Autonomy

It is autonomy that leads to engagement and its engagement that allows us to learn. However, if we had to pick a model that excelled at stamping out autonomy, we'd do well to pick schools. Autonomy requires control over four key variables: task, technique, team and time. When we have autonomy, we are able to choose what to do (task), how to do it (technique), who to do it with (team), and when to do it (time).

how all too often learning instead remains process-driven and degenerates into schoolwork

The work that characterizes classroom life may have originally been conceived with learning goals in mind, and it may even achieve some learning objectives, but from the standpoint of students, doing schoolwork is what school is about. It is their job, not attaining learning goals....We could find nothing in *children's talk about their classrooms+ ... .to suggest that the children thought of themselves as learners ... .By interpreting learning activities as jobs to be done, students not only concretize them but assimilate them to the rich knowledge structure that surrounds work in industrialized societies. Even young children know something about what it means to have a job, to be a good worker, to take pride in a job well done, and so on. All this knowledge can immediately be brought to bear on schoolwork, making what might otherwise be an incomprehensible enterprise something easy to understand and adjust to. The drawback, however, is that schoolwork rather than learning becomes the object of effort.