As we all are keenly aware, a new chapter opens the moment a learner walks into his or her classroom for the first time. Yet, in truth, a student encounters the possibility of a new beginning every time he or she walks into the classroom. We know the magic that shines in the eyes of a lit learner. As educators, we can be discerning and responsive guides assisting our charges make meaning and pose new queries. Contemporary students require fresh approaches matching who they are and the time in which they live. The Quest for Learning raises our awareness and fuses modern learning tools to open up options. The word quest in the book title aptly reflects our never-ending search as educators to develop exceptional thinkers and human beings.
On a personal note, it has been my great personal and professional pleasure to work with Marie, Mike, and Allison over several decades in a range of settings. I knew each of them separately before they met one another, and I admire their individual expertise. It is moving to have witnessed their interactions over the years. Their brilliance, passion, and ingenuity are evident in this book. There is no doubt that their future contributions will be electric.
Introduction
Teaching is an invitational art. If students are reticent to accept the invitation to learn, it limits their capacity to become more skillful and wiser from learning experiences. You work hard to create the favorable conditions for success in hopes of inspiring learners to engage, examine ideas, and produce works of value—How do you feel about what you are doing? Is it worth your time? You wonder how you can meet students’ needs—What should I teach? Who can I ask for help? What exactly is my approach, and why am I choosing to take it? What are students getting out of this unit? But learning is a voluntary endeavor. You cannot force a student to learn. You can change curricula, materials, and physical spaces, yet engaging students boils down to teaching in ways that are effective for the individual learner.
The tenets and designs we provide in this book embrace fresh opportunities. Questing is an instructional framework that helps teachers create powerful invitations to all learners through a series of choices. Author Seth Godin (2010) contends that there are really only two things teachers need to teach in school: “how to lead” and “how to solve interesting problems” (p. 61). Questing helps address both by embodying a long, arduous search for something that matters to a learner: the hunt for a vaccine, the hope of life on other planets, the pursuit of world peace, the uncovering of what really happened in history. These experiences can result in student-created and teacher-observed evidence that students have met specific learning goals. It is a journey that primarily students lead. Students determine what they consider worth pursuing and, with a teacher’s guidance, how they will pursue it.
A quest begins when teachers invite students into this mindset, revealing learning as it unfolds, versus once when they administer an assessment. What students discover and how they engage are as important as the end product. This approach prepares learners for an unpredictable 21st century world filled with messy, complex problems that often require skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and innovation along with dispositions such as listening with understanding, having empathy, and striving for accuracy.
The questing framework provides access to two elements that we believe are missing in much of learning: joy and community. It is possible to make joy a primary consideration when designing instruction, and you can facilitate it many ways—providing time and space to pursue something fascinating, introducing the struggle of figuring out something elusive, or recognizing progress, for instance. Sometimes that joy comes from being part of a community. Learners use questing to build or make themselves part of a sincere community of others—networks—who develop ideas, solve problems, and share approaches to benefit that space’s members. With aspects of the questing framework, which we help you dive deeply into, the focus is as much on the experience as it is on the learning. The challenge for teachers is both guiding the process as an invitation and documenting the experience effectively. This is where The Quest for Learning comes in.
After the following section discerns questing from other instructional models and frameworks, we will introduce questing and its components and provide an overview of what is in this book.
Discern Questing From Other Instructional Models and Frameworks
The appetite for an instructional model satisfies a craving for something tangible to guide instruction with a linear (or near linear) flow of steps, protocols, and tools. An instructional framework, which is what questing offers, does not do this; instead, it clearly defines the elements or choices and then uses those elements or choices consistently as the foundation for future models. Questing naturally nests within the instructional model of personalized learning. Allison Zmuda, Greg Curtis, and Diane Ullman (2015) define personalized learning as “a progressively student-driven model in which students deeply engage in meaningful, authentic, and rigorous challenges to demonstrate desired outcomes” (p. 7). Questing is very much in line with personalized learning’s purposeful choices about when the teacher takes the lead, when teachers and students co-create, and when students take the lead. Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda (2017b) explain that the “teacher can turn the volume up or down, amplifying or reducing the amount of student agency as the teacher and students begin to feel more comfortable with student self-direction” (p. 54). Exhibiting this responsiveness and allowing this range are vital as you balance alignment with content standards, exposure to new ideas and ways of thinking, and identified areas for individual student growth.
Three learning models or frameworks may appear similar to questing—(1) individualization, (2) differentiation, and (3) project-based learning—because in them, students have increased control over certain aspects of their learning. Individualization, a student-centered framework, helps students own the pace of their learning as they tackle content-related problems. They can move at their own pace through a series of topics and demonstrate mastery when they’re ready. The teacher manages the learning by helping establish and monitor timelines, offering consultations when needed, and evaluating performance in light of desired results. However, individualization limits students’ control over what problems, questions, and challenges they tackle. In addition, students may not interact much with others. The goal may be more focused on completing a topic than engaging in robust learning experiences.
Differentiation allows students’ content, process, or product choices, but within the confines of what the teacher offers (which he or she determines based on individual students’ readiness, interests, and learning preferences). While offering choice, the learning designs typically are prescribed options or scaffolds that the teacher has vetted for alignment with specific learning goals, preferred ways of working, and scoring methods. The teacher functions as a designer, lead instructor, and evaluator. In addition, the teacher sets the pace and often designs instructional tools (such as centers or stations) to support learners in differentiated ways.
Project-based learning engages students in the pursuit of a worthy, challenging question or problem over an extended period of time. The students are responsible for delivering a public presentation, but unlike quests, the teacher is primarily responsible for forming the essential question and task, even if students contribute to the deliverables’ design. After the project’s launch, the teacher may facilitate ongoing work while relinquishing some control to students.
Quests are based specifically on what students determine is compelling, with few, if any, restrictions, though not necessarily without guidance. Quests are not necessarily monthlong projects, though they can be. A quest can occur during the process of learning a cell’s major components, for example. In addition, collaboration is an integral part of questing. While writing this book, we embraced the nonlinear and often messy reality of defining a framework.