Make a Difference With, Not For, Students: A Plea to Researchers and Reformers

Abstract

Student role redefinition is a critical, but overlooked, link between changes brought about by educational reforms and the realization of desired student results. Although the reform literature is well-stocked with ideas about what facilitates role change in adults, it is nearly silent with respect to students. This is surprising, given that most reforms maintain stringently that students' customary ways of acting will have to change for them to be prepared to assume a constructive place in the real world. If students do not receive training, assistance, and support from researchers and reformers as they make the transition between current expectations and future ones, they will be no more likely to embrace new roles than are adults under the same conditions.