The Pedagogy of Confidence by Yvette Jackson

Author:Yvette Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Situating Learning in the Lives of Students

Situating learning in the lives of students engages student participation by facilitating their discovery of relevance and meaning in academic learning. As discussed earlier, it has long been established that engaging anyone in learning requires connecting to that person’s cultural context or frame of reference (Feuerstein et al., 1980, 2006; Vygotsky, 1978). Lave and Wenger (1990) extended this understanding by pointing out that learning is a function of the activity, context, and culture in which it is situated. However, most classroom learning activities that involve abstract knowledge occur out of context, hampering cognition and learning. This lack of contextualizing is an instructional reality for school-dependent students. Most often, the examples and connections they are provided come from the cultural context of the teacher or from a community to which they do not belong (Lave & Wenger, 1990). Like all students, these individuals have vast knowledge from their life experience that is organized into elaborate networks of abstract mental structures (schemata) that represent their understanding of the world. When they must assimilate new conceptions of understanding or schemata that seem to contradict their existing understandings or suppositions, they experience internal conflict, which causes them stress. This stress blocks their comprehension. Situating the new understandings in relation to their life experience enables them to recognize the connections between what is being introduced and what they already know and suppositions they have already formulated, minimizing internal conflict and maximizing comprehension (Lave & Wenger, 1990; SIL International, 1999). Working from the personal cultural context of students engages and heightens their attention because the engagements are perceived as meaningful.

Eric Jensen’s work provides a neuroscience perspective on the importance of contextualizing instruction. PET scans of the brain reveal that what one recognizes as meaningful has a neurobiological correlate. Relevance and meaningfulness are a function of the brain making connections from existing neural sites to sites activated by a new experience. These connections are strengthened by emotions elicited from experience, and the emotions are triggered by the brain’s chemistry (which can actually change the brain’s physical structure). Context is created from prior knowledge or experiences that trigger pattern-making or relationships among neural sites. These relationships, in turn, may be related to the formation or activation of larger neural fields. The larger the neural field, the greater the possibility of connections that will create meaningfulness and relevance (Jensen, 1998, pp. 90–92).

From a cognitive standpoint, a connection from academic experiences or content to what is relevant and meaningful in students’ lives captures their attention by providing the frame of reference from which to build bridges and construct meaning. The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory suggests that students are motivated to learn when curriculum considers the experiences and the issues and problems students are concerned with, as well as their patterns of processing information (NCREL, 1996). Urban school-dependent students have a powerful driving impulse for validation of their cultural frames of reference and intellectual interests. That impulse is connected to their drive for establishing individual and group presence, identity, and meaning (Comer, 1993; Mahiri, 1998).

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