Students as Learners and Teachers: Taking Responsibility, Transforming Education, and Redefining Accountability

Abstract

As has been the case throughout the history of education in the United States, the current structures and practices of U.S. schools and colleges are informed by particular ideals regarding the potential of education. Through this comparative descriptive analysis, I argue that a major reason why these ideals have rarely been realized is the way that students are positioned in educational institutions, dialogues, and reform. A preliminary argument for rethinking how we conceptualize student role and responsibility frames my description and comparison of two programs, one that involves secondary students in the preparation of high school teachers and one that involves college students in the professional development of college faculty. I then draw on the perspectives of student participants across these two programs to address a series of educational ideals that span K–12 and college contexts: inspiring lasting learning, celebrating humanity and diversity, and engaging in meaningful assessment. I designed the programs that are the focus of my analysis with the goal of improving teacher preparation and teaching, but as I discuss in this article, they are proving to be promising models for pursuing what may be a more encompassing possibility: fostering in students a sense of and capacity for responsibility in ways that not only address existing educational ideals but that also point to both more transformative and more achievable notions of education and accountability than those currently in place.

Seeking for the unwelcome truths: beyond celebration in inquiry-based teacher professional learning

“…They believe that the longer term survival of taking account of the views of young people is to build the practice into a 'coherent and secure school-wide foundation for the work' (p. 229); in effect to undertake a genuine obligation to it in terms of Shier's (2001) concerns regarding commitment. This view is further supported by the work of Cockburn (2007) and Cook-Sather (2010).…”

What Is and What Can Be: How a Liminal Position Can Change Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

“…But there are elements of the classroom that we are co-responsible for, that we are traveling through together." (See Cook-Sather 2009a, 2010a, and 2010b for expanded discussions of this point. )…”

“…By making students active participants in their learning, including their voices as part of an ongoing discussion of teaching and learning, and ensuring that listening and speaking are the twin responsibilities of all parties (Lodge 2005), it is possible to change the traditionally hierarchical relationships among faculty and students. Affording students opportunities to share "decision-making, implementation of action, and reflection on action" (Holdsworth 2000:358), and affording faculty opportunities to learn "with and from" students in "more holistic ways through processes of co-constructed, collaborative work" (Fielding 2006:311) allows students to engage actively as dialogue partners, as co-conceptualizers and co-constructors of educational experiences and revision (Cook-Sather 2006b, 2006c, 2010a2010b;Rudduck 2007). Living such possibilities in liminal spaces allows faculty and students to imagine enacting them in actual classrooms; when we experience something out of time and place and then bring back what we have experienced, we are better able to change the reality to which we return.…”

Redressing the balance: Inverted hierarchies in the tourism classroom

“…Cook-Sather (2011), for example, shows how students who were working in partnership with faculty staff as consultants developed greater confidence, capacity and agency. According to Cook-Sather (2010), greater responsibility and accountability, by asking more of students, fosters a more transformative notion of education. In addition, benefits for teachers are also noted.…”