Constance Steinkuehler on games, interests, learning and literacy levels.
"So we have this massive disparity: why suddenly are they reading - if you let them choose the text - why are they reading at this incredibly, of much higher level of comprehension performance. What it came down to was something called self-correction rates. When the choose the texts, when they care about it, they actually fix their own comprehension problems more than two times as often as when they don't care about the text. It's kind of stating the obvious, but we forget it schools all the time: that if you care about understanding the topic, you will sit and work through, you will persist in the face of challenge in a way that you won't do if you don't care about the topic."
"What I'm trying to say is: rather than treating kids interests as a means towards your educational goals, try to treat your educational materials as a means towards their goals. So the model of pedagogy behind it is really radical: it is to say teaching would look a lot more like community organizing, where the first question is 'what do you, as a community, want to accomplish?' And then your job is to figure out how do I marshal resources to accomplish that. And along the way, to tool you up with practices, knowledge, dispositions that you keep for a lifetime."