Learning Plans and the Art of Negotiation

There’s too much time spent discussing the teacher autonomy issue, and not enough time focusing on the importance of student voice moving forward.

A recent issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership focused entirely on the importance of teacher autonomy and why there wasn’t more of it in our K-12 system.

Two articles caught my attention.

The first, written by a New Hampshire classroom teacher, contends there is no self-motivation without autonomy:

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan are two of the most important researchers in the field of human motivation. Their theory for understanding human motivation, called Self-Determination Theory, has helped us understand the fundamental connection between motivation and autonomy. They contend (and tons of research supports their claim) that one can’t be truly self-motivated without autonomy. A person might be compliant – even happily so. They might be extrinsically motivated (by the promise of a reward or worry about a negative consequence). But to be truly self-motivated – to have one’s motivation really come from the self – a person has to have at least some power and control over what they’re doing or how they’re doing it.”

The second, written by two RAND Corporation researchers, emphasizes how outside limitations jeopardize autonomy:

“Since 2022, we have worked alongside other researchers, using RAND’s American Educator Panels to survey teachers about their opinions on state restrictions, what they perceive as limitations on their instruction, and how they navigate limitations in their classrooms. These data shed light on how and why teachers may experience limitations as infringing on their autonomy.”

“In our analysis of responses from more than one thousand teachers across the nation, we found that limitations influence how teachers approach instruction in a multitude of ways: Teachers describe how limitations curtailed the control they had over their choice of instructional materials, classroom discussion topics, and books in their classroom libraries (Woo et al., 2023).”

“In 2022, we found that slightly over half of teachers nationally reported that they opposed state restrictions on instruction (Woo et al., 2022). In 2023, teachers were about ten times more likely to consider limitations harmful to student learning than they were to consider them beneficial. Teachers expressed concerns that limitations reduce students’ access to learning opportunities and diminish students’ sense of belonging and capacity for empathy (Woo, Diliberti, Lee, et al., 2024).”

“One can’t be truly self-motivated without autonomy.” Too few teachers, even though they want autonomy for themselves, are willing to build autonomy in their students.

And just as states apply restrictions on teachers regarding instructional materials, classroom discussion topics, and books in their classroom libraries, too many teachers apply similar restrictions to their students when it comes to their learning.

Learning plans, personalized to the individual learner, can go a long way in establishing a process by which the young learner defines, plans, executes, and evaluates their own learning. The adult learning leader’s role is not to restrict, but instead to negotiate.

Learning plans and the art of negotiation, between the adult learning leader and a young learner, are tools absent in most traditional K-12 settings. But they are tools necessary to provide the right amount of autonomy that can only lead to a self-motivated learner.

I’ll be away tomorrow, but back Thursday. Til then. SVB