Seeing learners in a different light

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus of Education, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 We moved to a new residence about a year ago. The walls in our previous home were primarily cloud white. The ones in our new home are three shades of blue-grey in the light to mid-grey range. When we hung the artwork from our previous home in the new one, we began to see the paintings and photographs differently. The blue-grey walls provided a different context for the art. And, because our new home has more and larger windows, we saw the art in an entirely different light, literally.

Seeing the art in a whole new light started me thinking about how the way we have ‘framed’ certain observations in education have propelled us in directions that would be different if we had framed them in a different way.

Consider the observation that some children begin school without knowing some shapes, colors, letters, and numbers, etc. There is a commonly held expectation that students without such knowledge find learning more challenging. The problem is often labeled “lack of school readiness”: that the knowledge that some children possess when entering school makes them “school ready” and other children’s lack of such knowledge prevents them from being seen as ready for school. This leads to judgments and action that are different from ones that one might make if the observation was framed differently.

Instead of framing the problem in terms of what children lack, it could be considered as a problem with schooling. Why do schools define some knowledge as valuable and its absence as a problem? Framed in this way, one might ask: are schools ready for the range of children for whom they will be responsible? Other related questions are: what strengths do children entering school possess upon which the school can build? How might we recognize and validate the range of knowledge that students do bring to school?

I expect that a change in our frame of reference would help us to make the school environment more welcoming to Indigenous students, to children for whom English is an additional language, and to students with special needs – and their parents, too. And I expect that appreciating various types of knowledge would lead to greater success because that framing would lead us to a different course of action.

Recognizing and validating a broader range of knowledge conveys the message to learners that what they know and can do is important in school and that they can be proud of what they know and can do. This may make the transition of children from cultures where, although they do not have the expected “school readiness” skills, they possess other important skills such as listening to elders, making observations, and sharing – skills that are also important for successful learning.

As almost every teacher knows, children who believe they are successful are more persistent learners because they recognize that they have already learned things of value. Students’ expectations about their own success also influence learning. Having been successful learners in the past engenders confidence in learning things that are new to them. The children who are ready for school in the conventional sense might learn that the knowledge they possess is not the only knowledge. They might see that there is a broad range of knowledge recognized and valued by the institution.

Just as I came to have a different appreciation of our artwork when it was seen in a new context, recognizing what children know and can do at school entry might prompt us to treat them differently. Seeing and appreciating what they bring would create a more welcoming environment for them and help to increase their success.