Cultivating Joy in Learning, Part II
In last week’s blog I examined the distinction between joy in the classroom and joy in learning. This week’s post takes the analysis one step further and explores ways to cultivate joy in learning.
For those who spend time with small children, the joy of learning is often easy to spot. Observe a toddler investigating frogs at a pond, watch a child stacking blocks to make a tower, or study a group of kids playing “Café” with their peers. Joy – and Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow– seem to come naturally. When children begin formal schooling, sometimes the joy of learning is less visible. This raises the question: What are the ingredients, or necessary conditions, to cultivate joy in learning?
In Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play, author Mitchel Resnick suggests that the best step we can take for students as we work to honor 21st century learners is to create classroom ecologies that reflect the original aims of Froebel’s kindergarten. Friedrich W.A. Froebel, a 19th century German educator, is considered the founder of kindergarten. Froebel’s philosophy of early childhood education honored the strengths and capacities of young learners. For Froebel, learning was best fostered when children were given time to create, explore and play. Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, contends we ought to extend this model across the continuum of compulsory education, and beyond. In other words: Lifelong kindergarten.
Froebel understood that in order for learning to be meaningful to young children, there had to be elements of exploratory play. Froebel designed a set of learning tools, Froebel’s gifts, that learners were invited to play their way toward understanding with. Interestingly, Froebel’s ideas have not been lost on contemporary culture. Google invites its employees to create and explore for 20% of their work-week. The Stonesfield School in New Zealand borrowed this idea and allows students to spend 20% of their time in Breakthrough: self-led learning time. Other schools have implemented Exploratory, Genius Hour, or Passion Project time. Each has recognized the value of ensuring that people maintain agency in the work (and play!) they do. But these elements are not ubiquitous; they often begin much later than primary education, and they are not always available to all learners.
Like Resnick, I worry that space for creativity has gone missing in many classrooms. Pressure to “achieve” – as measured by standardized tests – has crept into the psyche of schooling. Choice is doled out in terms of books students get to read or apps they get to work with on an ipad or Chromebook, but authentic creative, exploratory time during which students can make choices about what they want to learn and how they go about that learning can be much harder to find.
Resnick believes we are wise to offer students opportunities to create. To place students in the role of producer, rather than relegating them to the role of consumer for the lion’s share of their time. His work focuses heavily on projects he’s collaboratively developed at MIT -- Scratch programming and LEGO robotics –but the overall message exceeds the scope of these specific initiatives. Resnick and his team believe that students need time to be creative, and the principles to guide that work are projects, passion, peers, and play.
But, how do we do this? There are two approaches I’d like to set forth for thought this week: 1. Exploratory Learning, and 2. Situated Learning.
Exploratory Learning
As mentioned above, exploratory learning is based on the idea that students need routine opportunities to lead their own learning. Borrowing from both Resnick and Froebel, Exploratory Learning places students in the role of producer, challenging them to identify a topic or concept they want to learn more about and then design their own learning journey around that area of interest.
Suggested components of exploratory learning include:
1. A consistent block of time for students to utilize
2. A Wonder Wall to capture and inspire ideas
3. A flow chart that maps the creative process
4. A wide variety of materials available for student use
5. A wide variety of mentors to support student work
Exploratory learning holds the potential to embed each of the four elements Resnick and his colleagues deem important. Students have the opportunity to design their own projects. In theory, each project is based upon a topic students are passionate about. Projects are presented to peers, and the organic nature of exploratory learning holds the potential to welcome play.
A noted strength of exploratory learning is that presenting one another’s projects to peers expands the interests and awareness of other students in the classroom. A liability of exploratory learning is that we cannot be certain all of the academic standards at a particular grade level will be addressed. This brings us to the question: How do we add joy to learning that is centered upon academic standards?
Situated Learning
Based on a theory that “deep learning works better as a cultural process than it does as an instructed process,” situated learning returns academic standards to the cultural practices they are rooted in (Gee, 2006, P. 13). For example, in third grade the Common Core Mathematics Standards state that students are to learn how to measure to the nearest centimeter and half-centimeter. This is commonly accomplished by having students measure lines on paper. A situated learning approach to measurement would be to take students fishing and teach them how to determine if the fish they catch is a keeper or not according to standards from the Department of Nature Resources (DNR). Or, if that seems too extreme, to challenge students to measure wood for a birdhouse construction project.
School curriculum has been known to remove content from context. While a textbook may mention a connection to real-life, the way students practice the skill is very often separated from applied context. The idea of situated learning is to return the skill or concept of focus to the lived practice that utilizes that skill; to capture and release the relevance (to take the fishing analogy one step further).
A strength of situated learning is that it challenges students to try on different identities; to be and become a fisher-person using measurement, an archaeologist using Cartesian coordinates, a business owner calculating costs and expenditures. Situated learning prioritizes “know” as a verb over “knowledge” as a noun (Gee, 2008). By this, we mean knowing requires authentic action.
A second strength of situated learning is that practicing the skill in context gives rise to the discourse – or language – that accompanies the skill. For example,
S: Is my fish big enough to keep?
T: I’m not sure. You better measure its length.
S: It’s big! It’s the biggest one I’ve caught.
T: The DNR says it needs to be at least 8 inches long from tail to mouth. Is it?
S: Let me see. (Places fish alongside ruler.) It is! The mouth is between the 9 and the 10. That’s long enough.
T: Exactly how long is it?
S: Between the 9 and the 10.
T: The DNR would call that 9 ½ inches.
S: It’s 9 ½ inches. My fish is 9 ½ inches. Can I keep it?
Finally, situated learning opens students’ eyes – and minds – to topics or concepts that may otherwise be less familiar to them. It primes students’ interests. For those who wish, topics explored via situated learning may be further investigated through exploratory learning. In this way, situated learning and exploratory learning have a symbiotic relationship.
Within situated learning, joy resides in stretching capacities and trying on new identities. Not every experience will be deemed a favorite by all students; but every experience holds the potential for joy, even if its only in the sense of accomplishment that comes with trying something new.
Conclusion
As educators, parents, and/or coaches, we cannot know exactly what will be interesting, motivating, or joy inspiring for a learner, much less an entire class full of learners. This challenges us to acknowledge that the best we can do to cultivate joyful learning is to offer students the space, resources, and structure necessary for joyful learning endeavors, and the mentorship necessary to guide them forward in a productive manner. It is a model Google and other workplaces recognize as beneficial to employees, as it fosters a culture of innovation and enables people to tackle the hard problems faced by local and global communities.
Recognizing a need to adhere to academic standards, I propose utilizing a combination of exploratory learning and situated learning as the framework for the cultivation of joyful learning. This model enables students to dive into the wild spaces they are interested in and also be exposed to new terrain they may otherwise be less familiar with. It invites them into learning as consumers and producers.
Finally, to maximize joyful learning in schools and beyond, we are wise to remember to cultivate the assets that contribute to a joyful classroom: Connection, Play, and Community (see Cultivating Joy in Learning, Part I). Fortunately, these are readily available within exploratory learning and situated learning alike.
Citations:
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. NY: Harper Perennial.
Gee, J.P. (2008). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. NY: Routledge.
Resnick, M. (2017). Lifelong kindergarten: Cultivating creativity through projects, passion, peers and play. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.