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When I was young, my family and I went on long car trips. I helped to pack the car but otherwise had little input into logistical planning. Consequently, my priorities became eating snacks, watching scenery and not bothering Dad while he drove. My involvement related to questions such as ' How long until we get there? ' and ' Can we stop to go to the bathroom? ' . One parent drove, the other held the map and together they handled the entire trip while my brother, sisters and I were along for the ride.
When I was young, I was content with the road trip structure. I had ideas but I was fine with my role. As I grew older and was able to make more of a contribution, the structure of ' Sit down, be quiet and hang on ' became less satisfactory. My enthusiasm toward family road trips waned and I nearly lost all interest.
I have noticed many similarities between the old road trips and a classroom. As students set off on their yearly educational journey, they pack their bag, find their seat and are taken for ride. Once in a classroom, a student ' s priorities become recess, lunch and not bothering the teacher while he or she teaches. Involvement of students revolves around questions such as ' Is this going to be on the test? ' and ' Why do we have to know this? ' The teacher drives, creates plans and handles logistics. Students are along for the ride.
When children begin their schooling, they seem happy with school structure. Typically, early years teachers are student focused but unfortunately may downplay student ideas. In time, as focus turns from students to curriculum, and student suggestions are less tolerated, there is a gradual erosion of enthusiasm until many students nearly lose all interest.
In 1993 Dr Lee Jenkins, of Enterprise School District, in Redding, California, began distributing an attitude survey to students at the end of the school year. His Prep through year 8 district was composed of approximately 3,000 low to middle income students. The district was mostly Caucasian, with large Asian and Hispanic populations. Dr Jenkins wanted to understand the timing and causes of this decline in enthusiasm. The prevailing district attitude was finger pointing. Year 1 teachers knew their students were enthusiastic, so it couldn ' t be their problem. Year 8 teachers knew their students weren ' t enthusiastic, so the decline must have happened before students reached their class.
Surveys were conducted over several consecutive years to establish trends. Findings were consistent each year and were both affirming and surprising. Yes, year 8 students were profoundly less enthusiastic than year 1 students. The surprise occurred with the discovery that no particular year affected enthusiasm significantly more than any other year. Students entered school tremendously enthused, yet immediately began a linear decline each year until they reached year 8. No teachers could take credit for maintaining enthusiasm and no teachers could be blamed for its loss. What was the reason? It was a ' system ' problem.
At the time, I was a middle years teacher with fresh exposure to Quality Management theories of Dr Edwards Deming. Deming believed strongly in systems thinking and found a relationship in industry between employee morale and quality of products. Two key insights for me were these:
Deming believed that the system often destroyed worker joy. However, joy would return if managers could remove the system barriers. Enthusiasm wasn ' t lost; it was covered over and locked up. This explained what I saw on playgrounds and in after-school activities. Young people were motivated to learn sport, games, music and other personal activities - but not in the classroom. Deming also believed that ideas needed to fix the system were held within the workers. Deming found the more he involved workers in system processes, problems and solutions, the more they felt valued and appreciated. This led to more joy and pride in their job, which translated into fewer problems, lower company costs and higher quality products for the customer.
I wondered whether this could also be true in education? Could application of Quality Principles in classrooms lead to greater enthusiasm, less problems and increased learning? Two last pieces of insight motivated me to get started. First, Dr Jenkins translated Dr Deming ' s belief for schools by saying: ' Students have all the information needed to make a classroom great and none of the power to make it happen. Teachers have all of the power and little information ' .
Second, research by child psychologist, Jean Piaget, reported that, although young people do not think as adults, they feel the same as adults. With this, I decided to discover student perceptions that could help us improve.
I started with a tool from Quality Management called a Plus Delta, which allows individuals to write down ' what is going well ' and ' what needs to change ' . Monthly, students completed Plus Deltas anonymously to encourage honesty. I also needed a graphical representation of student perception, so I created and developed what I called an ' Enthusiasm/Learning ' graph. This scatter diagram that showed the relationship between a student ' s perceived enthusiasm and learning. The combined feedback and movement on the graph gave us all incredible insights. The students and I then used the Quality Management problem-solving method, Plan-Do-Study-Act.
This provided a simple structure to plan, implement and study their suggested changes in the environment, behaviour, procedures, relationships, and teaching of the class. Successful plans transformed our classroom into a more learning friendly environment. Plans that didn ' t work were just as valuable because students were learning through experimentation.
This process also changed the student/ teacher relationship by removing adversarial relationships and replacing them with teamwork to improve learning. It took coaching to help students to give effective feedback. Providing improvement suggestions to an adult was not something in their experience. Some could never get over the awkwardness and either gave silly suggestions or none at all. In a short time, however, the majority of the students gave great feedback and wouldn ' t tolerate silliness. In the end, 100% of students surveyed one year after experiencing the process found it valuable and necessary.
Follow-up discussions provided even more insight into why this process is so important to students. One year 8 student said: “When we don ' t get to have input, it feels like ' school ' : surfacy and uninvolved. When we do get to have input, it feels like ' learning ' because we go much deeper into how we learn, what we learn and the environment we learn in ' .
That feeling of ' school ' gets to the heart of why many students lose their enthusiasm. Another year 8 student said: ' When we get to give input into our recreation activities, we don ' t need the teacher to solve problems, everything just goes smoother. When we get to give input into our learning, we learn more, better and faster ' . This process, in combination with other empowerment techniques, allowed joy to re-emerge in students, just as it did in workers.
In districts where the processes are implemented in each year, there have been significant increases in enthusiasm throughout the school, with dramatic results in years 3 through to 8. On the negative side, students lamented the limitations. When only a few teachers allow a ' learning ' environment, it was difficult to go back to ' school ' . However, they now understood the difference and carried the tools of learning within them.
This process currently generates similar results in schools, from Prep through to university, all over the United States and parts of Australia. Regardless of the learner level, it has produced increased enthusiasm, increased learning and decreased problems. The same processes used with school staff are also achieving similar results.
In the May 2002 issue of the Australian principals ' journal, Principal Matters, the article ' Going, Going Gone ' , by Dr Stephan Lamb, cites ' dissatisfaction with courses and poor relationships with teachers ' among reasons for early school leavers. Are we doing enough with students to create more satisfying courses and improve relationships with teachers? In order to transition young people from ' students ' to ' learners ' , they need to be allowed out of the metaphorical back seat and be fully involved. The more teachers are willing, and able, to allow their classrooms to feel less like ' school ' and more like ' learning ' , the more young people will feel that learning is a lifelong journey.
Mr Jeff and Ms Jacquie Burgard are co-owners of J. J. Burgard & Associates, in Northern California, in the USA. After 26 years of applying quality principles in business and the classroom, they are now consultants dedicated to creating partnerships with schools and offering professional development, based on Jeff ' s book, Continuous Improvement in the Science Classroom.
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