Democracy

Assumptions: Students enjoy being in democratic classrooms because their voices are heard

What do democratic classrooms look like and are they effective?

Democracy in the classroom is a term that had been thrown around throughout our four years in the Education program. I have heard many people say that they want to have a democratic classroom and hope that by doing this students will be more apt to participate in class discussion and take pride in their classes. Despite hearing people express their desire for democratic classrooms we have yet to actually see one in action, understand how they work, and determine if they help avoid student apathy.

After researching what exactly democratic classrooms are, I discovered numerous parallels and connections to inquiry based education.The National Service-Learning Clearhouse states, “Democratic classrooms are those in which the curriculum actively engages students in collaborative inquiry decision making.” It also states that, “Students choose their daily activities.” An example of this is, students could be given a choice of World War II themes to study. Their goal is to learn about this theme in a sufficient amount of time. For one week they get to decide how to want to learn the material each day. They might choose to read a novel, do internet research, interview members in the community and after they have learned about this theme, they can choose how they would like to present this information. They may choose to show clips from an interview with a community member, family member or teacher and describe how this interview supports the theme or topic they were learning about.

When it comes to using a democratic classroom for learning the goal is to go beyond the idea of an inquiry based project once a semester. In every day content, students should be given flexibility with the strategies they choose to learn the content. The teacher can give students the option to learn content by reading a novel or analyzing advertising from a certain time for example. This, of course, will need to adapt and change according to which outcome is being taught and the resources available. Using these strategies provides teachers the opportunity to spend more time reviewing their students work, providing meaningful feedback or followup questions to further their learning. We have certainly learning during internship that teachers spend the bulk of their time planning lessons and thus, do not always have ample time to thoroughly evaluate students’ work.

Teachers may need to restrict the topics or themes the students can research to meet curricular outcomes. In current classrooms many students struggle with not having strict assignment instructions which they are required to follow. The amount of control students have will vary depending on the students and how well teachers are able to run a democratic classroom. Introducing this to a class with be a profound change for them so it will need to be something that is practiced and developed over the course of a semester or year.

Similar to society at large, each person in a democratic classroom has a role to fill which will provide something to the community. The National Service-Learning Clearhouse gives these five guidelines for democratic classrooms.

• Students and teachers work together to make students’ learning a contribution to their community;

• Students demonstrate their learning in public settings and receive public feedback;

• Students have escalating degrees of choice, both as individuals and as groups, within the parameters provided by the teacher;

• Students actively work with problems, ideas, materials, and people as they learn skills and content; and

• Students are held to high degrees of excellence in both their academic objectives learned and their contributions made to a larger community.

We can understand the effectiveness of a democratic classroom when we compare it to society. In society leaders who employ authoritarian leadership traits do not have the same quality of a country as those leaders who share their power with the people. Democratic leaders instill basic expectations for their citizens and create laws and policies coherent and in the best interests of their citizens in mind. On the other hand, authoritative leaders promote their own power and create strict rules in which each citizens is expected to follow regardless of what is in their best interests. Teaching Tolerance states, “research indicates that a democratic approach is more effective, both for classroom management and student learning.”

In the classroom, an authoritative classroom would be one in which the teacher establishes strict rules and is constantly looking for classroom criminals. These rules are grounded on the premises of absolute authority and were created by the teacher and not in conjunction with the students. In a democratic classroom the teacher works in conjunction with the students to create a specific set of guidelines and consequences understood by both parties. This means the students and teacher know exactly what to expect each day and since the students help create the consequences they will clearly understand what will happen if they stray from this set of expectations. Creating rules in a democratic classroom is a positive task giving students a sense of the teachers expectations, whereas, an authoritative classroom focuses solely on power and punishment.

In the video, “Democratic Classrooms” (2008), you will see a Californian based teacher who has shifted from an authoritative to a democratic classroom. By doing so he has been able to shift the focus of his classroom from rule following to participation, freedom, and learning. Since his classroom requires students to participate, the idea of having a completely silent classroom and solely individual work has disappeared. Giving students the freedom to speak has allowed him the opportunity to turn their desire to chat into an effective strategy.

What rules are important for this classroom?

How would you like to learn about this topic?

How would you like to demonstrate your learning for this assignment?