Putting Students at the Center of Education: Trailblaze Your Own Path with Student Voice & Choice
In the typical American classroom, kids spend their entire adolescent education developing their ability to regurgitate information rather than developing their voice, their understanding of who they are and how they fit in the world. On the opposite end of the teaching spectrum is student-centered learning. And while this isn’t a novel concept, it proves to be difficult to implement in the hybrid-pandemic-learning-model we find ourselves in as educators.
At Curvd Learning we’re constantly developing researched-back teaching approaches that set students up to Trailblaze Their Own Path in school by exercising their voice and choice. The idea is that being a passive learner in a teacher-driven education setting doesn’t encourage positive engagement among students. Without developing a sense of self early on, it’s easy for them to crash and burn at the first sign of challenges. By putting students at the center of education they build life skills in addition to meeting national education standards.
“This principle Trailblaze Your Own Path is rooted in the idea that our entire job as educators is to prep kids for life after school and if we spoon-feed them information that entire time, they never learn what it takes to build healthy relationships, figure out where their passions meet their drive, how to navigate careers, family, life, and how to define their individual values,” said Mara Morrison, Curvd Learning head of curriculum design.
As Diane Tavenner put it in Character Lab’s Letting Kids Drive, only when students have a reason for learning and are able to follow their own curiosity, do they bring their full attention and energy to their work. This is why particularly during project-based learning students learn so much; there’s room for failure. Beyond hitting national standards, they’re building life skills.
What does it mean to actually be student-led and student-driven?
The International Association for K-12 Online Learning defines student-centered learning as:
Tailoring learning for each student’s strengths, needs and interests – including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when and where they learn – to provide flexibility and support to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible.
We are all different learners. If we can get similar, positive outcomes using a variety of modalities, why wouldn’t we?
“Student choice enlivens a passion for learning – that’s not the case if everything is prescriptive and kids are told what they need to learn. The more curious someone is, the more interested, the more willing they are to put the work in, ask hard questions and put the time in. The other piece is leaning into the aspects of learning that sometimes feel uncomfortable and normalizing that. Being ok with failure, learning strategies to iterate and stand back up. Overcoming roadblocks is something that can be uncomfortable but can also be a really empowering experience for students,” said Laura Quarin, Curvd Learning curriculum designer.
The beauty of implementing student voice and choice is that it can be slowly ramped up in the classroom. As Curvd continuous improvement and equity consultant, Jesse Hinueber, reminds fellow educators, don’t bite off more than you can chew. There are little ways to immediately begin to put students at the center of the learning experience.
“Don’t tackle the thing you’re most uncomfortable with as an educator first. If you don’t do labs at all, don’t suddenly start trying to do that. Instead, try taking something you feel confident and strong at and implement a twist to make it more student-centered and student-driven. For example, if you lead a great literature circle, why not have the kids pick the next book and take leadership of the discussion?” Hinueber said.
The power of student-centered learning
Engagement, relevance, cultural responsiveness, future preparedness…the list goes on.
Hanover Research conducted the Impact of Student Choice and Personalized Learning report, gauging promising learning approaches and their potential to increase academic achievement, student persistence and overall student engagement. The report concluded that giving students a choice in their learning increases positive emotions and makes them active participants in their education. Such autonomy in the learning environment teaches decision making, increases their interest in learning, is associated with greater personal well-being and satisfaction in educational environments, as well as in terms of academic performance.
“We give a lot of opportunity for kids to pick the topics they want to study, the types of experts to work with and roles to fulfill in group projects. We slowly release the wheel as early as kindergarten with our students,” Morrison said of her students at lab school, Tahoe Expedition Academy.
The idea is not only choice of topic but playing to each students’ strengths and areas where they need to build muscle.
“There’s such opportunity for metacognition and reflective opportunities within projects and activities. Things like, acknowledging when things are hard and why, talking about topics that made us uncomfortable and sitting with that, allowing students to reflect and normalizing that reflection – that things that are hard are seen as being okay and then helping students develop strategies through practice and collaboration with peers and trusted adults to move through some of those hard pieces,” Quarin said.
A stark contrast: the status quo vs. what could be
How to ramp-up student voice and choice in your class/zoom-room
The most promising strategies that the Student Choice and Personalized Learning impact report found were:
Robust learner profiles: where educators create comprehensive, data-rich learner profiles to convey how a student learns best and is used to plan customized learning environments and instructional strategies.
With a deep understanding of each learner, we can leverage individual strengths to determine the correct blend of learning modalities and strategies to ensure success.
Customized learning paths: where each learner follows a unique path based on their individual interests, strengths and learning style.
By personalizing learning for each student, we create circumstances where we can address needs as they occur, rather than having to remediate later.
Proficiency-based progression pathways: where learner progress is based on demonstrated proficiency in pre-defined, agreed-upon standards and advancement is tied to performance, not seat time or credits.
What content or skill is the student demonstrating knowledge of? How are students engaging with content and what are they expected to produce or show their differentiated learning?
As always, we love collaboration and are always eager to hear from fellow educators. Feel free to send an email to info@curvd.org to share what is or isn’t working in your classroom.