Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide.

Educators are painfully well acquainted with the phenomenon known as “burnout.” Some days it seems that the bulbs have gone out in most faculty lounges and administration buildings. But what if, hypothetically speaking, this syndrome also affected students? How would they talk and act? Teachers around the country to whom I have put this question immediately suggest such symptoms as disengagement and apathy – or, conversely, thoughtlessness and aggression. Either tuning out or acting out might signal that a student was burning out. In both cases, he or she would presumably just go through the motions of learning, handing in uninspired work and counting the minutes or days until freedom.

[1]  R. Ryan,et al.  PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Origins and Pawns in the Classroom: Self-Report and Projective Assessments of Individual Differences in Children's Perceptions , 1986 .

[2]  Robert Sommer,et al.  Experience and Education. , 1974 .

[3]  C. Kamii.  Toward Autonomy: The Importance of Critical Thinking and Choice Making. , 1991 .

[4]  John A. Davis.  For Your Own Good. Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence , 1984 .

[5]  Paul Cobb,et al.  Young Children’s Emotional Acts While Engaged in Mathematical Problem Solving , 1989 .

[6]  Robert G. Rainey.  The effects of directed versus non‐directed laboratory work on high school chemistry achievement , 1965 .

[7]  A. Kohn.  Caring Kids: The Role of the School. , 1991 .

[8]  A. Lund,et al.  Effects of decisional control and work orientation on persistence in preventive health behavior. , 1990, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[9]  E. Deci,et al.  On the Importance of Self-Determination for Intrinsically-Motivated Behavior , 1978 .

[10]  Shelley E. Taylor.  Positive illusions: Creative self-deception and the healthy mind. , 1989 .

[11]  Ellen J. Langer,et al.  Long-term effects of a control-relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged. , 1977 .

[12]  Richard deCharms,et al.  Personal Causation Training in the Schools1 , 1972 .

[13]  Lella Gandini,et al.  The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education , 1993 .

[14]  Jean-Louis Derquet,et al.  Goodlad (John I.) - A Place called school : prospects for the future , 1984 .

[15]  Margaret C. Wang,et al.  An Investigation of Children’s Concept of Self-Responsibility For Their School Learning , 1974 .

[16]  Thomas Lickona,et al.  Educating for Character. How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility. , 1991 .

[17]  K. Punch,et al.  Teachers’ Psychological Distress: the ameliorating effects of control over the work environment , 1992 .

[18]  C. E. Silberman.  Crisis In The Classroom, The Remaking of American Education , 1970 .

[19]  N. Noddings.  The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education , 1992 .

[20]  S. Sharan,et al.  Expanding cooperative learning through group investigation , 1992 .

[21]  J. Beane.  Affect in the Curriculum: Toward Democracy, Dignity, and Diversity , 1990 .

[22]  J. Condry.  Enemies of exploration: Self-initiated versus other-initiated learning. , 1977 .

[23]  S. Thompson.  Will it hurt less if i can control it? A complex answer to a simple question. , 1981 .

[24]  Paul Cobb,et al.  Small-group interactions as a source of learning opportunities in second-grade mathematics. , 1991 .

[25]  M. Barrett,et al.  Helplessness deficits in students: The role of motivational orientation , 1992 .