Schoolwork, homework, life's work: the experience of students with and without learning disabilities

Elementary school students were interviewed about schoolwork, homework, and personal learning projects (e.g., learning about astronomy). Four groups of students were distinguished. Those in the first group experienced school knowledge as an integral part of life and inseparable from their personal projects; students in the second group saw such knowledge as necessary for preparing for life, but as less engaging than their personal projects. For those in the third group, schoolwork was an imposition, contrasting sharply with satisfying personal learning projects. Those in the fourth group lacked absorbing personal learning projects and found schoolwork to be an imposition. Students with learning disabilities (more than students without) fell into the last category. Fostering more favorable motivation and voice (ability to articulate purposes and critique schooling) in such students might involve changing their views of school knowledge, helping them find personal identity-building learning projects, and reducing the dichotomy between schoolwork and personal projects.