We’ve worked our way through the identity, learning skills, and knowledge parts of the Performance Model and the pieces left are context, personal factors, and fixed factors.
Context is next up in batting order and basically covers the situation where a performance takes place. That situation is the where, when, and how of the performance.
Consider our pirate, Walmart Jim (it will become clear). While his identity is that of pirate, he is not always in performance mode. In fact, he has promised his sister that while he’s watching her kids, he will be only Uncle Jim and NOT perform as a pirate, though he does take his parrot with him to entertain the kids. The context of Jim’s performance as pirate is limited to “the high seas”, “desert islands”, and whatever coastal villages Jim has his crew pillage (the where). He prefers to limit acts of piracy to weekdays, the warmer months because pirates actually get wet a lot, and daylight hours (the when). For Jim, piracy is something best done in person, from the deck of his ship, and with a variety of tools (the how).
While Jim doesn’t commit acts of piracy among family and friends, his nieces and nephews love hearing the stories of his pirate adventures. His stories are compelling and include the what, when, and where of what happened, as all good stories must. In fact, he made a “Pirate Pieces” list for the kids so they can make up their own stories. It includes a list of Who, What, Where, When, and How they can mix and match:
The kids find this great fun. But for Jim, it’s not just the stories of his pirate performances; it’s information he needs to succeed in performing as a pirate. With that Walmart episode, he learned the important lesson that acts of piracy, no matter how tempting, are best not performed at the local supercenter; the context has to be appropriate for the performance. Even if every other aspect of the piracy performance is worthy of an Errol Flynn, inappropriate context makes the performance unsuccessful. You simply have to be aware of the context of performance, knowing where, when, and how to perform as a pirate. The more appropriate each are to the performance and the more the performance takes each into account, the better that performance is.
And so it is with students.
Do you still have nightmares of showing up in the wrong classroom to take a final? Or having forgotten about a course you registered for until halfway through the semester? These are nightmares of getting the context of being a student wrong. Consider the student who is meeting remotely, via Zoom, who has no webcam or microphone. That student can’t perform successfully as a student because the HOW context of their performance is not appropriate. What about the student who gets the time wrong for a critical seminar? That student has performed poorly, even if they’re otherwise an A student, because the WHEN context is inappropriate. The student who submits a research paper to the wrong email address and the student who can’t find the testing center in time are students who have missed the proverbial boat, with respect to the WHERE context, with poor performances as students the result.
These are some of the issues that student orientation and a Student Handbook address, but the quality of the information there is not directly related to what students know. Students aren’t patients and exposure to information does not vaccinate them against problems. As every professor knows, handing out a syllabus doesn’t equate to students understanding or even knowing how to find the where, when, and how of a course! If the goal is to simply deliver the information and then hold students accountable for knowing it, then handing out a syllabus is sufficient. But if the goal is to ensure that students know the information, then helping them learn it must be what we do. This is the perennial question, isn’t it? Whether we are committed primarily to giving information and evaluating or whether we are committed primarily to helping students learn and then improve.
If it is the latter, then analyzing their performance as students and addressing how contextual errors may be keeping them from succeeding is something we need to be prepared to do, as educators and mentors of students. There are a lot of creative and enjoyable ways to do this; Jim heartily recommends a campus or course treasure hunt! Give students a list of critical contextual information they must find and provide them with resources. Time them, let them work as groups, do whatever is appropriate for the context of your course and school. Not only will this help students fill in the context gaps required for being successful as students, it will also help you address the HOW of improving the performance of your students, which is an important part of the context for performing successfully as an educator!
