Ch. 5
Enhancing Meaning
Where I’m From
Working With Younger Students
Selecting or Creating Engaging Stories
Making Sense of Meaning
The Concept of Flow
Using Metaphors and Stories to Encourage Different Perspectives and Deepen Relevance and Meaning
Using Stories and Case Studies
Developing Purposeful Guiding Questions
Using Case Study to Engage English Language Learners in Analyzing a Student’s Experience of School in the United States
Closing a Case Study
Activity 5.2 Case Study: Working With English Language Learners to Analyze the School Experience of an English Language Learner
Working With Older Students to Write Their Own Stories
Case Study: Filad
Conclusions
A Day in the Life of Filad
Discussion Outlines for a Case Study
Activity 5.1 Where I’m From
ELL Program at School
questions to stimulate discussion with a case study
Which issues in the case stand out for you? Why?
Were any of the issues familiar to you because of your own experience?
What issues are most important to resolve? Why?
What might make you apprehensive about trying to resolve an issue you think is important? Why? What could be done to change this?
If you were going to research a particular problem in the case, how would you turn it into one or more researchable questions? What steps would you follow for a thoughtful study? What resources would you use? Why those?
How does the case connect to other topics you have been studying in school? What are those connections?
What would you say to __ if she or he asked you __?
Thought-Provoking Questions to Facilitate Student Engagement and Learning Through Critical Thinking
Using Relevant Problems to Facilitate Learning
Using the Motivational Framework for Problem-Based and Project-Based Learning
closing a case study activity:
Ask students to describe specific issues or concepts they understand at a deeper level and possibly why as well.
Ask students to write answers to questions such as these: What new insights did you gain from this case study and its discussion? What are your lingering questions? What new ideas do you want to continue to think about?
Ask learners to brainstorm insights, personal changes in thinking or action, or new areas to explore as a result of their work.
Go around the entire class and ask each student to provide one insight or question that emerged as a result of the process.
Activity 5.3 Thought-Provoking Questions
Activity 5.4 Fish Bowl Questioning Procedure
Activity 5.5 Guided Reciprocal Questioning
Activity 5.6 Identifying Relevant Problems With Students
Project-Based Learning
Pragmatic Considerations for Projects
Role-Playing and Simulations to Enhance Meaning in a More Realistic Context
Concluding Role-Plays and Simulations
Foreshadowing How a Role-Play or Simulation Works
Games
Use imagination and artistry to evoke meaning and emotion in learning
Activity 5.7 Visitation Maps
Activity 5.8 Spotlight Presentations
Action Research With Students
Activity 5.9 Dot Graphing
Summary
This chapter described practices that can challenge and engage learners in meaningful learning. Of course, repertoires of teaching strategies, no matter how promising, are only part of the equation. Nuanced interactions with students, routines and rituals, connections, and patterns influence student motivation. When it comes to enhancing meaning with children and youth, it is important to continuously estimate the motivational quality of teaching and learning, and adjust accordingly.
It’s also important to remember that motivation will naturally ebb and flow. When students are tired or their energy seems diminished, it is easy to overreact. Skillful educators have high expectations, but they are also realistic about the fact that there is not one-to-one correspondence between time and motivation. Downtime can be a catalyst for intense periods of productivity.
Further, how teachers assess engagement is culturally mediated. A student who is silent and calm may be as motivated as, or more than, a student who is highly demonstrative. As with all things, teachers’ assumptions and perceptions of a situation are culturally mediated. Nurturing optimal learning is like blowing on the embers of a fire to boost a flame. Personal conversations with students fuel optimal learning environments. The challenge of helping students find value in an opportunity is the challenge of student and teacher voices in constant dialogue with each other. Teachers who are fully present and keenly aware are more apt to increase students’ motivation as they are learning, mutually creating great momentum for learning. This reciprocity is a primary topic of the next chapter , which focuses on engendering competence through authentic ways to support student success.
Purpose: To examine the experience of English language learners in schools and their communities
Purpose: To encourage students to think critically and to promote connections between ideas in a lesson to another context
Purpose: To examine and strengthen students’ understanding of an issue using thought-provoking questions and to practice using thought-provoking questions to realize their value for in-depth understanding and different perspectives on relevant issues
Purpose: To examine and strengthen students’ understanding of an issue using thought-provoking questions and to practice using thought-provoking questions to realize their value for in-depth understanding and different perspectives on relevant issues
Purpose: To identify issues and problems for special interest groups to study
Purpose: To provide students with an opportunity to imagine and visually represent a visit to a community center
Purpose: To review topics and issues from students’ perspectives and to creatively develop well-organized presentations on relevant topics
Purpose: To generate ideas for action research based on student perceptions of a relevant issue
Purpose: To share aspects of students’ lives in ways that surface creativity and promote meaning making about influences on their identities
This chapter probes two essential questions:
What is meaning?
It provides examples of learning activities that teachers have adapted to a range of subject areas and grade levels.
How can we create it in schools?
When meaning provides a connection or pattern that links our perceptions to important goals or questions, it intensifies motivation for all students because there is obvious relevance. This deeper meaning accesses strong feelings that are intertwined with the ways in which we have been socialized in our families and communities.
Many of these connections are made through creative, artistic, spiritual, and manual experiences involving music, dance, theater, the visual arts, meditation, and service to others. Creative and contemplative forms of cognition contribute, in pivotal ways, to students’ interest in and interpretation of opportunities to learn.
In essence, they help students experience harmony in their feelings, thoughts, intentions, and actions
Flow occurs in learning when the students’ goals are desired and clear, feedback is immediate and relevant, and the level of challenge is in balance with the required skills or knowledge.
When it occurs as part of the process of learning, it makes learning an end in itself. Students who experience flow have not only a better chance of learning but also a better chance of wanting to learn more.
Flow requires engagement on the part of the student, an action that might involve searching, evaluating, constructing, creating, or organizing some kind of learning material into new or better ideas, memories, skills, values, feelings, understandings, solutions, or decisions.
Metaphors allow us to create meaning with students and educators in ways that are often not possible through academic language.
An alternative to written metaphors is illustrated metaphors. At the conclusion of a course or unit, a teacher might ask students to draw a metaphorical illustration of a concept they studied.
Creative metaphors are also common in the titles of popular articles.
explore creative metaphors comes directly from the music they enjoy
A case study is a narrative of real events that presents provocative questions in a way that compels students to deliberate, analyze, and advance informed judgments to integrate an array of perspectives and concepts
When teachers use stories that are someone else’s, yet are relevant to students’ lives, students tend to be more open-minded and less defensive in their analysis.
the opportunity to think through a relevant predicament with others often contributes to a sense of solidarity with others and different perspectives can be safely communicated.
Further, powerful stories with complex issues encourage inquiry, imagination, and vision because students can see that opinions are insufficient as a way to build knowledge
When stories (or case studies) are a teacher’s primary approach to teaching a subject, it is particularly effective to present them in a sequence that lets the narrative unfold with additional information and complexity. Whether a primary or occasional learning tool, guiding questions scaffold students’ ability to make meaning.
The most effective questions for critical thinking ask students to critically analyze a situation in a way that requires students to clarify what they need to know, distinguish facts from assumptions, identify issues, prioritize and research issues in ways that include multiple sources and different perspectives, and identify possible solutions based on research as well as experience.
tells a “real” story
raises a thought-provoking issue that is relevant to students
has elements of conflict
promotes empathy with the central characters
lacks an obvious or clear-cut right answer
encourages students to think and take a position
demands a decision
is relatively concise
What is the situation?
How does it relate to your own experience?
What issues (or problems) does this story address?
Evaluate the pros/cons and underlying assumptions of issues (or problems) in the story in relation to (learning goals).
What problems need to be solved? What problem(s) will you focus on? What are some possible ways to solve the problem(s)?
What information do you need? Where/how could you find it?
What criteria will you use to evaluate your solution?
In addition to teaching students to ask peers for assistance, the process of turn and talk or turn and learn and other kinds of frequent response opportunities are common across grade levels.
At all levels of education, there is significant opportunity to customize storytelling for different academic, social, cultural, and developmental purposes.
Regardless of age, searching online using the key words “using stories to teach” provide links to freely available web-based resources for many disciplines and purposes.
The motivational significance of using stories with middle and high school students to personalize the consequences of intractable social problems is best conveyed through Christiansen’s (n.d.) own words:
Give students meaningful assignments that they want to write and revise. When I interviewed a group of Latina/o and African American juniors after one of our first essays, I said, “I noticed at some point you stopped doing this because it was an assignment, and you became passionate about writing the essay.” Their answer: We got to write about issues that were real in our lives, and someone listened and cared. (“Writing and Revising Vignettes,” para. 3)
Home and Family
When time permits, it can be clarifying to role-play aspects of the case.
Other times, it is beneficial to record key information on the board or a chart, whether with the aid of the previously mentioned three-column approach or with a graphic organizer or set of bullets.
If teachers and students are to realistically engage in the construction of knowledge, they must be capable of thinking about information in ways that transform that material into new knowledge.
This critical questioning stimulates students and teachers to use their own information, perspectives, and experience to become involved, deepen learning, and transform ideas and concepts into new meanings.
Most definitions of critical thinking involve analyzing, inferring, synthesizing, applying, evaluating, comparing, contrasting, verifying, substantiating, explaining, and hypothesizing (Beyer, 1988).
A critical orientation examines problems, data and reasoning for inconsistencies, alternative perspectives, and counterarguments
Relevant problems go hand in glove with problem-based learning, inquiry-focused learning, and project-based learning, all of which provide students with the opportunity to learn about a topic or issue by exploring authentic problems.
, problem-based learning is discipline-specific and emerges from vicarious sources such as case studies, fictional scenarios, and imaginative math or science problems.
roject-based learning is interdisciplinary, involves “real-world” tasks or settings, and includes a concrete product or demonstration.
problem-based and project-based learning, teachers typically encourage self-direction, peer collaboration, inquiry, and creativity. Further, both approaches tend to require more time, intellectual engagement, and support than discrete classroom learning tasks.
questioning methods or brainstorming helps to draw forth a relevant problem based on student concerns and interests. Students then immerse themselves in research to learn concepts and develop skills that lead to insights and ideas for problem resolution.
intrinsically motivating and academically effective projects offer multiple ways to connect with others and make connections across subject areas, pursue relevant goals and interests, work through meaningful challenges, and create new knowledge and demonstrations of learning.
They draw on a wide range of intelligences and elicit new concepts and skills in ways that authentically contribute to the lives and aspirations of learners.
the four conditions of the motivational framework:
Very high levels of learning challenge (enhancing meaning: challenge and engagement), often coming from an internal personal passion (developing a positive attitude: choice and relevance)
Equally high levels of external caring and personal support—a demanding but loving teacher, a tough but caring coach, or an inspirational learning guide (establishing inclusion: respect and connectedness)
Full permission to fail—safely and with encouragement to apply the hard lessons learned from failure to continuing the struggle with the challenge at hand (engendering competence: authenticity and effectiveness). (pp. xxvi–xxvii)
In the case of projects that have a cultural theme that is outside of some students’ experience, a teacher might also consider developing a council of project mentors who not only support these students’ work, but offer support to the teacher as a learner as well.
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whether projects will be individual or collaborative
the extent to which students will assist in the project’s conception and initial planning
how students will personalize and update their goals and approach as they learn
the kind of project timeline that will help students schedule their learning activities in ways that coordinate with others and can be realistically completed
with whom students will share/present their final products
how students will receive feedback throughout the process
whether the audiences for student presentations will offer feedback and, if so, what kind
whether, in addition to what students learned in relation to research questions, the final evaluation will take into account the quality of project planning, execution, and presentation; challenge level; creativity and originality; use of resources; and evaluation of and from co-learners
access to knowledge from people outside of the class, such as local experts
Role-playing is acting out a possible situation by personifying another individual, imagining another scene or set of circumstances, or both. Because role-playing has broad applicability across subject areas and provides a context for multiple perspectives to emerge, it is a highly useful strategy.
The main goal of role-playing is to create an experience that involves students’ intellect, emotions, and physical senses so that their experience is as realistic as possible.
Role-playing offers students the opportunity to think in the moment, question their perspectives, respond to novel or unexpected circumstances, and consider different ways of knowing. It can be used to practice a specific skill such as critical questioning, a collaborative skill such as collective bargaining, a problem-solving skill such as a computerized simulation of the procedure for a biochemistry experiment, or a synthesizing skill such as how to organize a project plan using procedures from throughout this book.
help students develop empathy and validation, especially when they imagine the viewpoints and rationales of people from different backgrounds
Simulation is an umbrella term for learning procedures that include role-playing and simulation exercises and games that allow students to practice and apply their learning in inauthentic yet sufficiently realistic contexts
Simulation exercises and games are situations in which a whole group is involved, with students assuming different roles as they act out a prescribed scenario. These scenarios allow students to acquire or put into practice particular concepts or skills.
simulations have become popular for school-to-career preparation, and rapidly evolving technology makes them more creative and accessible for classroom and online learning.
A well-designed simulation elicits a variety of feelings in learners, allows for practice of new learning among unpredictable events, replicates potential roles in work and the community, offers feedback from a variety of sources, supports collaboration, and stimulates decision making with cause-and-effect consequences
Following are some additional guidelines for simulations and role-plays:
Make sure the simulation or role-play is a good fit. Role-plays that feel contrived or trivialize an important issue undermine learning.
Plan ahead. Students should be familiar and moderately proficient with the concepts or skills that will be practiced during the activity. Do students have a fair knowledge of the cultural or personal roles they may assume? If they are uncomfortable, can they excuse themselves or observe until they are more comfortable with playing a role?
Be relatively sure students understand the role and scenario before you begin. Often it is helpful to write a script with a description of the role’s attitudes, experiences, and beliefs. The students use the script to deepen their familiarity with the role. For example, “I’m a new student in the school. I come from a much poorer neighborhood than most of my new classmates. Although I am usually self-reliant, I feel intimidated by the way others talk and dress.”
Set aside enough time for the simulation and the discussion that follows. The discussion and analysis are as important as the simulation itself. What are some different perspectives, reactions, and insights? What has not been dealt with that still needs attention? Have the goals for learning been accomplished? How is this known?
Freeze the action during a role-play when you need to. This can serve various purposes:
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to critique a perspective
to explore students’ reactions to a poignant comment
to allow students to make beneficial suggestions to the actors
to relieve tension
Plan follow-up activities for simulations and role-plays. This is extremely important. For example, a compelling next step after a role-play could be to create action plans to use what has been practiced and discussed.
Ask students to free-write for a couple of minutes after the experience so they have something to offer based on reflection.
Ask students to speak with a partner for a few minutes about key issues that emerged for them in the role-play or simulation before requesting individual responses.
Ask a couple of students to summarize the role-play or simulation before asking others to join in.
Ask each learner to remark about one element she or he felt was important in the simulation, and record these comments publicly. This lets everyone know there is a range of interpretations before discussion begins.
have students write responses to questions such as these:
What new insights did you gain from this role-play (or simulation) and our discussion? What are your lingering questions? What are some new ideas with which you would like to experiment? What resources would be useful to you?
In small groups or as a large group, brainstorm insights, personal changes in thinking or action, or new areas to explore as a result of the learning experience.
Go around the group, and ask each student to provide one insight, question, lesson, change, or idea that has emerged as a result of the process.
Introduce the procedure by describing and demonstrating the steps of the process with a vivid relevant example, clearly outlined on paper or on PowerPoint slides (even better when the example comes as a suggestion from the learners).
Have students work in guided practice with a short and relevant process that captures the form of the procedure.
Have students take notes on their reflections while they are involved in guided practice and discuss them collaboratively afterward (reflection-in-action).
As a result of reflection-in-action, students may want to suggest changes in the procedure to align with their cultural perspectives and intellectual strengths.
Games can be similar to simulations but they are usually very structured and have a competitive win-lose quality