August 2012, Volume 18
Topic: Classroom Covenants
The Learning Covenant will continue to evolve in light of new pedagogical insights, student
needs and interests, and classroom dynamics. …. I cannot imagine reverting back to a teacherdirected classroom.
Dr. Fred Glennon, Professor of Religious Studies, LeMoyne College
The problem: Your teaching load requires you to instruct general education
students in a core course, and a good number of them harbor attitudes of
disinterest or outright antagonism toward this requirement. You also have a
senior seminar course where you hope to give well-known and well-loved students
significant choice in where their studies take them. In the former you’ve resigned
yourself to be more a sage on the stage, but for the latter a guide on the side. Is it
possible that the large core course could be personalized for students? And how
will you give your 4th-year students that control you wish to offer them? In short,
how can you manage the tension between highly structured, one-way dumping of
information and a more fluid process of engaging students through their own goals
and interests?
It begins with our identity, integrity, and views on community.
In Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach, we are reminded that good teaching is
less about technique and more about our identity and integrity. That is, our
values, commitments, and personal ethics shape our philosophy of education, and
ultimately our classroom interaction. Do we see ourselves as authorities?
Hopefully so, for students expect us to know our discipline well. Does knowing
our field bubble up in the classroom as authoritarianism? Hopefully not. Topdown instruction with little opportunity for feedback and discussion puts some
students asleep, and puts others off. Palmer argues that education is a
community affair, we with students, and students with us. Our classrooms can be
places of high interrelating where students know each other, are known by us and
each other, and where all have voice. Are these ideas wishful-thinking? What
have some professors done to shape such ideals?
Personalized Learning Contracts and Classroom Covenant
Structures: In “Promoting Freedom, Responsibility, and Learning in the
Classroom: The Learning Covenant a Decade Later,” professor of religion and
ethics Dr. Fred Glennon considers 1) Personalized learning contracts, and 2)
classroom covenants as means to increase student voice and motivation to learn.
He admits that his ideas work best in small-to-medium sized classes of 36 or
fewer, so qualifies his enthusiasm for those teaching very large classes. Glennon
teaches at LeMoyne College, a liberal arts school in the Jesuit tradition, where
they strive to combine “educational excellence with cura personalis -- care for the
whole person.”
A personalized learning contract begins by posing a question to students—“What
do you want to learn?” and allows each student to craft particular learning
outcomes uniquely for themselves, with some guidance. Glennon provides a
general standard syllabus noting topics required of all students, but augments
these topics with additional questions, topics, assignments, and activities students
may choose for themselves. Glennon also lays out the evaluation criteria for every
assignment so students know how they will be graded. A student may also
negotiate the percentage the required and additional assignments weigh in their
final mark, within a given range. The required elements (in his religion course,
these include discussion/participation, a critical review of a religious ritual, and
the final exam) may count as little as 40% or as much as 75%. The remaining
percent is taken up by the additional assignments students choose from his list.
He presumes that the “extra assignments” students add are motive-driven, and he
observes that “Learning information and skills is more significant when students
are able to make meaningful connections to their goals and interests.” (p. 34)
Whereas personalized learning contracts are intended to value student freedom
and responsibility, classroom covenants are intended to build classroom
community and shared purpose. On the first day Glennon provides students with
four basic elements of the syllabus: “course content and objectives, student rights
and responsibilities, evaluation, and ground rules for discussion.” (pp.36-37)
Attached to each section are a set of questions to get students thinking, such as,
How would you modify these learning outcomes? Is anything missing you thought
would be here? Are you comfortable with the criteria for evaluating the critical
essay? What would you change about the ground rules for laptop use, tardiness,
and all-class discussion? Glennon places students in groups of 4-5 (by random
assignment) and lets them discuss the syllabus materials at length. In fact he
takes two days for the dust to settle before determining the final syllabus content,
modes of evaluation, and rules for classroom decorum. For example one semester
students chose to study Christian ethics less and other religious systems more,
and students also opened the door for classmates to read their papers and
contribute a percent of the mark.
Drawbacks and Benefits
Fred Glennon acknowledges these methods come with some challenges. Not every
student is ready for the freedoms and responsibilities of crafting their own
individual learning contract; they expect the prof to lead, lecture, and examine
them. Students have also commented the class lacks structure, that they don’t
value their peers’ insights, and that procrastination is easier when they have set
their own assignment due dates. Glennon also acknowledges drawbacks for
himself as instructor. Both the contract and the covenant are labor-intensive to
set up, manage, and then adjust to. For example, students hand in papers
throughout the semester, not at established times. Tracking and calculating
marks with varyingly weighted assignments is a challenge, and syllabus
adjustments require new preps almost semesterly.
Despite these challenges he remains optimistic and sees the benefits that
accrue to students and faculty. Students in his general education courses gain
a sense of control, direction, and relevancy for where they can take an
otherwise (to them) uninteresting course. Students learn how to write learning
outcomes and evaluation criteria—skills useful in future studies and on the
job. Self-agency also prepares them for graduate school where self-starting is a
must. Most of all, students can adapt their experience to their own gifts and
learning styles and give the professor their best work in their preferred
medium. In fact personalized learning covenants work very well in highly
experiential course contexts such as practica / internships and senior
seminars where you already know students well.
For professors the benefits include the satisfaction in knowing that these
approaches favour learning-models (for students) rather than instructionmodels (for teachers). Glennon also says the diversity of assignments—and the
media thereof (e.g., presentations, videos, art-work)—enliven marking.
Moreover, he is not the only teacher; his students genuinely teach him. This
dynamic pushes him to become a reflective practitioner, and a critically
reflective teacher who is alert to assumptions and practices brought to the
educational task.
Have you used personalized learning and/or classroom covenants? If so, care
to share them with other faculty? Send them to us.
An example of a learning contract in an environmental studies course can be
found here: http://www.enterprisingeducation.com/Documents/Learning%20Contract.pdf
Guidelines for developing/writing learning covenants for internships are here:
http://mail.ltsp.edu/context/field_ed/20072008_GUIDELINES_FOR_DEVELOPING_A_LEARNING_COVENANT_CU..pdf
If you have more ideas for Teaching Tips, please send them to:
Gordon Chutter (GordonC@twu.ca) or Bill Strom
(strom@twu.ca).
Glennon, Fred, “Promoting Freedom, Responsibility, and Learning in the Classroom: The
Learning Covenant a Decade Later,” Teaching Theology and Religion, 11, No. 1 (2008): 32-41.