Should Students Be Responsible For Their Own Learning?

This summer, there was a great article in The Washington Post, by Daniel Willingham, who is a University of Virginia professor. In his article, he talked about the challenges of teacher accountability through student performance. This is a topic that has been receiving a great deal of attention lately, and I thought that his view on the matter brought a new light to a subject that is troubling a great many educators.

He writes that as a professor, often he encounters freshmen who are not familiar with the idea that they are responsible for their own learning. While his responsibility lies in being a good teacher, the student has to make the effort to learn the material, and if they don't, they have no one to blame but themselves. If they don't understand a particular concept, it is up to them to ask questions and find out, rather than expecting the professor to recognize their issue and address it. According to him, professors at the college level may not notice or care if a student doesn't attend class, study or learn. In his mind, this is no different than an employer would treat an 18 year old.

The concern is that during the K-12 years, students are not being taught to be accountable for their own learning. And this is partly due to the emphasis on teachers making sure that each student learns the material. While making sure that students are learning is important at the lower levels, when a student reaches high school, shouldn't teachers bear less of the responsibility?

In most public schools across the nation, teachers at all levels are being evaluated by the percentage of their students who pass standardized tests. This means that if students don't learn the material, the teachers are the ones who are held accountable. It becomes standard for the high school teachers to ensure at every step of the process that students are learning the material, but are the students missing the more important lesson? Shouldn't they be taught that learning is their responsibility?

The professor also suggests that teachers should be accountable for teaching well. Students should be responsible for doing their part. What do you think? Do you think that student performance on standardized tests are an adequate way to evaluate the abilities of the teacher? Do you find that high school students are expecting educators to hand hold them and provide them with the information they need, rather than find out for themselves?
 

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.