Re-Imagining Relevance in Education

Abstract

Educational relevance. If we had the ability to look into the brains of practicing teachers we’d see this notion rolling steadily through cells in the frontal lobe. Looking for relevance allows us to interest our students. It allows us to coerce them into learning something new or, at least, something the powers-that-be consider important for them to know. If we stopped brain-watching and instead listened into a typical seminar for pre-service teachers on curriculum and planning, we would also encounter this term. It is the plight of the teacher to help students connect with topics. Faced with this task, looking for relevance seems like the logical thing to do. By connecting students with something – by “hooking” them as teachers so often call it – we assume that we are more likely to be able to teach them and that they, in turn, will be more likely to learn. This chapter commits some educational heresy. I want to argue that this conception of relevance is not as useful for learning as we think it is. Looking to relevance and feeling confident that it, in conjunction with the kinds of objectives- based approaches to curriculum planning that run rampant in our schools, is most important is actually a recipe for educational disaster or, in the very least, boredom (but isn’t boredom in the classroom synonymous with educational disaster?). Following a brief discussion of the pedagogical limitations of relevance I will indicate, with an example, how we might more successfully engage students in learning. Some