‘My brain hurts:’ incorporating learner interests into the classroom

ABSTRACT

Educators have long been advocating for the appropriation of students’ interests into the classroom as a means of promoting participation and learning. However, little attention has been paid to the possible issues that interest-driven pedagogy might engender for both teachers and students through its blend of the personal and academic. This article examines how one elementary school teacher appropriates his students’ interests into an instructional task and how this attempt at blending real-life and instruction shapes student participation and task completion. The data come from an hour-long video recording of a third-grade sheltered instruction English Language Arts class at a public school in the United States. Conducted within the conversation analytic framework, the study shows that implementing interest-driven pedagogy in the classroom can engender a struggle between instructional task demands and real-life student concerns, consequently both hindering and facilitating student participation and task completion.

KEYWORDS:

• Interest-driven pedagogy
• sheltered instruction
• student participation
• participation framework
• conversation analysis

Acknowledgement

This research would not have been possible without the teacher and students who welcomed me and my camera into their classroom. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and the editor Rita Elaine Silver for facilitating this manuscript's journey to print. Finally, a special thanks to Jasmine Ma, who drew my attention to some key references in the field of interest-driven pedagogy, and to my advisor, Hansun Zhang Waring, and our doctoral seminar, who generously offered me feedback and support throughout the writing process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Images have been anonymized to protect the participants’ identities.

2. I would like to thank one of the reviewers for raising this point.

3. I would like to thank the reviewer for this insightful observation.