Contextual teaching and learning: this is the second installment of our series on Richard Lynch's new directions for High School Career and Technical Education in the 21st Century.

The research on different ways of learning explored in this issue of Techniques was also used by Richard Lynch in his yearlong assignment to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education. That assignment resulted in his paper, New Directions for High School Career and Technical Education in the 21st Century.

According to Lynch, 20 years of research on student learning, motivation and achievement confirm the importance of contextual teaching and learning, so that students will understand the meaning of their experiences and thus the meaning of their educations. Much of this research also validates the applied, student-engaged, hands-on instructional approaches that have historically been used by career and technical educators.

Defining the Context

Contextual teaching is defined by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (Howey, 1998) as teaching that enables learning in which students employ their academic understandings and abilities in a variety of in- and out-of-school contexts to solve simulated or real-world problems, both alone and with others. Using contextual teaching strategies, teachers help students make connections with their roles and responsibilities as family members, citizens, students and workers. Contextual learning is characterized as problem based, self-regulated, occurring in a variety of contexts, including the community and work sites, involving teams of learning groups, and responsive to a host of diverse learners' needs and interests.

Lynch says that this definition of contextual teaching and learning describes the existing practices of many effective teachers, but he also cautions, "far too many teachers continue to use very traditional, talk-and-chalk methods." In fact, the new knowledge about intelligence, brain development, cognition and learning--and the ways in which this relates to student motivation and achievement--pose serious challenges to the way the vast majority of students are still being taught.

Contemporary research studied by Lynch puts student cognition and learning into a relatively new theory of contextual teaching and learning. This new theory says that cognition today is:

* situated in certain physical and social contexts (how a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which he or she learns them, are a fundamental part of what is learned and how that person will transfer the knowledge);

* social, in that interactions with other people are major determinants of what is learned and how that learning takes place; and

* distributed over the individual, other people, and symbolic and physical environments.

Seeing the Relevance

As we learn more about how students think and learn, we also need an ongoing study of ways to motivate them to continue to learn, because lifelong learning will be even more important in a continually evolving technological society. To keep students learning, we must draw from their interests and personal experiences and demonstrate the connections between what they need to learn and how that learning will be used in the real world.

Lynch finds that, to most high school students, the traditional teaching methods involving lecturing, lecturing with overhead or chalkboard, and working or reading at one's desk are boring. As a result, these disengaged students not only do not learn well, but they also have difficulty retaining, and subsequently applying, what they learned in both the short and long term. This contrasts sharply with the results of studies of students who are actively engaged in their learning, apply the content in context, draw on prior knowledge to construct and synthesize new knowledge, and are allowed to demonstrate knowledge acquisition in a variety of ways. These students are demonstrated to retain the knowledge and its practices far into the future.

Lynch also calls for increased use of authentic student assessment strategies as part of the new push for accountability and student assessment in our schools. This will allow students to demonstrate use of their knowledge in real-world and simulated contexts.

In the Workplace

Another factor cited by Lynch is the changing workplace and the change in the specific skills needed to succeed in the 21st century workplace. While technical and technological skills remain important, Lynch says that they must be modified and grounded in employees' abilities to think of them in the context of the big picture--understanding all aspects of the industry. In addition to technical skills, today's employees need "soft skills" that include interpersonal skills and the ability to think and solve workplace problems. Therefore, the business community continues to ask that schools provide an education with more rigor and relevance. These business interests also ask that schools instill the need for lifelong learning in students--both youth and adults.

With regard to career and technical education, Lynch says that the new economy clearly calls for more inclusion of thinking and culture into career and technical education. It should not be just "training" for specific jobs but should be "education" to help the student learn to make decisions, solve problems, find answers and draw on a variety of disciplines and cultural contexts in order to understand the challenges of the workplace. The learner needs to understand the mission of the company as well as his or her own role and responsibilities. Employees need to see the context of the workplace within their own lives.

The Challenge to Change

Richard Lynch understands that it is going to be difficult to change the learning culture in schools, especially since some of that learning is being provided in places other than school classrooms. However, he also believes that career and technical educators are in a position to offer a great deal in this particular arena. After all, career tech teachers have a long history of active--and action-oriented--learning environments in school classrooms, supervised farm projects, clinical internships and cooperative education programs.

Lynch does caution that career and technical education teachers must pay increased attention to the theory and the why, not just the how, in planning programs, curriculum and instruction. He cites the work that has been done on contextual teaching and learning as adding credence to the initiatives to integrate academic education with career and technical education to bring more of the pedagogy historically identified with career tech to academic subjects.

"It is the blending of the academic with the vocational that is probably the most responsive to the knowledge of how high school students learn and remember best," says Lynch.

Richard Lynch is the former director of the School of Leadership and Lifelong Learning and is currently a professor of occupational studies at the University of Georgia. His paper, New Directions for High School Career and Technical Education in the 21st Century, can be found at www.ericacve.org/mp_lynch_01.asp.