warrington’s blog

Well, our session with the SFU librarian was very helpful in learning how to use ERIC, the library search engine, and I did find a few sources to back up my Field Study idea, “Will making my classes student centered lead to increased student motivation”. However, to be frank, I was just as successful in using those same techniques, ie; advanced search options, ‘find sources with these words/ without these words’, etc. with a Google search, but at least I had another search engine to access.

As for the sources I found, I was able to find plenty of research enthusiastically proclaiming that student directed learning was by far the ideal way to go. No problem there. The absolute best way to learn is to choose a subject of you own passion, research it in your own way, and create a project on it at your own pace and schedule. This works really well in an open-ended university course (did anyone say, ‘TLITE’?), but it is not nearly as obvious to make this work with grade school students, where the curriculum and learning time and place are set.

I was also able to find plenty of research about student motivation. Some of these talked about great ideas on how to motivate students (the teacher must really care, be enthusiastic, knowledgeable, use key visuals, manipulatives, projects, make it real for the kids, and so on). Other sources talked about what makes the best students (motivated, mature, passionate about the subject, driven, etc.). But it was much more difficult to find any sources which gave research studies on whether or not making grade school classrooms more student centered could increase student motivation.

It would seem likely that it would indeed work. Intuitively it makes logical sense. I’m guessing though that there is a dearth of hard evidence showing this, simply because of the above; that given the lack of complete choice in grade school curriculum, and in the learning setting, then it’s hard to make the classroom truly student centered.

I do have some sources which show indicators, tendencies and so on, so I think I will be able to cite credible sources backing up my field study, but it won’t be a solid case. I suppose that if it were that obvious to motivated teenagers, someone would have started doing it ages ago, no?