"Not Very Fun Enough": Active Learning in a Treatment Center

• In Event: Epistemological Inquiry Into Teaching

Abstract

The researcher/teacher performed an action research qualitative study which implemented a disciplinary literacy curriculum, Reading Like a Historian, within an adolescent residential treatment center. The researcher collected data from the teacher’s ethnographic journal, student work samples and a student survey. The data indicates that despite some important successes in learning through a disciplinary literacy approach, the students struggled to acquire the skills of the historian, and the curriculum became a form of passive learning. The researcher interprets these findings through Bourdieu arguing that the coercive structure demanded by the treatment center may have promoted student dispositions which undermined the active learning required to be successful within this curriculum.

Author

• Jared P. Collette, Canyons School District