What Underachieving
Middle School Students
Believe Motivates them to Learn
Middle School Students
Believe Motivates them to Learn
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Middle School Students Believe Motivates them to Learn |
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Chapter 1: The Challenge to Educate Everyone Chapter 2: A Review of Literature Chapter 3: Methods Chapter 4: The Results Chapter 5: Discussion
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Experience is the first component. Educators should remember that most learning is finding patterns in experiences (Schank & Cleary, 1995). These patterns become schema and help define how a person perceives and understands her world. Experience provides students with rich sensory data, furnishing multiple cues for memory and recall (Rumelhart, 1980; Bruning, et.al., 1995). Teachers should use active teaching strategies, especially those providing hands-on work or involving experiential learning. All six students preferred being active, doing things, and having hands-on activities. Many of the students went on to complain that they didn’t learn well from too much book work. Eric and Cathy said it was because there was too much sitting. Mike was more vehement about an over reliance on book work: "[Y]ou never learn anything sitting over a book 24 hours a day, you’re just staring at it." Andy and Doris say that part of what they liked about hands-on activities was that there was often more than one solution and not everyone had to do the work the same way or at the same pace; they disliked lockstep teaching. The recommendations that several of the students would make to the Department of Education focused on reducing the amount of book work and increasing the amount of hands-on work. Nearly all the students liked project-based teaching and thought they learned well from it. Despite their interest in doing things and hands-on work, none of the students wanted to forego all book work. Their descriptions of hands-on activities and project work were full of references to researching, reading, and writing. Cathy was specific about not minding book work as long as there were some more active components to the work, as well. In my field notes from the pilot study I noted, "‘Activity-based’ teachers don’t always do activities. They still deliver content, and review, and [give] tests." Further, people perceive and process experiences differently (Sternberg, 1997; Gardner, 1983, 1998, 1999; Fairhurst & Fairhurst, 1995; Papert, 1996). Teachers can meet students’ diverse needs by using a variety of teaching strategies from learning style or Multiple Intelligence theories. Teachers can also provide assignments, such as projects, that are flexible enough that different students can complete the task in different ways. Teachers’ responsiveness to students’ individual differences in how they learn well was very important to the six participants. All the students and all the teachers interviewed in the two studies agreed with Papert (1996) that most failure to learn is a result of instruction not matching the individual’s learning style. Further, despite the common motivators (teacher relationship, hands-on work, and choices), there were individual differences between how the students felt they learned well. Cathy wanted feedback and considered herself an auditory learner. Eric wanted to see how content was useful and for teachers to review, clarify, and model what was expected. Doris, too, wanted clear expectations and repetition, but also wanted to be pushed a little. Ben wanted to have fun and to be involved in real world simulations, such as the money simulation several of his teachers used. |
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Send questions or comments to wilder@somtel.com Last updated April 25, 2001 |
Assistant Professor of Education University of Maine at Farmington 104 Main Street Farmington, ME 04938 207.778.7179 wilder@somtel.com http://violet.umf.maine.edu/~mmuir |