response to that question, the authors compel us to reconsider more rigid views of instructional models and curriculum planning and see the potential for hooking our learners on questing threads both spontaneously and over time. Their carefully crafted tenets of engagement serve as a vibrant questing platform that can drive our professional choices and actions.
I am particularly struck by how Alcock, Fisher, and Zmuda build on these tenets by tackling the challenge of naturally merging three critical contemporary arenas into practice: gaming, networking, and question design. These arenas have perplexed teachers and school leaders who grapple with modern learning experiences. Gaming is a source of fascination and considerable discussion, especially among educators who are involved in game play, but it has remained an outlier in everyday school life and practice. In this book, readers not only explore and compare an array of game types but gain direct connections between gaming and content areas and skills.
Networking is part of everyday life for most students and teachers, yet it conspicuously gets neglected in curriculum planning. Here, the authors open up specific strategies for making discerning networking choices in regard to social-networking platforms, community organizations, in-school networks, and peer relationships.
Also, while raising questions for investigation is not new to educators because it is at the heart of teaching and learning, the authors argue for a more nuanced view of questioning. They propose teachers present questions that provoke student ownership of learning pathways. Respecting each student as unique in a specific place and time, educators must be observant and responsive with the formation of four types of questions that encourage meaningful investigations. In short, the authors declare that because we have contemporary learners, we need to bring those learners to relevant, worthy inquiries and experiences; active, intentional cycles of expertise; and social, collaborative opportunities.
The authors creatively explore examples of gaming, networking, and inquiry. They pack the book with clear visuals showing the relationship between the three arenas, strategies for integrating them, and resources for further exploration.
While reading The Quest for Learning, I found it striking how it asks us to think differently about our interactions with students—not only in moment-to-moment interactions but during long-term planning as well. We do not direct learners; we teach them to direct themselves. Questing is a mindset for engagement. Rather than a rigid step-by-step planning model, genuine design thinking is afoot here. Alcock, Fisher, and Zmuda provoke catalytic, genuine rethinking of overly planned, rigid types of inquiry, which contradict the nature of spontaneity. It is not that plans do not matter; they do. But we often miss the myriad of opportunities to actively seek questions, deepen curiosity, and determine which questions merit longer-term investigation.
The Quest for Learning cultivates the joys of an epiphany-making environment. The authors walk us through golden opportunities to pick up on student interests and convert them into threads for inquiry. This book is a wake-up call to mindful listening and observation. Often, the clues we need are there—with both motivated and struggling learners.
Timely in its focus, The Quest for Learning provides direct guidance for administrators and teachers who are developing personalized learning opportunities. Nationally and internationally, school planning meetings lead to lively, often frustrating discussions about what personalized learning looks like. Is it the same as individualized instruction? Is it differentiation? Is it project-based learning? More than any book I have read before, the book in your hands details how to navigate learners through a compelling personalized learning journey. As co-creators, teachers and learners move from interest to inspiration in framing questions, researching and networking, and developing deliverables for an authentic questing experience. What is more, the authors present suggestions in the context of thoughtfully rendered pedagogy refreshed by the three tenets of engagement.
As we all are keenly aware, a new chapter opens the moment a learner walks into his or her classroom for the first time. Yet, in truth, a student encounters the possibility of a new beginning every time he or she walks into the classroom. We know the magic that shines in the eyes of a lit learner. As educators, we can be discerning and responsive guides assisting our charges make meaning and pose new queries. Contemporary students require fresh approaches matching who they are and the time in which they live. The Quest for Learning raises our awareness and fuses modern learning tools to open up options. The word quest in the book title aptly reflects our never-ending search as educators to develop exceptional thinkers and human beings.
On a personal note, it has been my great personal and professional pleasure to work with Marie, Mike, and Allison over several decades in a range of settings. I knew each of them separately before they met one another, and I admire their individual expertise. It is moving to have witnessed their interactions over the years. Their brilliance, passion, and ingenuity are evident in this book. There is no doubt that their future contributions will be electric.
Introduction
Teaching is an invitational art. If students are reticent to accept the invitation to learn, it limits their capacity to become more skillful and wiser from learning experiences. You work hard to create the favorable conditions for success in hopes of inspiring learners to engage, examine ideas, and produce works of value—How do you feel about what you are doing? Is it worth your time? You wonder how you can meet students’ needs—What should I teach? Who can I ask for help? What exactly is my approach, and why am I choosing to take it? What are students getting out of this unit? But learning is a voluntary endeavor. You cannot force a student to learn. You can change curricula, materials, and physical spaces, yet engaging students boils down to teaching in ways that are effective for the individual learner.
The tenets and designs we provide in this book embrace fresh opportunities. Questing is an instructional framework that helps teachers create powerful invitations to all learners through a series of choices. Author Seth Godin (2010) contends that there are really only two things teachers need to teach in school: “how to lead” and “how to solve interesting problems” (p. 61). Questing helps address both by embodying a long, arduous search for something that matters to a learner: the hunt for a vaccine, the hope of life on other planets, the pursuit of world peace, the uncovering of what really happened in history. These experiences can result in student-created and teacher-observed evidence that students have met specific learning goals. It is a journey that primarily students lead. Students determine what they consider worth pursuing and, with a teacher’s guidance, how they will pursue it.
A quest begins when teachers invite students into this mindset, revealing learning as it unfolds, versus once when they administer an assessment. What students discover and how they engage are as important as the end product. This approach prepares learners for an unpredictable 21st century world filled with messy, complex problems that often require skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and innovation along with dispositions such as listening with understanding, having empathy, and striving for accuracy.
The questing framework provides access to two elements that we believe are missing in much of learning: joy and community. It is possible to make joy a primary consideration when designing instruction, and you can facilitate it many ways—providing time and space to pursue something fascinating, introducing the struggle of figuring out something elusive, or recognizing progress, for instance. Sometimes that joy comes from being part of a community. Learners use questing to build or make themselves part of a sincere community of others—networks—who develop ideas, solve problems, and share approaches to benefit that space’s members. With aspects of the questing framework, which we help you dive deeply into, the focus is as much on the experience as it is on the learning. The challenge for teachers is both guiding the process as an invitation and documenting the experience effectively. This is where The Quest for Learning comes in.
After
