Beyond Involvement

Abstract

With many states adopting new standards and evaluation systems, teachers must adopt effective instructional strategies and assessment methods aligned to the rigor of new standards and assessments. One way to improve student achievement is through supporting student ownership of learning, a core component of formative instructional practices. Teaching students to take an active role in their learning can benefit students by promoting student goal setting, self-assessment, and self-determination. As students become meaningfully engaged in their learning, they gain a better understanding of learning targets, how to collect and document evidence of their learning, and how to evaluate and clarify additional learning needs, leading to the ultimate goal of improving student achievement. This article (a) describes how promoting student ownership benefits students, (b) identifies some evidence-based practices that promote student ownership of learning, and (c) illustrates the important role student ownership plays in formative instructional practices.

Keywords

self-determination assessment IEP process standards tests/testing

Expectations and accountability for student and teacher performance are increasing. With the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards, teachers must address the challenge of improving student achievement at the same time they are adjusting their curriculum, instruction, and classroom assessments. To make this shift successfully, it is more important than ever that teachers are able to (a) deconstruct academic standards into clear learning targets, (b) collect and document evidence of student learning, (c) analyze assessment results and provide students with effective feedback on their performance, and (d) promote student ownership of learning. With all that teachers are tasked with doing, they may overlook the importance of promoting student ownership of learning. However, when teachers take time to empower students by teaching them how to take an active role in their education and providing them opportunities to do so, student engagement contributes to the goal of improving student achievement. This article (a) describes how promoting student ownership can benefit students and (b) identifies evidence-based practices that promote student ownership of learning as part of formative instructional practices.

Student Ownership

The literature is replete with strategies for increasing student participation, involvement, and engagement (e.g., Kern et al., 1998; Test et al., 2004). These terms are often used synonymously and are generally accepted as best practice. Although students can participate, be involved in, and likewise engage in activities in their classrooms, these behaviors do not necessarily support improved student achievement. For example, teachers may observe busy, but off-task, students who ostensibly appear to be actively engaged. Similarly, teachers might count instances of student-to-teacher or student-to-student interactions as a measure of participation, and they may take student preferences and their feedback into account as a means to increase student involvement. Certainly, actively engaged students are a good indication of some very important cultural aspects of the classroom and perhaps of the relevance that the learning holds for its students. Nonetheless, in many of those same classrooms, most of the learning is generally teacher led, where the assessing and evaluating is done formally—not with but to students. For the past two decades, Stiggins (2002) has pointed to the need to shift this instruction-assessment dynamic in ways that directly promote student ownership. In this view, student engagement becomes more meaningful when teachers go beyond assessment of learning and use assessment for learning. Student ownership is then pivotal to a formative system of teaching and learning in classrooms. Formative instructional practices (Pearson & Battelle for Kids, 2012) support a classroom environment where teachers and students are clear about where they are going, where they are, and how to close gaps to accomplish the intended learning targets. Accordingly, teachers who promote student ownership of learning are able to answer the following questions:

How will students know where they are headed over the course of a year, an instructional unit, or a lesson?

How will students set personal goals and track their own progress towards these goals?

How will students learn to receive, recruit, and use feedback?

How will students support each other’s growth?

How will students communicate their goals, progress, strengths, interests, and needs?

The Benefits of Student Ownership

Given the rigorous demands of No Child Left Behind (2002) and other teacher accountability measures, fostering student ownership can be an effective and practical way to support all students in meeting academic and behavioral goals. At this time, when teacher performance is being measured as a function of student performance (Ballou, Sanders, & Wright, 2004), teachers may be reluctant to actively work on increasing student ownership of the learning process. Teachers may fear giving up some of the control of goal setting, progress tracking, and assessment. However, granting students an active role in their learning can increase school completion; teach students valuable skills, like setting and attaining goals; and help students develop independence (Uphold & Hudson, 2012). Additionally, when students have the opportunity to engage in self-assessment, track their own progress, and communicate their learning, the effects on academic performance can be profound (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Stiggins & Chappuis, 2008).

Student ownership in the educational process is also a way to increase self-determination, which is defined as “acting as the primary causal agent in one’s life and making choices and decisions regarding one’s quality of life free from undue external influence or interference” (Wehmeyer, 1996, p. 22). Teaching students to become self-determined individuals is an “ultimate goal of education” (Halloran, 1993, p. 214), providing a strong case for increasing student ownership in setting academic goals, monitoring their progress, and self-assessing their performance.

Self-determination consists of a series of component skills, including choice making, decision making, problem solving, goal setting and attainment, self-observation, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement, self-instruction, self-advocacy and leadership, internal locus of control, positive attributions of efficacy and outcome expectancy, self-awareness, and self-knowledge (Wehmeyer, Sands, Doll, & Palmer, 1997). Reviews of the literature document the positive effect of teaching students with disabilities self-determination skills, including choice making and self-advocacy (Algozzine, Browder, Karvonen, Test, & Wood, 2001) as well as goal setting and self-management (Konrad, Fowler, Walker, Test, & Wood, 2007). Evidence-based practices that promote self-determination and student ownership of learning enable students in the following ways.

Being informed about their learning goals, in terms they can understand, from the very beginning of the teaching and learning process;

Using accurate assessment information to become confident in themselves as learners;

Receiving frequent feedback that provides them with specific insights as to how to improve;

Engaging in regular self-assessment, with standards held constant, so that they can watch themselves grow over time; and

Actively communicating with their teacher and their families about their achievement status and improvement.

Evidence-Based Practices That Promote Student Ownership

Formative instructional practices refers to the process in which teachers use student assessment results to make instructional decisions, changing and modifying the instruction based on the students’ needs (Pearson & Battelle for Kids, 2012). Teachers can enhance their effectiveness by implementing these formative instructional practices, which are characterized by developing and communicating clear learning targets, collecting and documenting evidence of student growth, providing feedback, and promoting student ownership of learning (Pearson & Battelle for Kids, 2012).

There are many evidence-based practices for promoting student ownership of learning across all the other components of formative instructional practices (Pearson & Battelle for Kids, 2012). These strategies require students to take roles that move their learning forward by recognizing and developing clear learning targets and behavioral objectives, collecting evidence of their learning, monitoring their own progress, and giving and seeking feedback. Although the following section organizes these strategies by aligning them to formative instructional practices (i.e., establishing clear learning targets, collecting and documenting evidence of student learning, and providing effective feedback), it should be noted that the reciprocal nature of formative instructional practices makes it difficult to isolate many of the strategies within just one component. See Figure 1 for an overview of the strategies; the bidirectional arrows in this diagram illustrate the interconnectedness of components of formative instructional practices and the reciprocal nature of the process.

Figure 1.

Strategies to support student ownership of formative instructional practices.

Being Clear About the Learning Expectations

In order for students to have ownership of their learning, they must have an understanding of the intended learning. Developing clear learning targets is essential to student ownership because learning targets provide direction about expectations for performance. However, teachers must go beyond developing the targets. The targets must be communicated clearly to students. For students with disabilities, it is particularly important to share targets in ways that make them concrete and accessible. To do this, teachers should write targets in student-friendly language (e.g., “I can” statements), discuss the targets with students using vocabulary that is at the appropriate level for the students, share models of student work that demonstrates mastery of the learning, visually display the targets in the classroom, and frequently and explicitly reference the targets throughout instruction. For students with disabilities who have additional targets to master, teachers should familiarize them with their individualized education programs (IEPs) and help students develop “I will” or “I can” statements related to their IEP goals and objectives.

Clear learning targets are an effective tool for building student ownership of learning with students of all ages, even early elementary students. Figure 2 shows a chart used with first-grade math students to focus their learning on problem solving. The teacher can post a large classroom version of this graphic to track class progress through the foundational, mastery, and more advanced learning. Students can also use an individual version to track their personal growth, coloring each section of the ice cream cone as they meet each learning target. A chart such as this helps to make learning clear to students, while also encouraging them to take ownership of and track their learning.

Figure 2.

Sample mastery tracker. Image used with permission from the Ohio Department of Education.

Many students have difficulty visualizing how isolated skills may relate to one another, so the creation of a visual display of classwide learning targets can make this connection more explicit. Students gain more from a lesson when the information is structured in a manner that helps them make connections between previous learning, the current lesson, and future learning (Brophy & Good, 1986). Posting of these targets in a prominent location in the classroom helps keep the targets “front and center” for students.

In addition, teachers can promote student ownership by teaching students to set goals. Goal setting begins with knowledge of the learning targets. Clearly defined learning targets act as a point of reference for students to make comparisons about their current level of academic performance and where they need to be. When students understand the learning targets, they can begin to self-evaluate their performance and identify their long- and short-term goals. Goal setting involves self-assessment of strengths and needs based on current performance, decision making about academic priorities, and instruction on how to define an objective and measurable goal (Agran, King-Sears, Wehmeyer, & Copeland, 2003). Involving students in the process of goal setting can increase student awareness of learning targets and current skills, promote accurate self-assessment, teach decision making, and facilitate self-evaluation of achievement and growth (Agran et al., 2003). Teachers benefit from student goal setting in multiple ways, including students becoming more likely to accurately collect and document evidence of learning, making them better able to accurately self-report their progress toward the learning objectives.

Student Collection of Evidence

Teaching students to track their progress is another way to invest students in their education. When students collect evidence of their learning, they experience the ownership and excitement of monitoring their achievement and growth. When student progress stalls or falls short of the targets, students can compare their levels of performance with the learning targets and reflect on what went wrong, evaluate their learning strategies, and/or seek additional feedback to help move learning forward.

Self-Management Strategies

Self-management interventions focus on teaching students to be more aware of academic and behavioral expectations, and strategies to meet those expectations (Kern, Ringdahl, & Hilt, 2001). Strategies may include accurately observing their own behavior, setting appropriate goals, and monitoring and evaluating their progress toward those goals. Students benefit from these interventions because they are able to more accurately assess and report their current levels of performance and communicate their strengths and needs in relation to their progress and goals.

Self-monitoring

Goal setting can be used to transition into self-monitoring interventions, further promoting student ownership and shared responsibility for collecting and documenting evidence. Self-monitoring involves teaching students to select a behavior to self-monitor, identify occurrences and nonoccurrences of behavior, and accurately record instances of occurrence of correct responses and incorrect responses (Lane, Menzies, Bruhn, & Crnobori, 2011). While often discussed in relation to behavior, self-monitoring can also be applied to developing academic skills. Self-monitoring typically involves the student completing a self-monitoring form over time, thus aiding the teacher in the collection of evidence of student growth.

After the upfront investment of teaching students to set goals and monitor their progress, goal setting and self-monitoring are efficient strategies for promoting student ownership because they decrease the time teachers need to devote to progress monitoring. Thus, by advancing student ownership of learning, teachers can increase the ease of using formative instructional practices.

Self-graphing

In addition to having students set learning goals, students can also be taught to visually analyze their growth through self-graphing interventions. Self-graphing teaches students to continuously monitor their performance on operationally defined behaviors, plot the information gathered on a graph, and visually analyze performance by comparing past levels of performance with current levels of performance (Stotz, Itoi, Konrad, & Alber-Morgan, 2008). This visual representation of student progress not only allows for students to increase their self-awareness and ownership of their learning but also enhances instructional efficiency by allowing teachers to more quickly make instructional decisions through analyzing the graphed data (DiGangi, Maag, & Rutherford, 1991).

Giving and Getting Feedback

In order for students to evaluate their progress, it is essential for them to receive feedback. Students must learn to analyze the results of their assessments in order to develop and understand feedback about their performance on their own. When students compare the results of their assessments with the learning targets, or with previous levels of performance, students can develop feedback from the assessment to identify areas of need. Students must also learn to recruit, receive, and use feedback from others to improve their performance.

Teaching Students to Recruit Feedback

Every day, teachers instruct classrooms full of students with varying needs and abilities. In these environments, teachers often spend significant time addressing behavior issues and disruptions within the classroom (Alber & Heward, 2000). Unfortunately, well-behaved and quiet students may not receive as much instruction and/or attention as their disruptive peers; this problem can be overcome by teaching students to take ownership of their learning by self-recruiting feedback.

According to Alber and Heward (2000), to teach students to self-recruit feedback, skills in need of feedback should be identified. These skills can be academic or behavioral and should be based on the needs of the student. Next, students must be taught to self-assess their performance to identify areas of need. For example, a student who is a fluent writer may have a great ability to write quickly but may need to develop skills for editing his or her work. Once the student has increased his or her self-awareness, teachers must provide instruction about how to recruit feedback appropriately and how often it is appropriate to seek feedback. These expectations will vary greatly depending on the type of classroom and learning expectations. For instance, a student may learn to raise his or her hand when his or her work is completed and ask the teacher to review it. The teacher might suggest the student allow at least two other students to ask a question or get their work checked before requesting feedback again. In order to make these lessons more effective, teachers should model and role-play this process to ensure students are given concrete examples of how to recruit feedback and thus will be more likely to apply these skills to the actual situation (Alber & Heward, 2000).

Teaching Students to Act Upon Feedback

Regardless of their age or ability, students need teachers to explicitly prepare them to respond to feedback. Indeed, students’ effective use of feedback is directly related the teacher’s effective use of feedback. Teachers must first be clear about the purpose of feedback, how to deliver it, and how they want students to respond to the feedback. Teachers who model feedback that is related to the learning targets, is nonjudgmental, and is explicitly focused on how students can help close gaps in their learning enable students to effectively act upon that feedback (Brookhart, 2008). As such, feedback is effective when students know what to do next and how to do it better. It is ineffective when it fails to affect the likelihood of future success for the student and when it results in the avoidance of future feedback. Teachers further students’ abilities to act on feedback when they routinely provide students with opportunities to give, recruit, and respond to peer feedback and when those opportunities are guided by the same set of principles teachers use. Figure 3 provides a set of classroom guidelines for the use of feedback adapted from work of Wiggins (2012) and Boud (1991).

Figure 3.

Classroom guidelines for giving and getting peer feedback (Boud, 1991; Wiggins, 2012).

Teaching Students How to Use Collaborative Time in Class to Receive, Reflect on, and Use Feedback

Teachers can design lessons that allow students to respond to feedback in collaborative groups. Teachers who analyze student work and intentionally organize student learning groups based on their students’ patterns of response and respective feedback encourage peers to work together and use feedback to produce better work. Teachers can briefly conference with each group to make sure the feedback is clear and actionable and then permit the group to respond to the next assignment using the feedback as a guide (Brookhart, 2008). Sometimes students will be asked to redo or correct their work before moving forward, but what is most important is that students are able to serve as a resource to themselves and others to progress toward the learning targets. Students should be provided the opportunity to self-assess their ability to move their learning forward—information that offers teachers an opportunity to refine the feedback they provide.

Peer tutoring

Stiggins (2002) pointed out that when teachers clearly define and communicate learning targets, students understand the expectations for academic performance and can begin to evaluate their own work and the work of peers. Peer tutoring is one way to improve student engagement and academic achievement. This strategy can be used to improve the quality of student work through peer instruction and feedback, resulting in higher-quality products. Peer tutoring involves preparing students to effectively instruct other students through presenting information and providing corrective feedback (Simmons, Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, & Hodge, 1995). Through this process, students take specific roles as the tutor or tutee. Peer tutoring has been found to be mutually beneficial to both the tutor and the tutee when proper training is provided (Hattie, 2009; Topping, 2005). Following training, the tutor provides targeted instruction to the tutee that is based upon on simple tasks, such as fluency drills, as well as developing more complex, critical thinking skills (Topping, 2005).

This strategy can increase the efficiency of instruction because it increases the number of opportunities for students to actively respond, provides additional opportunities to practice skills, increases time on task, increases feedback, and incorporates ongoing progress monitoring (Simmons et al., 1995). Because all students are occupied during peer tutoring, the teacher can circulate around the classroom, monitoring the tutoring sessions, ensuring students are on task, and providing feedback and clarification on questions that arise. Beyond the academic benefits, not only has peer tutoring been found to be a highly cost-efficient strategy, but also, when tutors are effectively trained, research has found that the time used to train the tutors does not represent a decrease in instructional time, due to the increased amount of engaged student time (Topping, 2005).

Fortunately, teachers who are interested in using peer tutoring can take advantage of readily available training resources and curricula. For example, Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) was developed to help provide strategies for peer tutoring in mathematics and reading. PALS provides a 1-day training, teacher and student materials, and instructional DVDs to help teachers use these interventions in their classroom (http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/pals/about.html).

Self-evaluation

Self-evaluation, also referred to as self-assessment, teaches students to compare their performance with a previous level or desired level of performance (Kern et al., 2001). A very straightforward way to introduce students to self-evaluation is through teaching students to use a provided checklist of assignment expectations. Students use the checklist to determine whether their performance meets the learning expectations.

Another approach is to use rubrics to provide more detailed information for self-evaluation. Rubrics outline the expectations for learning, often for a specific assignment or skill, breaking the task into subcomponents and describing above-average performance, average performance, and below-average performance (Archer & Hughes, 2011). Rubrics can be used to set clear expectations for student work and then allow for students to self-evaluate the quality of their work or, additionally, to evaluate the work of peers. By teaching students to utilize rubrics and assess one another’s work, teachers can increase the overall quality of work before it is initially turned in to the teacher (Archer, & Hughes, 2011). This strategy can be embedded as part of the classroom routine, which in turn may reduce the amount of time the teacher spends providing formative and summative feedback.

Public posting of progress

As the class demonstrates mastery of various learning targets, students can record and display performance data to illustrate progression within the curriculum. This type of feedback provides valuable information to the teacher and students relating to the pacing of the lessons and curriculum. Cumulative public posting can serve as a prompt for group discussions, which can ultimately increase retention of the previously learned material. This visual display can also remind teachers and students to engage in intermittent celebrations upon the achievement of academic milestones throughout the school year. Finally, and most importantly, prominent posting of targets mastered within a learning progression (i.e., the path toward the standard) helps students see what comes next in their learning. Ownership of learning depends on the learner’s ability to see where he or she is in relation to where he or she is going (Chappuis, 2009).

When teachers use public posting, it is important that they be aware of privacy issues associated with these practices. The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act 1974 requires schools to take steps to ensure the confidentiality of student information. Teachers can protect student information by removing names, grades, or raw scores from student information that is posted. For instance, teachers can assign each student a number, so students are able to see their own publicly posted data but not each other’s. Students can also publicly post whether they have met goals without indicating what the specific goals are. This allows teachers to individualize goals while maintaining a classwide system for posting progress.

Student Ownership in Conferences

Meeting with students on a regular basis is one way to promote student ownership of learning. These meetings may be teacher-student meetings that take place within the classroom or outside of the classroom as parent-teacher-student conferences. Either way, in order to promote student ownership of the process, teachers should provide students with explicit preparation for upcoming conferences. Ideally, teachers should help students to (a) be aware of their learning targets, (b) get involved in the collection of their own performance data, and (c) accept and act on feedback. Additionally, in order for conferences to be most meaningful, students must feel as though they have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation (Pearson & Battelle for Kids, 2012). Teachers should create an environment where they communicate with the students, rather than talking at the students. Students benefit when teachers foster strong teacher-student relationships that invite a collaborative culture (Hattie, 2009). In order to do this, teachers must establish a culture where student input is valued. For example, asking for input on and giving students choices about assignments, rules, or rewards helps students understand that their input is valued, which sets the stage for successful student ownership in conferences.

Student Ownership in the IEP Process

For students with disabilities, the IEP process provides another opportunity for practicing ownership of learning. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) mandated that students be included in their IEP meetings when appropriate, an important step toward building ownership. However, allowing students to be physically present is insufficient. Rather, teachers can promote ownership by helping students prepare for being active participants in their conferences (Peters, 1990). There are a variety of ways to prepare students. For instance, teachers can interview students about their future goals, teach students to communicate their opinions regarding career development (Benitez, Lattimore, & Wehmeyer, 2005), or teach students to write paragraphs describing their strengths and needs (Konrad & Test, 2007). There are many resources and curricula to assist teachers in preparing students to become actively engaged in the IEP process. See Konrad (2008) for practical suggestions for involving students across the entire IEP process, from planning to meeting to implementing. Although research has focused on the involvement of students in IEP conferences, teachers can generalize Konrad’s suggestions and adapt them to meet the needs of all students.

Putting Student Ownership Into Action

Student ownership of learning is the underlying goal of formative instructional practices. The intentional use of these practices helps teachers and students to focus on the right skills and content, collect accurate evidence of student learning, and provide effective feedback. Classroom transformation will only occur when teachers begin to shift from teacher-focused to student-focused classroom environments. Walking into a classroom where this shift has happened may be evidenced by any of the following:

Learning targets, written in student-friendly language posted in the classroom

Student goals (individual and classwide) and progress charts posted around the room

Students actively engaged in lessons that are clearly focused on the learning targets

Students self-assessing their work using rubrics, checklists, and self-monitoring forms

Students giving each other effective feedback and serving as resources to each other

Students recruiting feedback from teachers and peers

Teachers sharing examples of strong student work so that students are clear about what quality work looks like

Students who are becoming self-reliant learners by knowing what they need to do next to advance their learning

In classrooms like this one, students know where they are going, where they are, and how to close the gap.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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