Nearly every student who enrolls in a basic math class has years of (unsuccessful) experience as a math student; it stands to reason that they have a firm idea of what math class should be and what success in math looks like. They expect me to give them sheets of questions and some tricks to help them remember how to work with fractions. When I ask them to work with manipulatives or visuals, do group activities or field trips, they resist. "This is not real math."
I deal with that resistance by acknowledging that what I am asking them to do is not what they are used to, and it feels strange. I ask them to tell me all the ways they have tried to learn math in the past. Then I ask, "Does anyone know a way to learn math that really works?" Invariably, nobody does because they have all been previously unsuccessful. This conversation with students is part of making my work and theory transparent, and makes them partners in designing their own learning. The discussion about past methods of learning math, an evaluation of what parts were more useful or less useful and the conclusion that something new needs to be tried, means that they are part of the team talking about what form teaching will take.
Most recently, I have been fortunate to work at the Reading and Writing Centre in Duncan, a storefront literacy program that gives learners a great deal of control over how the program runs. Instructors work towards making the learning process more transparent so that students can make decisions on how best to accomplish their academic goals; we ask students to be in control of their learning and to understand their own ways of learning best; and we offer a variety of modalities to students in every subject area. I often do some work with students on learning styles, and help them figure out what their best style is, as well as looking at multiple intelligences and discovering their strengths.
Then I can answer that question, or ask the student to answer it, based on his knowledge of his strengths. Students get a chance to articulate how group work helps ("Talking about what I'm doing helps me learn,") or how manipulatives help ("I'm a body [kinesthetic] learner, and holding the pieces and piling them up both help me remember").
My answer to this question is, "You don't have to." No matter the theoretical discussions referred to above, or the general agreement in the group to try new ways of learning math, any individual is free to choose whether or not to take part. This is fundamental to my stance as a teacher—a refusal to get into a power struggle with a student about the way learning will take place, and a desire to honour their resistance to being put into the traditional one-down role of the student.