The whole continuum of people from the new to the experienced, from the unskilled to the highly skilled, from the slightly interested to the addicted, and everything in between, [and] is accommodated in the same space where people can pursue different goals within the space, based on their own choices, purposes, and identities. (Gee, 2007, p. 11)
Teachers, peers, and invested members all occupy these affinity spaces, and they play crucial parts in questing. How students relate to teachers and peers will change during a quest because the process reimagines teachers’ status quo role as experts and students’ as exclusively learners. In these spaces, students learn, receive feedback, and garner assessment from all participants, not just teachers. Students invite expertise from teachers in these spaces, but they also look to affinity space networks (see chapter 2, page 13) to help design and refine questions, seek opportunities to emulate experts, request and provide feedback, and create increasingly higher-quality deliverables. For the brain’s need for group connection, among other reasons, questing employs networks. A sincere community of learners promotes engagement and active learning.
Coda
Sit-and-get schooling has run its course. Making space for quests—open-ended opportunities driven by student interest engagement opportunities—can result in active learning, increased engagement, and increased brain activity. Questing can help students become emotionally attached to their learning, driving initiative and self-direction. They are leveraging technology to seek out affinity space members to collaborate with on authentic problems, challenges, and ideas.
CHAPTER 2
Identifying Questing Components
Quests contain a myriad of elements—design approaches, affinity spaces, research types, and products. What is a quest’s bedrock? The tenets of engagement. They are true for any learner in any learning condition. Beyond the tenets, there is the element of design to consider. In this book, starting with this chapter, we focus on three contemporary design options that can help maximize these tenets of engagement: (1) inquiry, (2) game, and (3) network. These tenets are interconnected, and any design option you choose might touch any one or all three of them to promote a learner’s engagement.
Tenets of Engagement
These tenets come from a meta-analysis of brain-based research (Kolb, 1984; Zull, 2002), game-based theory (Gee, 2007), and our combined experiences with thousands of students. The tenets speak to the challenging, joyful process of learning regardless of the environment where the learning takes place—at an internship location, in a virtual chat room, during pretend play, or in a laboratory, for example.
The questing framework gives rise to students who are fully engaged, motivated, and committed, persevering through problems with their learning networks and demonstrating expertise—all of which promote the tenets of engagement. As noted in the introduction, these are the three tenets of engagement.
1. The learner engages with relevant, worthy inquiries and experiences that are interesting or emotionally gripping.
2. The learner engages in an active, intentional cycle with clear goals and right-sized, actionable steps.
3. The learner engages in social, collaborative opportunities that grow expertise.
The tenets are not isolated aspirations; teachers, by following and emulating examples in this book, incorporate and grow these tenets throughout instruction to maximize engagement. Nor do they occur linearly. We stress that the tenets can occur in any order, happen repeatedly, or be omitted when appropriate—the choices are yours and your learners’. Let us look more closely at each tenet to examine the research, further explain the significance, and provide examples.
Relevant, Worthy Inquiries and Experiences
The first tenet is that the learner engages with relevant, worthy inquiries and experiences that are interesting or emotionally gripping. As a teacher, you may deem an inquiry topic worthy if it is motivational, meaningful, or joyful for the student. Science proves that long-term memory and passion for learning increase when students (with help from teachers, if necessary) connect to something that matters to them and they’re allowed to choose to pursue that interest (Bernard, 2010; Davachi et al., 2010; Evans & Boucher, 2015). Learners become motivated to try, believing a topic is a valid investment of their time and energy (Lambert, Gong, & Harrison, 2016).
Problem posing and critical thinking are vital here, since students must form questions and conclusions before and throughout their quests. The learner’s inquiries stem from his or her sense of curiosity and critical thinking, which stimulates action, conversation, and reflection. For example, elementary students may be interested in designing something to beautify their community. Instead of brainstorming good ideas in a vacuum, they collaborate with the people who will ultimately see the beautification on a daily basis and discover their concerns, challenges, and hopes for the space. Students then use that information to make an inquiry such as, How can we make something that has what people want and involve them in the making?
Another example might be high school students investigating and potentially acting on the global refugee crisis. When discussing current events in class, students may be aghast at the hardships refugees endure. They also may be sympathetic to the rights of sovereign nations that want to be compassionate but do not want to become flooded with new challenges. The questions that emerge are complex: Why are refugees being treated this way, and what can we do to help? Students investigate and collaborate with global organizations such as UNICEF and the United Nations, as well as national and local groups, to provide refugee assistance and examine the real fears people have when they see a new wave of refugees.
The beautification and refugee examples are a testament that student inquiries can drive a quest at the same time they address key standards. Elementary and middle school students can interview neighbors (speaking and listening), collect data on preferences and decide what to select (data and measurement), and design and execute the project (science and art). High school students can examine root causes of the refugee crisis (economics, geography, and history), propose solutions that demonstrate both nations’ compassion and sovereign rights (civics), and call people to action (argumentative writing and art). Instead of skimming the surface to arrive at an oversimplified solution, slower, in-depth study on a topic increases understanding. Immersed in ambiguity and uncertainty, the learners experience ideal conditions for learning. This condition can be brief or extended—either way, it primes the brain for engagement. This is why deeper, questing-type learning makes such a difference for the learner. He or she is building knowledge differently than before. In fact, we propose that questing, as a pedagogical framework, offers bigger, deeper, more authentic opportunities for students to build content knowledge all while being interested, engaged, and ready to receive the new learning.
Active, Intentional Cycle
The second tenet is that the learner engages in an active, intentional cycle with clear goals and right-sized, actionable steps. The extended cycle of expertise, which is based on Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia’s (1993) and James Paul Gee’s (2007) work, is intentional and actionable because it has goals. Teachers can intentionally build the cycle of expertise, shown in figure 2.1, in an instructional sequence. Students need to be invested in a new problem that will require new learning. When they hit the frustration zone, the level of engagement and need to hit the next level help them persevere through