Not strictly speaking on the same page you are (the focus is independent thinking rather than autonomy in the sense that it’s been discussed here), but there might be something useful there to throw in the mix

Try this one for a solid summary of autonomy in learning if you haven’t already.

http://psych.rochester.edu/SDT/documents/2006_VansteenkisteLensDeci_InstrinsicvExtrinsicGoal_EP.pdf

It’s the question I will be working on for the rest of my life. How do kids own the curriculum (autonomy) without owning the curriculum (standards)? I’m unwilling to throw either of these things out for the sake of the other, because I am convinced of the fundamental need for both.

So I gotta bring it. There’s no other way around. In otherwords: I’m remembering your post on NCLB, I think it was, in which you state that good teachers find ways to do their good work within the constraints of the law. So goes it here.

I think you’re right in implying that math does not nearly have the wiggle room that English does for this kind of creative work. But…but. It can be done. Through classroom culture/management approaches, through content matrix– wherever you can balance your goals as teacher with allowing the kids to have as much as of a genuine voice as possible. (I find myself starting often by saying to kids: “Here are the two groundrules. You have to like it. But I have to be able to live with it.” They get that.)

As per Feltron being a) energy-sucking and b) possibly not even successful: I still maintain that when b) you assess retention of content, critical approach, and creative analysis, Feltron’s gonna fly. Just watch.

I also maintain that a) if you average a conversion of a mere, sustainable 1/10 of your curriculum per year to autonomy-supportive projects, it’s going to take you only that decade to publish your groundbreaking math curriculum and own your island. I am dead serious. As you so rightly ask: Where *is* autonomy-supportive math curriculum? It’s in your head, Dan, like Athena, clamoring to be let out.

Is it dumb to ask, “Is there a way to cover state standards while promoting autonomy?” Still a bit antithetical to the devil-may-care wander-where-the-wind-takes-you ethos.

‘Cause I’m willing to put in the hours wherever. And I don’t enjoy one bit working a problem out “with” my students knowing I’m leaving them with few useful skills for handling future problems.

But I’m not sure I crank out a year’s worth of Feltron projects. I’m not even sure how successful Feltron is gonna be, itself.

Oh, sure (in a tone of friendly agreement). But alas, you have not even escaped my net here. The preponderance of evidence that kids learn to read better– more fluidly, with better comp, and more vocab acquisition– through weighting curriculum with autonomously selected material in which kids have intrinsic interest is astonishing. I mean, rock you back astonishing.

And of course there’s the stuff kids need to know about reading and writing that they don’t give a rat’s ass about. But even here, if you’ve created a classroom that is autonomy-supportive, the kids will learn even these rote unpleasantries better. TMAO knows. :)

I guess I still contend that “learning to learn” is a lot easier when you know how to read and write.

As per inversion, I truly don’t think so. Here’s why I think we can have my “autonomy” and eat your “teacher essentiality” too: it’s only the teacher who can encourage autonomy. It’s only the teacher who can watch and know her students so as to set them free to flourish with the correct knowledge and tools. It’s only the teacher, in the ultimate paradox, who can– and should– in the end, create the learning circumstances under which she renders herself obsolete.

(And I do mean the END. What is the END of education, after all? Isn’t it to give our kids the means to be responsible, self-confident, skilled, loving, compassionate people, without us nagging them every damn second? That’s autonomy at its paramount.)

— d

I’m responding, primarily, to your assertion above that if teachers promoted more autonomy in their students, they’d become less essential to the students’ learning outcomes. And I’m saying, without having yet clicked a link, that seems inverted.

Autonomy seems harder to structure, harder to scaffold, and harder to assess.

You’ve asked me whether “full autonomy” in a classroom wouldn’t implode with TEP neighborhood kids– I’m assuming you mean low-SES ELLs. My response is:

1) As I mentioned, I suspect strongly we’re not talking about the same thing when we say “autonomy.” Would you be surprised to learn that the Felton Project is drenched in it? I have an old post up on the theory:

http://theline.edublogs.org/2007/12/19/self-determination-theory-for-dummies-part-one/

and I’m planning another one soon.

2) Check out here

http://psych.rochester.edu/SDT/publications/pub_edu.html

for how this theory plays out real-world in education. I reject defending it through a theoretical application to TEP because, well, that’s inefficient. Much better for the entire conversation if we proceed from facts first.

3) Just so you know I’m not talking completely out of my ass, I did my student teaching at PS 130 in Chinatown. Just a taste of the world, and not Washington Heights, but certainly parallel. They do a ton of autonomy-support stuff there, and it shows:

http://www.insideschools.org/fs/school_profile.php?id=42

Want to try this again?