Once understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning,
law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in
which to live.
—Bruner, 1990, p. xWe have reached a challenging junction at which, on the one hand, teachers
and schools face increased pressure to prepare students for standardized
tests, whereas, on the other hand, they face a generation of students who
regard the school curriculum as largely irrelevant to their own lives. It
has become all too common to develop curricula and teach domain content
distinct from the people, places, and situations through which the content
has meaning. While it is expected that the information learned will somehow,
later, be connected to those situations in which it is useful and
meaningful, this is rarely what occurs. All too often the knowledge students
“acquire” in schools remains inert (Whitehead, 1929),
something demonstrated on a test in a school context where it can be traded
for a grade but not applied to a situation in which it has intrinsic worth
(Lave, 1991, 1997; Wenger, 1998).
The irony is that we then wonder why children appear unmotivated to learn
after we have disconnected meaning from the learning situation, assuming
that the learner somehow will attribute the same functional value to the
information as the teacher does
[Barab & Roth, 2006, p. 3].Unless we begin to engage youth in rich situations that add meaning to
disciplinary concepts – as part of the learning process – the
content of schools will be perceived as a thing to be acquired and exchanged
for a test score (having exchange value) and not as a
useful tool that has direct functional value in the world or to the
learner.