From School Choice to Student Voice.

By attending to students' existing knowledge and interests, educators will move from mass marketing to a niche approach

On most major interstate highways across America one can find an exit that leads conveniently to a McDonald's, Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box or a host of other fast-food restaurants. These businesses are frequently situated in close proximity to each other. They provide the hungry traveler with a set of choices.

In Boston, 1,500 students attend Boston Renaissance Charter School. They come from different neighborhoods to attend this downtown school. The parents and children have chosen the Boston Renaissance Charter School from a marketplace of public schools in Boston.

Inside a school in Tucson, Ariz., older students are interviewing younger students to identify their interests. Items such as animals, bicycles, airplanes, machines, low-riders, flowers, cooking, dancing and music emerge as principal interests. The teachers will use this information to discuss these interests with all of the children as they determine how to pursue them as choices in their classroom work. The children, who are 1st graders, will select an area of interest to explore further.

Each of these scenarios involves a touchstone idea of American culture--personal choice. It is evident in the marketplace and in the discussion of school reform. However, it is infrequently embedded within classroom work for ensuring student engagement and learning.

Mass and Niche Markets 

Like choice in the marketplace of fast-food eateries or other consumer items, much attention is placed on providing parents of school-age children with choices of schools and academic programs. The advocates for these kinds of choices build upon the accepted importance of choice among citizens in the United States and its success in our open economy. The rationale is that choice will improve parent and student satisfaction with and commitment to a school.

Individuals entering a McDonald's restaurant are not likely to ask for a Jumbo Jack or a Whopper. They went to McDonald's and ordered what is on the menu, not expecting items from a Jack in the Box or Burger King menu. Fast-food restaurants attract those who want what they offer and face little conflict over what is on the menu.

Supporters of school choice believe that parents and, therefore, their children should be able to choose schools that have a particular focus or have student accomplishments that they desire. This is not unlike choosing between a McDonald's and Jack in the Box because one favors the type of food, the quality and/or the price of the food.

Once inside, McDonald's patrons have other choices. They may choose a Quarter Pounder or a Big Mac. Lettuce, tomatoes, onions and special sauces are also available to add to the menu item selected.

Applying this idea to schools, parents and their children often have choice in the programs that are offered within a particular school. Program menu choices may include programs that focus on the arts or the sciences, or students may choose a program that focuses on specific careers, such as health care or technology. These choices grow out of mass-market principles. Goods and services can be made available and marketed to a mass of individuals and to their average interests. Parents may choose between schools and programs offered within a school.

Mass markets, however, differ from niche markets. Different restaurants and boutique shops exist on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Calif., than in the strip malls of less-affluent communities in Los Angeles. A number of stores and restaurants are unique to Rodeo Drive and are part of a niche market, which focuses on the particular tastes and interests of a relatively small group of people.

On the other hand, McDonald's and Jack in the Box are part of a mass market. Fast-food restaurants do not flourish in or seek customers from Beverly Hills' most affluent neighborhoods. This does not mean that affluent Beverly Hills customers do not eat at McDonald's or Jack in the Box. It only means that the mass-market idea calls for menus to appeal to the masses of individuals who will come from the segments of the society that have the largest numbers of individuals.

Mass Production

The goods that are marketed in this mass-market system also must be mass produced. This is possible because mass production relies on standardization in all aspects of the system. The inputs, or "throughputs" as they are often called, and the outputs of the system are uniform.

The raw materials used in any mass production system have to be homogeneous. Little to no variation can exist in their essential features each time the raw materials enter the production system. The raw materials used in the making of a McDonald's hamburger, whether in east Los Angeles or east Boston, have the same amount of fat, lean meat and flavoring. They are the same weight, thickness and shape.

With the sameness of the inputs in place, it is now possible to have standardization in the mass production of burgers or any other goods. Burgers are grilled in the same fashion, at the same temperature, for the same amount of time. The manner in which the sauce, lettuce and tomato are placed on the buns is the same throughout the system, regardless of the locale.

This standardization of throughput results in a great deal of consistency in the quality of the product or output and gives confidence to those in the mass marketplace that a McDonald's burger will look, taste and feel the same wherever it is sold.

A niche market conversely looks inside the masses to address more individual and specialized choices. The burgers in the neighborhood grill in Beverly Hills are likely to be different than those served in a neighborhood McDonald's. Customers may choose how they would like the burger cooked and choose from a variety of sauces, such as teriyaki or mushroom sauce or any number of specialty items specific to that particular grill or chef.

In addition, the niche restaurant also may take specific customer requests that may not be on the menu. Niche markets look to satisfy customers' uniqueness rather than their broad commonalities. They seek to offer products and/or services that address individuality, another cornerstone in our American ideals that is often ignored in school reform efforts.

Marketing Education

The principles of mass marketing and mass production are problematic as guides for the development of educational systems and learning environments. The purposes and goals in schooling differ markedly from the goals in mass marketing. Mass markets do not seek the individual interests of each person in the market. Rather they seek the average interests in order to fulfill mass interest.

In addition, mass production systems require uniformity in the raw material used (inputs), the process of production (throughput) and the product (output). Children and adults are not and cannot be made uniform in their thoughts, feelings or intentions. They are heterogeneous. They are variable. Anyone who has been around a child will attest to the fact that they are willful and volitional. Human beings differ inevitably and wonderfully from each other.

Such variability, not uniformity, should be embraced as a key principle in the development of our public education system. Ideas of choice in education have been misplaced as they grow out of the principles of mass marketing. The choice in schools is akin to the choice between McDonald's and Taco Bell.

A more congruent fit with research recently published by the National Research Council on human development and cognition would be to recognize every child as a niche, not one of a mass of individuals who comprise a market based on average interests and knowledge. Rather than offering broad choices of schools or programs for children and parents, we argue that school reform should be focused on the idea that children's individual choice has to be embraced every day within schools and classrooms as a central feature of a customized and personalized education.

Student Knowledge

All children have assets and knowledge. Their personal interests have a great influence on their motivation to learn. These statements are based in a growing body of research evidence and theory about human cognition and development.

Motivation and interest provide the fuel for the effort and energy that are required to learn. The facets of interest involve children's curiosity, challenge and problem solving. Children are curious about their world. They seek challenges in their world and solutions to problems that they confront daily.

Those features of the world about which children are curious or which challenge them are rooted in their prior knowledge and experiences. Children have an abundance of prior knowledge before they enter school and before they begin any formal learning activity in school. Their prior knowledge and interests originate in their neighborhoods and families and other out-of-school experiences.

These ideas were reaffirmed in classroom practices in a project that we were involved in from 1990 until 1998 in Tucson, Ariz. Our work tried to create more powerful classroom experiences for children by focusing on what students and teachers did in classrooms based on student choice and other ideas about learning and motivation.

The schools were in the economically poorest neighborhoods of Tucson. Teacher struggles over giving up the ideas of standardization arose. Understandings about the importance of students' interests and the unique and abundant knowledge they brought with them to school had to be understood and acted upon.

During the early days of discussing these ideas in the schools, we clearly recall the disbelief the adults had about children having knowledge and interests that could be important learning opportunities. During our dialogue sessions, teachers regularly made statements about what little knowledge the children had. Teachers concluded it was the children's lack of knowing that explained the failure and underachievement that seemed to prevail in many, if not all, of the classrooms.

Amazing Discoveries 

These views were encouraged by the prevailing fact that the children did not fit the standard model of what students were to know when they came to school. When the students did not appear to know these particular things and did not have interest in schoolwork, it was presumed they knew little to nothing and had few to no interest in what the teachers deemed important.

One particular dialogue focused on the inadequacies of the children and what little they seemed to know. As the discussion went on, we suggested that during the following week teachers find out if children knew anything about the topic that they would be focusing on in their classrooms before they started teaching what the textbooks and their heads told them to tell students. Most agreed to do this. We reminded them that they had a theory about the children and their knowledge--that the children knew little. The efforts of the teachers during the coming week were to provide data that confirmed or disconfirmed this theory.

When we returned to our dialogue the next week, teachers brought in long lists of what students knew. They were amazed that they had these long lists. The teachers who worked with the 1st and 2nd graders were going to start a unit on plants. The teachers asked students what they knew about plants, anticipating limited responses, especially from children who lived in the desert. Instead, students provided many details about their knowledge about plants.

Teachers were most amazed by the fact that students already knew the three points that the textbook wanted them to emphasize and for which the teachers had developed plans to present during the week--that plants require soil, water and sun to grow. But students knew those points and more. Students knew that the seedpods of plants with which they were familiar smelled like the plant it was going to develop into, assuming it had sun, water and soil.

Teachers now had to confront a more confirmed theory that students do have prior knowledge and that this conflicted with their long-held view that these students knew little. They also had to address the fact that spending time on the points in the text no longer was necessary. This idea about the relevance and importance of prior knowledge is now strongly embedded in the literature about human learning and cognition, according to the National Research Council.

Rather than focusing on what the text had decided was important for children to learn at that age level, perhaps there were other ideas the children wanted to further explore, thus expanding the knowledge they had. Instead of offering them a McDonald's burger (the textbook information), which is made for a mass market with common interests, perhaps we would further children's knowledge by offering them the opportunity to use what they already know and create their own unique burger.

However, merely focusing on students' prior knowledge is not enough. In a niche market, we then search further for what the customer wants. In this case, the teachers sought what the children wanted to know about plants. The children of one classroom voiced an interest in vegetables. You can imagine what might be the typical classroom scenario. The teacher, excited that she has tapped into a student interest, selects vegetables from the grocery store and brings them to the classroom. He or she then may have children engage in a naming and categorizing activity. This would all be done in the name of providing basic knowledge to students about vegetables. The naming would signal to the teacher that the students had learned and knew about vegetables.

The teacher whose children were interested in vegetables took the idea of student interest beyond only discussing vegetables. She took the children on what she called a "mini-field trip" in the school neighborhood. She used the context in which children likely learned about vegetables--their neighborhood. There she and the students explored what they saw and what they knew about vegetables and plants.

The teacher was stunned by her discovery. Here is what she wrote about this experience: "I was amazed at how much learning could happen from a vacant lot and children's interpretations of this lot, which represented the real world to them. Everything they said was in relation to their prior knowledge. I was amazed at all the higher-order thinking skills kicking in during the experience. A worksheet couldn't have shown me as much."

A Customized Classroom

The idea of a walk in the neighborhood may be fun and interesting, but mass marketing and production ideas raise questions about learning in this kind of situation. What standard output or outcome will students have after an experience like the one we have just described? What will students have achieved and learned that will be like what every other student in every other classroom in Tucson or throughout the United States has learned and achieved?

Standard inputs, throughputs and outputs have no place in promoting customized activities and learning. As the late Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon stated: "... the meaning of 'knowing' [learning] has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it. More than ever, the sheer magnitude of human knowledge renders its coverage by education an impossibility. Rather the goal of education is better conceived as helping students develop the intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to acquire knowledge that allows people to think productively about history, science, technology, social phenomena, mathematics, and the arts."

The children involved in the example above had learned and therefore knew about the features of plants and other details of vegetables that they were describing. They had learned these particular features of plants and their world in their everyday lives in interactions with adults and children with whom they live and play.

This out-of-school learning and knowledge is significant in light of the fact that the textbook to which we referred earlier asked children to know and therefore learn only three facts about plants: plants need sun, water and soil to grow. According to the textbook, these facts were to be learned by all of the students in ways prescribed by the textbook.

The children, however, already knew a lot of different features about plants. Children can know and learn much more from their total set of experiences in and out of school. Focusing on a narrow set of particular curriculum facts to be learned in school may be contributing to children's underachievement.

From our example, it is also evident why Simon, an American economist, suggests that inert facts are less important than are the tools and strategies of learning and knowing. The children came to know these things because they used their minds' tools and their own strategies of figuring out how things work in the world with the support of significant others.

A niche market embraces the unique knowledge of individuals and their interests and promotes various ways for children to know what they know and learn more about what they already know.

Everyday Occurences

The reliance on borrowed ideas from mass production and manufacturing systems has guided public education and its reform for too long. Under these standardized conditions, wherever a student goes to school, the expectation is that each and every student will achieve the very same things that any other student achieves and learns. Such a belief and an assumption make the development of niche and customized classroom work difficult, if not impossible.

Providing school or program choice does not guarantee that within the classrooms of the school there will be real student choices or other features of schoolwork that will compel and enhance student learning. Student choices, interests and knowledge must be taken seriously for students to be fully engaged and to learn. The assumptions and guiding beliefs of a mass market inhibit attention to the kind of student choice that we have in mind and that is likely to encourage student learning.

Mass markets like McDonald's and Jack in the Box provide goods and services, that can be marketed to the average interests of the mass of individuals in our society. Our desire is that all child-ren develop essential understandings, tools and strategies based on their knowledge and interests. It is essential to move beyond the narrow and standard facts that have long held sway in schools and that Simon suggests have to be overshadowed by more powerful tools and strategies of learning and knowing.

The choices that children and their parents currently have and are being advocated in the debate on school choice focus on which particular pieces of information they will remember and repeat in which schools. We have argued that significant choice has to be based in everyday opportunities for children to pursue their interests and prior knowledge in engaging and meaningful ways. What is most important about our attention to the idea of student choice is that it will have to become part of the warp and woof of classroom life for all students everyday.

Paul Heckman is director of the Center for Educational Renewal at the University of Washington, 313 Miller Hall, Box 353600, Seattle, Wash. 98195. E-mail: [e-mail]. Viki Montera is the former principal of SMASH, a public alternative school in Santa Monica, Calif.

Resources

Paul Heckman recommends the following books, reports and articles relating to the subject he discusses here.

The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen Langer, Addison-Wesley Longman, Reading, Mass.

"Bridging the Gap: A Case Study of the Home-School-Community Relationship at Ochoa Elementary School" by Viki Montera, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson.

"Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms" by Luis Moll and others, Theory into Practice, Spring 1992.

"Planting Seeds: Understanding Through Investigation" by Paul Heckman and others, Educational Leadership, February 1994.

National Research Council has produced three recent reports relevant to this discussion: "Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers"; "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School"; and "From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development." The reports can be ordered from the National Academy Press at 800-624-6242 or www.nap.edu.