Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

Engagement is a whole school issue. How do we inspire learning for everyone?

 

‘I’m bored!’  ‘This is boring!’  ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’  

There is surely no teacher alive who has not heard these comments from students who are at odds with our aims. School, by its very nature a mechanism for categorising and standardising, perpetually runs the risk of disaffecting those it is there to serve. It would seem that, for many students, the Victorian factory model upon which our education system is founded, is as alienating today as it was in Dickens’ Hard Times. 

The challenge for us as educators is twofold: to build structures and practices which support learning and to constantly identify and eliminate obstacles to engagement. This necessitates a deep and honest inventory of attitudes and practices - no mean feat, since the variables that lead to a state of (dis)engagement are complex and often subtle, deeply embedded in our notions of what education actually is. 

They reside in our attitudes and expectations, resonate in our language and are manifest in the outcomes of our teaching. As one year 9 student pointed out, ‘Learning is a stain in your mind’, an indelible footprint in our consciousness that must be planted with the utmost care, to reflect a curriculum that, in all ways, is best for our students. If this is to happen, we must understand the mechanics of engagement and realise that they depend upon more than subject matter and the way it is presented in a lesson. 

Deliberate learning is the result of an implicit contract. It is the change that occurs at the point of contact between teacher and student. It is the interstellar medium between two stars, the resultant energy between the individual gravitational pulls and is dependent upon the willingness of the two parties to connect. Engagement involves complicity and, unless the people consent to meet in this middle place, none of the changes sought by the teacher will be possible. There can be no conflict of interest and, for a student to make an agreement to learn, it is necessary that:

• the proposed learning seems relevant and worthwhile to them and their teacher
• they do not suffer a loss of parental or peer approval from participating in the learning
• the student trusts that the teacher and the school have their best interests at heart.

These points will now be addressed. A student must see some kind of benefit arising from what is on offer. Some of us will recall at least one occasion in our own schooling where this was not so, and may remember the confusion wrought by the arrival of a sudden, decontextualised piece of information.  The insistence of adults that students do well in order to get a better job may feel meaningless to a 14 year old whose preoccupations, unlike ours, are not with mortgages and career structures or deferred gratification, particularly if his or her parents and/or peers have other priorities. The significant adults in the lives of many of our students earn vast sums of money yet had little or no schooling. Because the acquisition of money in our culture is such a motivating force, it is no surprise that young people aspire to it above all else. 

Perhaps the simple proposition that education gives you more choices, and allows you to change your mind more often about how you earn a living, may provide a better incentive than trying to predict ways in which specific items of learning will be used. Why waste the chance to exercise your intelligence? Learning for its own sake is what we must aim for and humanising and historically locating the subject matter in a meaningful way are also important. So much of my own learning at school seemed to revolve around the random delivery of free-floating information. 

One of the earliest of these sessions led me to go home and ask my mother if she remembered the Great Fire of London or, at least, the Battle of Hastings. I baulk at the memory of the dark day when the Merchant of Venice fell out of a tree and landed on my desk in our dreary classroom. I had not, nor wanted, any idea of who this scorchingly dull gentleman was or why he spoke in a way that, to my 11 year old ears, was unfathomable. All I knew was that everybody else in that interminable ‘book’ was cast in the same mould, and we had a new teacher who did not much care for children or explanations.

Hour after hour, we plodded through the dusty pages of what was apparently a play, trawling for quotations to absorb for homework then regurgitate the next day in class. ‘Signor Antonio … I’m sorry to disappoint you but I have better things to do with my life than engage with you … or my very boring teacher.’  I had similar problems with Erasmus who ‘hatched the egg of the reformation’ (something to do with chickens), physical education (designed to humiliate any non-world class athlete) and biology, a subject where thinly disguised vivisection passed as the pursuit of scientific understanding.

To avoid the pitfalls of presenting decontextualised material, we need to sow new ideas into something existing and familiar. I needed to know that Shakespeare was a person who, like me, had a life then chose to write about the things he knew. The following prompts may be useful to students. What kind of life do you think he lived that gave him an interest in kings and queens and dukes and things?  What do you know about that other people might find interesting? Let me explain why his language is so different from our own. What factors are affecting the evolution of English at present? How many languages do you speak, including text messaging and the ones you and your friends use that you wouldn’t want adults to understand? Have you ever watched the Baz Luhrmann film of Romeo and Juliet? It can really make sense to a modern audience.  Why is that?

And still, as educators know too well, planning riveting lessons and delivering them with the verve of a children’s entertainer may not engage all students because there are external pressures that make learning unpalatable. These may include pressures from the wider culture, the shame of exceeding their parents’ achievements, the possibility of losing acumen amongst their peers, negative learning experiences in previous schools or other areas of the current one, the requirement to break a long-term habit of underachievement, poor nutrition that impairs concentration, or the fact that, denied the possibility of success in any legitimate area of school life, a reputation for being anti-school provides an irresistible opportunity to excel. 

Someone’s propensity to engage is related to how valued he or she feels as a person. It is amazing how many students think that their teachers do not like them and, sadly, in some cases, this is true.  Yet, if students are given the opportunity to operate within a holding environment, where their voices are heard, their curiosity will grow and they will become more adventurous. Student voice is about amplifying the contributions that young people want to make. 

Our concern for our students must, at all times, be evident. It is our job to en-able them (to ‘bring about the condition of ability’), since ability is an attitude subject to change and not a finite state. No one knows what, with appropriate support, another person (or even ourselves) is capable of. We can refer to past performance to elucidate the influences that shaped it but, alone, it is not a reliable indicator, certainly not enough upon which to base assessments of future performance. The whole concept of prediction of this kind is a dubious one because it is the substance of self-fulfilling prophesy. 

A person will profit more from guidance and an optimistic appraisal of possibilities than reprimand and low expectations, even if these seem justified according to past performance. Students need to be assertively nurtured on all levels if they are to grow into responsible, contributing adults. It is worth perceiving undesirable behaviour or low attainment as an attempt at something better, even if this is hard to believe.

Disruptive behaviour is a symptom of discontent in a person too disempowered to articulate their frustrations in any other way. When we talk about the present lack of discipline in schools, we are identifying the problems of a culture in transition.  We have abandoned implements of external control, such as caning, but have failed to replace them by consistently nurturing the development of meaningful and long lasting self-control in our students. 

We need to teach students to look compassionately inwards so they feel safe with who they are, and develop the means to become considerate citizens.  As with any subject, some of us come more easily to emotional competence than others because we all process life differently. Provided we are upholding our end of the learning contract, students can be taught to take responsibility for their disengagement, which has to be done because external measures of appropriateness are inconsistent and, in any case, only work in the short-term. Without an internal regulator, a person flounders in a state of emotional and behavioural chaos, forcing us, as educators, into a policing role.

Our most powerful influence is as role models and, unless we are exemplary in this pursuit, our hypocrisy will emerge in their own developing values. For example, it is disingenuous to complain that students bully each other if we have implicitly taught them how to do it through favouritism or condemnation, or if they constantly test our boundaries when we have never taught them how to establish their own. Philosophical and practical structures that take account of the human need for authentic, supportive relationships are essential.  Without them, schools can become a stage set where everyone is in their designated part, reciting their prescripted words.  

Genuine connectedness and mutual respect prevent habitualised responses and the infiltration of context-dependent memories into the present day.  They support proper communication. Unless we are positively emotionally engaged, the language we use in our daily encounters with students becomes a mere husk, so commonly used phrases such as ‘Pay attention’ and ‘Stop talking’, although designed to engage students, can often have the opposite effect. They will automatically delete this ‘teacher language’, just as we do junk emails, and for the same reasons. 

Change places massive demands on the already overstretched population of educators. But there are high yield practical steps that can be taken, which provide the bedrock of support for sustainable progress. We need to:

• co-construct the learning agenda with our students in an atmosphere of deep care (including parents, some of whom may still feel alienated by their own negative school experiences) 
• establish academic peer tutoring programmes that give students the opportunity to take real responsibility for their own and others’ education, allowing them to come to maturity through experiential learning. 
• exchange lateral tutor groups for a vertical system that allows students to work with older and younger peers, strengthening cross-age relationships and building a deep sense of school community 
• employ non-instructional staff as lead mentors for these tutor groups (by removing the teacher, the symbol of authority, we equalise the members of the classroom community)
• organise in-school work experience so that students understand their part in the whole
• expose the mechanics of assessment to students and co-construct data that is for people - not about them.
• forge strong links with the local community through projects where students can learn in the service of others
• abandon setting in favour of a classroom culture of collaboration and cooperation (if setting is deemed necessary, ensure that it does not compromise teacher expectations of student ability). 

Providing the incentive for engagement is a whole school issue which, when addressed with courage and compassion, can nurture the growth of a generation of thoughtful, intelligent citizens. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ms Jacqueline Andrews works for APT4schools, in London, in the United Kingdom.

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