C. Shared: Practitioner and Learners

There are a number of aspects of classroom management where there is, or can be, a shared responsibility between the practitioner and the learners. Whether or not this responsibility is shared is largely determined by the practitioner. A number of the studies cited in the accompanying bibliography speak of the importance of participants’ sharing in the management of their classroom and thus in the approach to their learning. Juliet Merrifield, in Performance Accountability: For Whom? To Whom? And How? speaks of the need for learners to be able to effect change in other ways than simply dropping out. Pat Campbell in Participatory Literacy Practices: Exploring Social Identity and Relations, writes of the need for the understanding and sharing of power between the facilitator and the learners in an ideal class.

1. Class mission statement

While the term ‘mission statement’ may sound somewhat inflated for this best practice, it is the best way to outline an underlying philosophy that assures power sharing in the LBS classroom. Not only the bibliographic research, but the practitioners’ focus groups and responses to the questionnaire on practices identified the need for all actions in the classroom to be guided by such a mission statement.

A best practice on a mission statement:

There should be an operating philosophy within the classroom that affirms the right of learners to have a say in policies and actions which affect their lives.

Approach: The framing and hanging of the statement in a conspicuous place is important. The development of this ‘mission statement’ is under regular discussion in some programs where continuous intake is in effect. In fixed intake situations it can be reviewed with each new intake.

2. Participation in decision-making

Among others in the bibliography, Greg Hart, in Power, Literacy and Motivation, speaks of the need to have learners involved in decision-making, not just around their lives, but around class decisions as well. To Hart this power sharing in the classroom presages the taking control of learning and the development of self-confidence in the learner. Facilitators’ focus groups offered approaches. They stressed the value of ‘town hall’ meetings, student newspapers and suggestion boxes as means of getting participants’ involvement. They pointed out the need to guarantee a timely response to any query the learners had.