0.3 Self-determination  (Page 4/5)

Another generally effective way to support competence is to respond and give feedback as immediately as possible. Tests and term papers help subsequent learning more if returned, with comments, sooner rather than later. It is important to note that feedback should be substantive and task-specific. It is not enough to write, “Good job! A-” on a student’s paper, although the student would likely be happy to see it. Compare “Nice work!” with “Your use of descriptive language really engages the reader!” or “Try writing out the formula you need for the problem as soon as you read it – this will help ensure you include all of the steps.” Task-specific feedback gives students information about what they did well and what they could improve upon. It keeps the focus on mastery, rather than performance, and guides their future endeavors.

In the same vein, discussions facilitate more learning if you include your own ideas in them, while still encouraging students’ input. Small group and independent activities are more effective if you provide a convenient way for students to consult authoritative sources for guidance when needed, whether the source is you personally, a teaching assistant, a specially selected reading, or even a computer program. In addition, you can sometimes devise tasks that create a feeling of competence because they have a “natural” solution or ending point. Assembling a jigsaw puzzle of the community, for example, has this quality, and so does creating a jigsaw puzzle of the community if the students need a greater challenge.

Supporting the need to relate to others

The main way of support students’ need to relate to others is to arrange activities in which students work together in ways that are mutually supportive, that recognize students’ diversity, and minimize competition among individuals. Having students work together can happen in many ways. You can, for example, deliberately arrange projects that require a variety of talents; some educators call such activities “rich group work” (Cohen, 1994; Cohen, Brody,&Sapon-Shevin, 2004). In studying in small groups about medieval society, for example, one student can contribute his drawing skills, another can contribute his writing skills, and still another can contribute his dramatic skills. The result can be a multi-faceted presentation—written, visual, and oral. The groups needed for rich group work provide for students’ relationships with each other, whether they contain six individuals or only two.

There are other ways to encourage relationships among students. In the jigsaw classroom (Aronson&Patnoe, 1997), for example, students work together in two phases. In the first phase, groups of “experts” work together to find information on a specialized topic. In a second phase the expert groups split up and reform into “generalist” groups containing one representative from each former expert group. In studying the animals of Africa, for example, each expert group might find information about a different particular category of animal or plant; one group might focus on mammal, another on bird, a third on reptiles, and so on. In the second phase of the jigsaw, the generalist groups would pool information from the experts to get a more well-rounded view of the topic. The generalist groups would each have an expert about mammals, for example, but also an expert about birds and about reptiles.