Making students responsible for their own learning

Getting students motivated to learn and be responsible for their own learning is an issue for any teacher with unmotivated students. The question is, how to motivate them and how to get them to take responsibility for their own learning.

Some teachers try try to make their lessons more interesting and giving "real-world" applications (see TIMSS video #30 "Science - AU1 Fingerprints"), however this example suggests to me that the students don't necessarily appreciate the extra work put in by the teacher, the students still seem to "do without thinking" and require excessive guidance. I would have liked to see the students complete the prescribed lab work and extend it with their own ideas. I would have liked to see more collaboration rather than just working in groups and sharing materials.

Other teachers use rewards based training - positive reinforcement (see: Classroom economy, Classroom money system, Other rewards systems). I happen to like this idea, but am not necessarily convinced that it would lead to students taking responsibility for their own learning - it may however increase motivation form some students, depending on the potential rewards.

Currently, the answer from many sources (WPI 2009, Slackson 2009, McCombs n.d.) for ways to get students to take responsibility for their own learning is by giving students choice and control of their learning and the classroom. There is a particularly good article about this topic published by the APA (McCombs, n.d.). This article suggests that teachers need to focus on teaching students skills in making appropriate choices, to give the students ownership of their class (with some "non-negotiables") by allowing them to cover the content in their own way, so long as the content was indeed covered.

These choices may include: allowing students choices on how they will demonstrate mastery of different concepts, how they will approach different assignments, whether they will work independently or with peers.

Other suggested changes include: Setting clear performance goals and performance requirements, talking with students about how the expectations are related to their own personal interests, provide feedback with precise information about the skills they have acquired or need to improve, encourage students to assess their own learning through journals, charts, etc.

Note they also discourage peer tutoring of higher achieving students with lower achieving students unless the higher ability students are specifically trained to work as private tutors.

There are other opportunities for allowing students control over their own learning, such as allowing students to lead parent-teacher night interviews (Slackson 2009) and allowing students to critique and re-submit work (WPI 2009).