Adam Fletcher believes that schools should move students beyond engagement, which is merely an emotional state, and toward active involvement. To foster such involvement, schools need to give students opportunities to participate in activities that are meaningful and relevant. In this article, Fletcher offers several examples of roles for students. He tells stories of student involvement in school planning, teaching, and professional development. Students advocating for educational improvement, researching classroom climate, and leading new approaches to learning and teaching stand along side one another in the architecture of involvement that Fletcher endorses, demonstrating what school change looks like when the hearts, heads, and hands of students are infused throughout the process.
This is a description of an article I wrote for the November 2008 (Volume 66, Number 3) edition of Educational Leadership magazine. The theme for the edition was “Giving Students Ownership of Learning”, and my article was called The Architecture of Ownership.
Adam F.C. Fletcher 