When your job is working with adults, and I use the term loosely to include those aged 16-plus, there is a certain level of assumption of what a student should already know before they even step foot in the classroom.

For example, we automatically expect our students to know that it is time to learn when they are in the classroom; we expect them to know what appropriate behaviour is and what would be considered inappropriate for an educational setting. We expect them to know what they will need for that day and to come prepared. Some would even go as far as to call this typical sentence. But since when has common sense ever, truly, been common?

Almost everything we know about the world we develop over many years through learned experiences, communication and collaboration. Nevertheless, as teachers in the FE sector, we often have unrealistic expectations of students’ contextual understanding of the world around them. Too often, these gaps in contextual knowledge directly affect a student’s learning.

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There are many explanations for the gaps in students’ common knowledge - for example, cultural differences, learning difficulties and/or economic deprivation. Nevertheless, preconceived assumptions can unknowingly be both a barrier to learning and prevent open communication between teachers and students. Due to this, I would like to share a few times in my career as a functional skills English teacher that I had to check myself and re-evaluate my expectations of “common sense”. 

Meta learning

Meta learning or, more simply put, the skill of learning how to learn, is something we do not talk about enough in education today. When I first started teaching, I have to admit that I had this very idyllic impression that as a teacher, I would teach and, as the learners, my students would learn. All straightforward, right? Wrong! The human brain does not work like that. Learning is a highly personal endeavour. It can take some people a lifetime of trial and error to honestly figure out what works best for them and what does not. It takes reflection, patience and work ethic.

I get a lot of very intelligent and, if not enthusiastic, then at least willing students. However, they have failed in traditional academic education because they have simply not developed the learning strategies needed to thrive. They do not know themselves well enough to make informed decisions about how they approach their work. One such example, in the early days of my career, I would hand out highlighters so students could use them to identify important information, only to find that many of the students would then highlight the entire text.

It did not even occur to me that simply highlighting important information was a learning strategy that had to be taught. Fast-forward a few years, and I now have a whole bag of learning tricks, from high-tech reading pens and read/write software to more straightforward learning tools like sticky notes, blank mind maps/list worksheets, prompts, flashcards, conversation dice and activities that get students on their feet. 

Using a dictionary

Today, classroom-based practice is hugely driven by education theory and the all-encompassing buzzwords inclusion, mastery and dual coding. One such theory making a comeback from the 1980s is active learning. A process by which the teacher becomes the facilitator, the student, on the other hand, takes the driving seat, meaning that they have to actively engage in their tasks instead of just passively staring out the window.

So one can safely say that getting students to use their own initiative and employ a dictionary to find and correct spellings for themselves is an ideological win. Fresh from the PGCE, I walked into my classroom with all of the confidence of youth and asked my students to give me a synonym to replace the word “good”. I was shocked to find that many of the students, including training hairdressers, engineers and chefs, had no idea how to use a dictionary. The reality is, in the 21st century, most 16-year-olds have never actually used a dictionary. After all, why use a dictionary when everything has spell check, or you can simply google? As my students always say, using a dictionary is “bare long”. This experience was a massive eye-opener for my first year of teaching and not only because I had to rethink my scheme of work.

Taking personal responsibility

We all have students who consistently turn up late to class, don’t do their homework and do not come prepared. The conversation is always the same. The teacher will ask the student, “why?” and the student will say, “it’s not my fault”. Fair enough, it is not their fault; after all, we all have bad days. In these cases, a little digging will often bring to the service some unknown issue or concern that can then be dealt with. However, every so often, you will get a student who says, “it is not my fault; I was up all night playing video games and could not be bothered”. I know what you are thinking: you are thinking, well, full marks for honesty. The first time I was faced with this problem, I remember being extremely annoyed.

Nevertheless, reflecting on that conversation now, I understand better that further education is a complex middle ground between being a child, where everything you do is organised and micromanaged, to being an adult, where not only are you expected to know how to organise yourself, but also to take responsibility when you do not. This jump from child to preserved adult can come as a real shock to some students, especially as it literally can happen overnight.

These days, when met with such a student, I like to play a little game. I ask the students about their expectations from themselves, the college, and me as their teacher. I find that this helps to start a dialogue where we can discuss those expectations so that the student can begin to contextualise these new expectations into the real world.

Having a preconceived and often fixed concept of what a student should know before they walk into the classroom can obstruct our ability as teachers to communicate and support our learners. After all, common sense is as elusive as it is subjective.

Jennifer Wilkinson is a functional skills English lecturer at a college in England