Daniel Pink's Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Traditional U.S. education methods focus on squashing creativity, individuality, and autonomy.  The assembly line factory approach of creating learners is still highly prevalent in the methods and structure of today's classrooms.  Autonomy is not rewarded and questioning purpose is frowned upon and considered insubordination.  Students are considered subjects and the teacher controls all power in the classroom, traditionally.  In order to truly transfer the ideas that Daniel Pink is suggesting requires a paradigm shift in the classroom.

In order to allow students autonomy, it needs to be taught.  Letting the students have control without guidance will not be successful because historically they have not been given this.  Amanda Fisher referenced this in the introduction video.  It will take time for them to become comfortable since they have been spoon fed and told what is and what is not acceptable for so long. A simple way that teachers do introduce autonomy is by providing choices on simple projects.  The RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) strategy has been popular for awhile and is a minor introduction for introducing more autonomy in the classroom. Given a open ended theme or idea, the students have control over the various elements that the project involve.

With required standards, it is nearly impossible to give students control of what is taught, but they should have some control of how they receive this information.  Present a variety of multimedia that they can access to get the information.  Provide mini-lessons that offer the same content that can accessed differently such as either podcasts, written, videos, and more hands on approaches, if possible. There are many other possibilities to increase autonomy in the classroom.  It just takes some time for both teacher and student to become comfortable with the new approach.

I feel in order for students to truly gain mastery, the content needs to be relevant to them.  If it is not relevant, then the information will not stick with the student.  They will just learn it to pass a test and forget it and move on.  If you think back to your days in high school, what sticks with you?  Was it the math unit that you scored an A on or was it a lesson or idea that you felt connected to?  You may not have received an arbitrary grade that showcased mastery in this lesson but you felt invested in it.  Having meaningful content that students feel is relevant to them and their lives will help foster mastery.  If they know the purpose for completing the tasks and learning the information, they will become more personally invested.  Some content areas are easier to make relevant than others, but that should at least be the focus.