It’s time to be honest about learner engagement
I have a friend who is astounded at the power of teachers, and sees it most visibly during assembly.
“All he does is clap and 400 kids go silent and listen to him. I can’t even get my 2 kids to listen to me!”
It’s a great party story that always gets a good round of hearty laughs. Every parent can relate to it.
Now, one might say the kids are engaged when the principal claps. But that’s not true is it. Yes, being silent and attentive may be polite and required behaviour when gathered as a group, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, just that it’s not engagement.
As we get deeper into home learning during these Covid-19 times, I see the same impulse gathering strength across the land: track what the kids are doing. Surveys are being sent to parents and kids, work is being asked for to see how much has been done. Judgements are being made about the extent to which kids have engaged with learning.
Funny how when the direct means of control is lost the impulse is to blame the controlled for not staying in line.
The clap for attention isn’t as loud when it comes digitally.
That’s what’s being revealed here, isn’t it? The conventional education understanding of engagement is actually compliance by another name. There are times when compliance is desirable, when it’s best to act in concert with others. But learning, for it to be meaningful and liberating for all, is not the time or place for compliance to to be the standard operating experience.
Nick Sousanis calls this way of being as ‘flat’ and those worlds as ‘flatland’. The problem with flat things is there is only one dimension — of thought, of being, of doing, of relating. Standardisation is what you get.
When you see this, you realise that pretty much all strategies a teacher has are around building compliance, be that for behaviour or learning. Things are flattened. Kids who comply are said to have engaged; those who don’t …
Let’s look at a few examples.
Class treaties are made at the start of each year, but all students know the drill and give the expected words and phrases. That’s why I can walk into any classroom anywhere in the country and see near identical treaties on the wall, all variations on: be respectful; do the work to the best of my ability; listen to others; participate and contribute; never give up. And now the trendy favourite: have a growth mindset.
The ‘must do / can do’ framework provides an illusion of choice, and never includes the option to ‘not do’ or ‘do something unthought of instead’. And they’re always determined by the teacher and their decisions about what’s worth doing.
Success criteria are always set by the teacher, no matter how much ‘voice’ is given to the kid in the process. How can it be any other way when the teacher is the judge of quality?
WALTs, exemplars, tasks and worksheets provide a nice smooth road for a learner to walk down, and minimise the risk they will wander off the well beaten, predetermined path to success.
Some kids are lucky enough to get ‘free time’ as a reward for being engaged and doing everything asked of them, but free time is never positioned as learning. It’s time free from learning. As a result it tends to devalue whatever the kid does, which is always something they’re interested in.
What this all amounts to is a subtle message: shelve what you’re interested in and do what we say, when we say it, in the way we say to, and you will do well. You might even get some free time. And the kids that do this we say are engaged. Such a nice word.
But it’s not the right word is it. Compliance is.
And now millions of kids around the world are learning at home and no longer surrounded by subtle messages of compliance, and teachers are feeling their control of the learning process slip through their fingers. Their clap for attention has lost its power.
The reality is, more kids are engaged now than they are at school. They’re doing what is meaningful to them. They’re determining what success really feels like to them. They’re in the process of unflattening. They’re learning all day every day, not just between 9 — 3, Monday — Friday. It’s time to be honest about this and recognise real engagement, rather than fret about what has been lost: the compliantly engaged learner.
