Active learning is the result of student involvement and investment; the pinnacle of which results in transformative learning – this is a teacher’s classroom goal.
“Tell me and I will forget.
Show me, and I will remember.
Involve me, and I will understand”
A saying attributed to the Lakota Sioux Indians. (Edgerton, 1997, p. 31).
As Barkley explains in words (and in a Venn Diagram); “Student Engagement is the product of motivation and active learning. It is a product rather than a sum because it will not occur if either element is missing. It does not result from one or the other alone, but rather is generated in the space that resides in the over-lap of motivation and active learning.” (Barkley, 2010, p.6) In my practice, I describe Barkley’s motivation as invested. As a practicing Instructor, my experience comes from the classroom, and motivation is a difficult process to detect accurately in the classroom; I cannot accurately use a yardstick of motivational level within a classroom, so it is not an effective tool in my use. Motivation is an internal process and can be exhibited – if it is exhibited at all – in students in many differing ways, so it is not a reliable measure. Invested is a term that I use to describe activity level of a student in class; but again, this is a nebulous term and cannot be easily defined. In my practice I use the term invested to refer to the interaction a student shows in the material being studied. This involves a wide range of actions and can include in class or out of class questions, homework efforts, attentiveness in class, thought processes displayed in comments and many other subtle indicators.
Involvement level can be demonstrated on Perry’s (1999) higher levels in his 9-point scheme; as a student moves from Dualist thought to Commitment/Constructed Knowledge, involvement can be said to be morphing into higher levels of involvement. Barkley points out: “Transformative learning occurs when students are challenged intensely, creating the kind of growth described by Perry’s upper levels of intellectual and ethical development.” (Barkley, 2010, p.7).
An instructor’s goal is to provide opportunity and to facilitate a student’s movement through levels of involvement and intellectual investment in pursuit of her educational goals; only by having such an over- arching view of instruction can an instructor be effective.
References
Edgerton, Russell. (1997). Higher Education White Paper. Pew Charitable Trusts.
Barkley, Elizabeth F., (2010). Student Engagement Techniques, A Handbook for College Faculty. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
William Perry’s Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, and Center for Cognitive Science, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY (present). Retrieved Dec14, 2018 from https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/perry- positions.html
