Gaining and Losing Voice: A Longitudinal Study of Students' Continuing Impulse to Learn Across Elementary and Middle Level Contexts

Abstract

This research traces students' perceptions of their experiences as they moved from a whole language elementary classroom, in which they actively participated as knowers, into subsequent experiences in a departmentalized junior high school. The study was framed by a constructivist definition of intrinsic motivation: the continuing impulse to learn. Students' motivation to learn in their elementary classroom was connected to their own empowerment through three interactive elements: (a) a condition of honored voice; (b) the collaborative construction of meaning; (c) shared ownership of knowing (epistemological empowerment). In junior high school, students found that those motivating qualities were less often part of classroom life. It appears, from our study and others', that students' continuing impulse to learn in middle grades is affected by a dilution of relationships—with the teacher, with other students, and with the curriculum. We describe how these relationships changed for the students in our study, and explore the implications of our findings for middle level teachers.