Engagement and Habit Formation in the Classroom

Abstract

How can teachers increase the effectiveness of their classroom practice, so that not only are ideas transferred (Perkins & Salomon, 1988), but so that students become people who shape their future and make the world a better place? This is an important question that refocuses the purpose of education and takes attention away from curriculum and outcomes to issues that have been seen as peripheral to education, such as ‘learning readiness’ (Schindler, 1948). The ludicrousness of the unspoken assumption that many students will simply ‘suck up lessons’ like a vacuum cleaner as they are presented, is thrown into stark relief.