By upholding personal relevance and transferability as core tenants of education, a large degree of responsibility is placed upon the student's ability and eagerness to learn. The tenants assume that the student is mature enough to take his education seriously and to challenge himself. The ideal student is self-motivated in fulfilling his own curiosity. He is developed enough in his thought to appropriately make connections between class content and personal interest.
In essence, a relevance-centered education requires that the he is self-aware enough to realise his ability, talent, and limits; and to know when to ask the teacher for assistance. Unfortunately, the teacher can only do so much to cater to her students individually. Students must eventually learn to be self-reliant, treating the teacher as a resource. For this to happen, it is important that a general atmosphere that encourages enthusiasm of the subject matter be maintained, one that is conducive to learning.
Once this is done, the teacher can appropriately work her students' interests and ideas, and help them develop both in school and independently of it. It is critical that the students see the importance of learning both inside and outside of the classroom. For instance: when I attended public middle school, my course on U.S. history was taught in a "drill-and-kill" manner. It was the sort of course that involved memorising predetermined lists of names and dates, and then regurgitating them for quizzes.
This teaching method had two main problems: firstly, math tutor needed there was no attempt to make it relevant to the current state of America; history was as separate from reality as any fiction. Just as bad, the names and dates we learned were of no obvious use outside of the classroom. The students had little ability to use the information to study other aspects of American history; they were exclusive to the lesson at hand. These are all examples of how a student's pastimes and hobbies could be integrated into different subjects in a constructive manner.
They demonstrate what Thomas Zane calls ‘domain definition', by "defining real-world, integrated tasks as opposed to listing a series of content topics or decontextualized knowledge components" (83 Zane, Part 1). The ‘domains' essential to student-relevant education are those that the student thinks are important to him. The teacher must not only recognise these domains, but also try to understand how the students are attempting to solve them.
This does not require that the teacher make lengthily records and descriptions of student behaviour for reference; rather, she should keep a mental tab of their emotional and intellectual abilities. With this in mind, she is better able to understand her students without overburdening herself with work. Nel Nodding describes how she attempts to engross herself completely in the student's mindset when helping them: If I care about students who are attempting to solve a problem, I must do two things: I must make the problem my own, receive it intellectually, immerse myself in it; I must also bring the students into proximity, receive such students personally.
(659 Goldstein) This kind of education benefits the student in at least two ways.
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