Category: Education Research/Theory

AOL gives us The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work from the Wall Street Journal that is helping me understand our younger students. Although I’ve done a lot of research on the Educating the Net Generation, I have also noticed certain behaviors (in class and online) that have caused me to change my classroom management techniques.For example, over the last several years, I’ve noticed that more and more of my on-site students refuse to take notes, come and go from the classroom, have their cell phones on (and often out on their desks), stare at me with blank faces, and otherwise exhibit behaviors saying they are not really engaged in the class. They are very tied up in their “affective domain” (how they feel about an issue), which makes intellectual discussion and topical analysis difficult. It becomes obvious that they do not enjoy learning for its own sake if I start by, say, trying to teach them history.

Such distancing behaviors have, of course, always been frustrating. When I was a younger teacher, I used to get angry, threaten to lock them out of the room, roll my eyes when they walked in front of me while I was lecturing, and talked to many individuals after class about their behavior. Then instead I began putting in the syllabus those behaviors I considered unacceptable, and giving instructions (turn off your cell phone, etc.) I would arrange group work to increase their participation and then get frustrated when they chatted about anything except the assignment.

Well, now it’s different. I already noted in my post on Student Intelligences that many of my on-site students are Body/Movement learners. It’s a maxim of mine (and of the Classroom Assessment Technique crowd) that there is no point surveying students unless you bring the results back to them. I reported the results to them shortly after they took the survey. I told them that, given the fact that so many of them need movement to learn, they should feel free to come and go from the room as they pleased, just try to avoid walking in front of me while I’m talking. The first few weeks, a number left the room a lot. When they realized it was really no problem, they tapered off. Only the ones who really needed it were still doing it by mid-term.

Was I praising them? No. Was I indicating that they were special? Yes. I never said a word about the cell phones, except to one student who played with his all through class. During the final exam last week, a student’s phone rang loudly. She absent-mindedly stopped the ringer. Two minutes later it rang again, and she apologized, not to me, but to the class as a whole. That’s the type of behavior I want to engender.

In the online environment, I make recommendations about their learning style (body learners should put their laptop on a kitchen counter and move around between tasks). But because of the distance, they can’t see that I am willing to work with them as individuals. So I use lots of emoticons and a very easy tone, designed to cater to their self-centeredness in such a way as to engender an open mind on their part. I rewrite a lot of responses. I don’t hit “Send” if I’m upset. And I’m using a discussion technique that validates their affective tendencies (see my last post, below).

I figure it this way. If their minds close when they are not treated as special, I cannot teach them history. If I can respect their affective domain just enough to open their brain, I can teach them. Though I am an intellectual, and do not access my affective domain when undertaking mental activity, I have come to understand that they do. They do not separate their feelings (about me, history, the classroom, the campus, their colleagues) from their thinking. Gold star, anyone?