SoundOut Education ConsultingSomehow educators… listen to outside experts to inform us, and consequently, we overlook… our students. As teachers, we need to find ways to continually seek out these silent voices because they can teach us so much about learning and learners.
-Suzanne SooHoo (1993)
Citizenship education provides opportunities for students to learn the values, ideals, actions and outcomes of shared social, political, cultural and economic lives.
The elements of citizenship education include:
At the center of citizenship education is student voice, which is any expression of any student about anything related to learning, teaching and leadership. Student voice can drive each of the elements listed above, and should be extensively entwined throughout all citizenship education activities.
Mindfulness can be a key to Meaningful Student Involvement. When students learn to be deliberate, take time, and understand multiple perspectives they are using mindfulness. It can be a key because the student/adult partnerships at the core of Meaningful Student Involvement are reliant on mindfulness from both sides of the equation. With so much of the onus for classroom relationships are placed on adults, it becomes vital to teach students about their part of the equation, too. Teaching mindfulness can be one step in that direction.
Whether in the classroom, through afterschool programs or anywhere students and adults work together in education, mindfulness can always be invoked and supported. Here are some ways to do that.
Mindfulness can provide a logical, meaningful and substantial gateway into deeper learning, more significant classroom connections and Meaningful Student Involvement.
The idea of school belonging and school connectedness centers on the reality that the way students feel, see and experience schools affects their learning.
Since everyone needs to belong to something, it makes sense that students, who spend many hours in schools everyday, would want to feel belonging in that place, too. Its especially important for students to experience school belonging as they’re growing up, too, since this bond may form the trend for future experiences as they get older.
Research shows that school belonging looks like:
The phrase school belonging is the most common one in research. Others, like school connectedness or school bonding are used, too, but are less common. (Anderman and Freeman, 2004)
Many educators make an intuitive connection between school belonging and Meaningful Student Involvement, which is appropriate. With its focus on community building and democratic action, Meaningful Student Involvement is wholly dependent on school belonging.
Student motivation is a learner’s interest and commitment to anything throughout learning, schools or education.
Long seen as a “warm and fuzzy” part of learning, today motivation is being recognized as an essential and enduring part of success in education. Without student motivation, all learning strategies are moot, all school improvement efforts are nil, and all attempts at student engagement are irrelevant and pointless.
Student motivation is the main way to improve schools.
One of the most challenging parts of student motivation is the reality that its not as simple as either students are motivated or they aren’t. Instead, there are many shades of grey involved. Some learners show motivation by simply showing up for class every day, whether or not they’re prepared to learn. Other students have to be loudly, actively and hands-on involved in learning to show their motivation.
An important note about motivation comes from Larry Ferlazzo, a high school teacher in Sacramento, California, who suggests student self-motivation is the key to learning. In an excellent article, he summarizes what it takes for students to become self-motivated, and says there are four qualities of student self-motivation: autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance.
Student voice and choice does not automatically increase student motivation, either. By addressing barriers deliberately, educators for all levels of students can begin to motivate all learners in positive, powerful and effective ways towards Meaningful Student Involvement.
Many strategies for Meaningful Student Involvement, student voice and student engagement can increase student motivation, too.
There are many ways students learn and become engaged in schools. Each student has a predominant way they become engaged, and none of the ways should be ignored in a given classroom. In order to understand these different ways, I have adapted Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory.
Following is a description of each style of student engagement, and an exploration of how it can be activated to engage students in classrooms and throughout education.
VERBAL ENGAGEMENT: Students who become engaged through linguistics focus on language and how it is used. They might remember names, places and dates easily and spell words quickly. Student Engagement activities can focus on words, sounds and meanings and spend a lot of time reading and writing.
MUSICAL ENGAGEMENT: Students who become engaged through music focus on music, rhythm and pitch. They concentrate more when music is played, sing to themselves a lot or make up songs to remember details. Student engagement activities involve these students in making music, analyzing music and teaching other people music.
LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL ENGAGEMENT: Engaging students through logic and math means focus on patterns, numbers and logical relationships. They are good at math problems, puzzles and mental challenges. Student engagement approaches can use computers, graphic design and logic activities.
VISUAL-SPATIAL ENGAGEMENT: Students who become engaged through spatial awareness focus on shapes, locations and distances. They are good designers and builders. Student engagement approaches can focus on community planning, building design and creating charts and maps.
BODILY-KINESTHETIC ENGAGEMENT: Engaging students through physical action focus on physical skills and movement. They are good actors, athletes and craftspeople who do not like to sit still. Student engagement activities teach these young people through constant activity.
INTERPERSONAL ENGAGEMENT: Students who become engaged through interpersonal activities focus on understanding and dealing with other people. They are very social, often trying to understand peoples’ motives and feelings. Student engagement approaches can focus on communication and give young people opportunities to organize their communities.
INTRAPERSONAL ENGAGEMENT: Engaging students through intrapersonal activities means focusing on helping young people understand themselves. They are self-sufficient, confident and opinionated and do things on their own. Student engagement programs can empower students by giving them more control of their surroundings and through self-driven activities.
NATURALISTIC ENGAGEMENT: When a student engages best in their natural surroundings, they are a naturalistic engager. This includes doing natural projects with animals and plants, learning about different species, or walking through the outdoors. They are sensitive and ethical and want to understand the holistic ways the world works, as well as its complexities–including the role of humanity within the greater ecosphere.
EXISTENTIAL ENGAGEMENT: Students who are deeply spiritually engaged or understand the world best through a connection with all other things are existentially engaged. They are deeply spiritual, frequently seeing the interconnections of man and nature, looking for purpose and passion in activities, ideas and outcomes. Student engagement activities can empower students by enabling their deeper understanding and giving them space to practice their style.
School leadership can be a logical and impacting location for Meaningful Student Involvement in all schools.
More than simply standing in front of others and telling them what to do, school leadership focuses on action that changes thoughts, feelings, and actions. As school leaders, students can affect their peers, younger students, parents, communities, educators, administrators, and others involved in an education community.
When students participate in the formal activities of policy making, committee memberships and school improvement, they can be meaningfully involved in school leadership.
Meaningful Student Involvement in school leadership is more than simply attending school events or making menial choices. School leadership becomes meaningful when it focuses on the community beyond individual students, or when it sincerely affects the depths of a students’ experience in schools. Ultimately, Meaningful Student Involvement in school leadership requires active engagement as fully equitable partners with adults in the guidance, deliberation, visioning and outcomes of the educational process for much more than the individual student.
Oftentimes, Meaningful Student Involvement in school leadership can affect hundreds, if not thousands of students. Engaging students in these activities includes opportunities for them to be involved in decision-making, research, planning, evaluation, co-learning and advocacy.
Are you wondering whether a school leadership activity is meaningful or not? Use this chart to help!
| This: Meaningful | That: Not Meaningful |
| Woven into the school improvement plan | Isolated activities that aren’t connected to any other process or outcomes |
| Funded educator champions and learning activities for students | One-time or unsustainable activities relying on charity or political will |
| Shared commitment and interest among students and educators | Top-down, assigned activities from educators to students without consideration for student voice |
| Full-voting, fully-informed students | No- or low-powered activities without student authority or ability |
| Reflects a wider dedication to meaningful involvement with the whole school community | Divergent and unrelated activities |
| Stated learning goals with curricular base and awarded credits. | Absence of learning goals or specific activities |
“You cannot prepare kids for living in a democracy unless they experience living in a democracy.”
– Deborah Meier
Meaningful Student Involvement should be present throughout the goals of education and student success.
Defining the purpose of schools focuses the direction of schools, teachers, and students. (Brennan, 1996) While some originally intended for public education to provide basic learning for successful democratic citizenship, others saw schools mainly as a way to support the economic workforce. Today, educational goals and “success” have become defined by student performance on standardized tests, in addition to measures like student attendance and graduation rates.
While these might be part of the purpose of education, many school reformers are seeking ways to broaden the goals of education to include students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development, as well as helping students gain the skills needed to build a better and more democratic world. (Dewey, 1948)
Meaningful Student Involvement positions students as equitable partners with adults in order to identify the goals of education, and to determine what student success actually is. As explored other places on this site, that doesn’t mean they are handed the keys to schools and told to take education wherever they want it to go. In a democratic society, there should be lots of opportunities for lots of people to become thoroughly engaged in examining, re-examining and moving forward goals of education.
For instance, students in Ontario have a variety of ways to be meaningfully involved throughout the education system. At a 2015 leadership conference, they designed the following graphic to illustrate what they thought the future of schools should be.
Students attending the Ontario Educational Leadership Council’s camp helped create the visual above to represent the ideas of the students about their future (and others) in education. The students were asked to think about what they need from us to be successful. What kinds of things are they looking for to support them in their educational path. The students had some time to reflect, discuss and exchange ideas that they felt would help them, and future generations become successful citizens of Ontario. This graphic has been shared with school district boards and a variety of other people throughout the province. Its inevitably helped indirectly form new ways of seeing students, seeing schools and envisioning the future. More importantly though, it has directly informed formal policy-making, too. Learn more here.
Student voice and choice are an entryway into Meaningful Student Involvement. However, this shouldn’t be seen as the beginning and end of the conversation. The larger topic at hand is the role of students in schools and whether the education system should continue to promote students being passive recipients of adult-driven learning.
The notion of student voice and choice limits the perspectives, actions, wisdom, ideas and knowledge of students according to what, how, when, where and why adults want to hear them. There are other approaches that are more authentic, appropriate and engaging.
Unfortunately, in many ways the idea of student voice and choice is being used as a surrogate for actually understanding Meaningful Student Involvement. This happens when adults…
Any classroom or school practice that is driven by the assumption that student voice and choice is the key to learning is still being led by that belief.
By determining that students should determine what, how, when, where, why and with whom they are learning, we are merely reinforcing the notion of who has control and authority in schools. Suddenly, students are being told it’s them, while in reality, control still rests in the hands of adults who have long been answered with “leave it to the professionals,” meaning administrators and policy-makers.
Creating opportunities for meaningful involvement for students, teachers, and parents is growing in many communities, while the federal government is increasingly asking how and where nontraditional voices can be engaged in decision-making. Businesses, community organizations, mayors, and others want roles, too. This is a topic that many people should rally around.
But student voice and choice is merely an entryway into that conversation, and not the whole thing in and of itself.
Meaningful Student Involvement can be embedded deeply in a school’s curriculum.
The question of who decides the curriculum in schools has a big impact on what goes on in schools. With influences ranging from textbook companies to politicians, and from school boards to businesses and more, schools and teachers somehow have to sort this out and provide a meaningful learning experience for students.
The federal government, along with a coalition of private organizations, is supporting the concept of Common Core State Standards that would create the same standards throughout the country, and many governors have urged their states to follow them. Meaningfully involving students in the curriculum allows teachers to engage students’ attitudes, experiences, beliefs, ideas, actions, and outcomes as central to learning. (Grace M. , 1999)
By identifying the central role of classroom curriculum in promoting Meaningful Student Involvement, schools can re-position student leadership by moving it from the purview of eloquent or gifted students towards the experience of the proverbial “every student”. This can allow learners to invest in learning, deepen their experience of curriculum, and secure the power of learning throughout their lives.
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