Significant research has been carried out by the Department of Education and Training in the ACT in the area of middle schooling. Two features characterise the research into the middle years which has been in progress for over a decade: a clear recognition of social alienation and disengagement from schooling by increasing numbers of students. These features are seen to result from rapid social change coupled with the failure of traditional methods of teaching. Rigid and outdated practices in schools were most likely to affect students in the middle years, who are influenced by a culture which, among other things, devalues text-based learning in favour of immediate communication, energy and movement, and is strongly peer-influenced while at the same time vehemently independent.
Mau (1992) identifies four dimensions of alienation relevant to adolescent schooling:
Powerlessness (lack of control)
Social estrangement (feelings of social and/or physical isolation)
Meaninglessness (irrelevance and lack of connection to their reality)
Normlessness (lack of direction resulting in rejection of social norms)
Elders have always bemoaned their youth. Recent research, however, appears to offer two significant factors likely to produce positive results with this significant group (and indeed across all levels of schooling!):
Schools need to create a culture of learning which engages through studies of significance to students, while retaining intellectual quality. It needs to be constructivist and learner-centred in which some measure of control is accorded to students through elements of choice.
Schools also need to establish a culture of relationship in which students are offered meaningful mentoring relationships in which they feel empowered and not smothered.
While academic concerns are only one aspect of this problem, pedagogy represents an element over which we do have significant control and which has been shown to make a significant difference. Teachers need be supported to move beyond "teaching the course" to "teaching the students".
The high ground: Good teaching, Quality Pedagogy