our book is designed to offer insights for researchers, educators and institutions who seek to design new spaces and structures that provide greater support for knowledge-building work. We believe that planning to help people come to know should be a transformative experience, one that gives learners and researchers fresh new opportunities as actors in their own knowledge-building work. The chapters in this volume are intended to inspire conversations and further explorations into what
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