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VOLUME XII, NUMBER 18

INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED. BY' THE NATIONAL INSTI Os 6) eed Lata tA To) ese ra TIONAL DEVELOPMENT, ia oT] VERS)

WITH SUPRORT FROM THE W.-K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION AND THE SiD W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION

 

Moving Students Toward The Role Of
“Active Participant” In Their Educational Experience

How can we as teachers create an environment in
which a student recognizes the necessity of becoming
an active participant in his or her own education? Most
of us who teach have arrived at the same frustrating
conclusions. It is not possible to motivate someone. It
is not possible to “inject” a student with a sense of

responsibility. These are truths that we encounter daily.

We have been teaching our “student success” course
for one year and have experimented with many meth-
ods to create a classroom environment in which the
student will recognize the necessity of becoming an
active participant in his or her own education. Students
frequently attribute failure in a course to events outside
their control. The emphasis in our Master Student
classes is that grades measure an expenditure of time
and energy. When we use this definition, issues such as
goal setting and values (priorities), time management,
and effective as well as efficient study skills are all
addressed. Metacognitive issues such as how the
student learns and how to motivate himself or herself
are emphasized, as well. We pre- and post-test each
student with the Learning and Study Strategies Inven-
tory (LASSI) and feel it is an extremely useful diagnos-
tic and prescriptive tool.

Ask a roomful of students to “assume the student
position” and they immediately and intuitively sit back
in their desks, cross one leg over the other, lift their
chins, let their eyelids drop to half-closed, and lay one
relaxed arm across their notes and textbook. This is a
waiting posture—waiting for the teacher to do some-
thing that will give them the information they need,
waiting for the teacher to do something that will
“educate” them, waiting for the teacher to do the work.

Anything involving “work”—the expenditure of
energy and effort—seems to be disassociated with
college. Traditionally, “work” has involved digging
ditches, washing dishes, scrubbing floors, and other
types of physical labor requiring energy and effort. A
college degree is supposed to provide a way out of this
trap. When students have difficulty with a course, they
usually explain this difficulty as events beyond their

control; i.e., just not smart enough; genetically incapable
of doing math (or whatever); the teacher can’t teach; etc.
OR, perhaps the worst (or the best) excuse—this is too
hard, this is work.

These beliefs are expressed in pervasive and subtle
ways—work is bad, work is hard; college is good,
college is easy; college is a way to spend time without
having to work; college is the alternative to work.
Students frequently attend college because if they were
not in school, their parents would insist that they “go to
work.”

Many of our students spend 40 or more hours each
week at a job. Many of these same students blithely
announce they will be taking 12 or 15 credit hours, as
well as working, because of their beliefs that school is
not work; school is something you can do in your spare
time and still have time left over. As the drop date ap-
proaches and their grades are poor, they report that the
teacher made it too hard; the teacher wanted too much
work. Asan advisor, I have been told more than once,
“that teacher acted like I didn’t have anything else to
do.”

Many students say they want a college education but
are unwilling to change a lifestyle that requires substan-
tial amounts of money and/or leisure time. They
consistently find themselves trapped by conflicting
demands—they “have to” leave town for two weeks
because of their job but get angry when the teacher is
unwilling to reschedule an exam or excuse the absences.

I have not ever met a student who consciously and
deliberately started college with the intention of drop-
ping out or flunking out. A smail percentage of stu-
dents are looking for a way to put off growing up and
the responsibilities of being grown up. However, for
most, poor and failing grades come as a surprise. For
another large group, those grades are proof of an
inadequacy that they had long suspected and feared.

It is important for instructors to communicate that
making good grades is not a result of having good
genes and a high IQ. Good grades are not the result of
luck or easy teachers; and (the biggest surprise and

 

 

EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin

—, Oi