Learning contracts are versatile tools. They can be designed in many shapes and sizes. Contracts can range in scope from organizing a choice of activities within a single class period to providing a unified structure for an entire course. They are adaptable to meet the needs of any discipline and any group of students.
For the sake of simplicity, I will define two classes of learning contracts: minicontracts and unit contracts.
Minicontracts are limited in scope and are generally designed to serve a single purpose, such as preparing for a test. They can comprise a span of time from part of a single period to several days and can contain as few as two or three items or as many as a dozen or so for students to work on. The principle function of a minicontract is to provide an opportunity for students to work on different things at the same time, both in the classroom and at home.
Minicontracts can be useful for teachers who are first learning how to integrate student choice into the classroom. For many students, having the freedom to choose what they are working on will be a new experience, and having simple, small-scale contracts is a relatively easy introduction in learning how to make wise choices.
The second class of contracts, unit contracts, are larger, more complex structures that organize all the work done by students within a given unit of study. Unit contracts can serve more functions more comprehensively than minicontracts. They can be used to organize the learning goals of an entire course, to document every student’s entire learning process, and to teach students to self-evaluate their work and be responsible for their own learning.
Creating a set of unit contracts for the first time can seem a daunting task, requiring a significant effort. Not only must all student activities be reorganized, but the classroom culture must be transformed to support student choice. For many teachers, this seems to be too large a change from their accustomed classroom structure.
A more reasonable approach is to plan and use minicontracts to get acclimated to student choice and to explore how that choice can be best utilized. The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to the study of minicontracts. The advantages and challenges of using unit contracts will be discussed in depth in the next chapter.