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.
