I think that one of the main challenges that the implementation of democratic education faces, is the question: is there such as a thing as students having too much academic freedom? As seen above, choice in learning can instill a student with the sense of ownership in their work which in turn gives them motivation and dedication to truly delve into a topic. However, if academic choices are encourage among students, the teacher faces three challenges: evaluation of student work, meeting government standard prescribed learning outcomes and exposing students to other topics.

       In regards to evaluation, teachers will need to ensure that criteria are broad enough for all students to meet no matter what the topic.  This can be achieved, and I believe will be the most successful, when students are involved in the creation of the criteria. The second challenge with evaluation is the teacher’s need to be familiar with potentially 30 different topics (assuming there are 30 students in a class).  In order to properly evaluate, teachers will need to verify that information gathered by the students is correct. This has the potential to be very time consuming and overwhelming but is still possible. Overall, challenges with evaluation are just that, challenges; they can be overcome.

       The second challenge, meeting government criteria, is more problematic.  Government mandated prescribed learning outcomes (PLOs) are the standards in education that teachers need to say their students have met.  If a child chooses a topic or the class as a whole would like to explore something that is not related to the PLOs the teachers may be challenged with being able to allow students to pursue it.  For example, I watched the TED talk video "Student Driven Learning" which demonstrated the idea of democratic education.  The talk is about a high school science teacher whose students wanted to raise money to help build a school; the teacher provided them with all of the support required, including class time, and eventually the students were able to achieve their goal. This example is inspiring and you can see the skills that were developed could be used for real life application, but as the teacher is a high school science teacher, I struggle to see how she was able to incorporate this into the science curriculum.  Based on my understanding of the project as it was presented, a project like this would not meeting government high school science PLOs.   I would need to do more research on this project in order to have a better understanding of how the teacher was able to support her students during class time.  Academic freedom is therefore “in competition with the teachers’ priorities for the use of that time – ‘covering the curriculum’” (Ekholm, 2004, p.109).

       One of the roles of the teacher is to expose students to new ideas.  If schools are designed for academic freedom where students have the ability to choose their own subjects and topics, a question that arises is: how will students discover interests in other topics if they consistently chose the same one? This can also apply to the ways in which students communicate their ideas. If students are responding to knowledge always in the same form they will become masters of that form of communication but may lack skills in communicating in other ways.  This can be detrimental as an adult because communication varies among people and in order to effectively communicate, people need to be versed in a variety of forms of communication. 

There are also challenges that students will face when it comes to democratic education such as the challenge of having too much choice and an increased focus on the self.  There is also the challenge of one student, or a group, dominating the space of a democratic classroom.   

       The first challenge of too much choice as outlined in the TED Talk “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz.  This speech outlines the detrimental side effects to having too much choice; these include: “regret and anticipated regret, escalation of expectations, and self-blame”.  I will not apply the “Paradox of Choice” in regards to academic freedom. First of all, if there are unlimited options as to what a student can academically choose to explore, once they have chosen a topic they may regret it seeing another option as being better after they have started to explore their own.  This in turn might lead to them switching topics, and then potentially switching again and again, and thus leaving several topics incomplete. There is also an increase of expectations when there are many choices; students may pick a topic that they like the most and therefore may begin to have high expectations of their enjoyment in exploring that topic.  Those expectations may not be met which would cause frustration and disappointment. This ties in closely to the last side effect: self-blame.  If the student has chosen a subject and the experience has not been as pleasurable as anticipated, students will blame themselves for choosing the wrong topic. If all of these side effects occur, the students’ experiences of academic freedom will not be as beneficial as the teacher of a democratic classroom would have hoped.

       The second challenge, and increase focus on the self, can lead to the opposite effect of one of the goals of a democratic classroom: a sense of community.  Thayer-Bacon and Bacon (1998) state that a democratic classroom “can tend to be more [focus] on the individual than the group” (p. 24). If students are consistently given the opportunity to explore their own interests through academic freedom, work becomes very individualize and potentially somewhat isolating. 

       When implementing a democratic classroom through providing students with input, there is the potential for “one child [to become] a gang leader and [lead the other] children by encouraging them to be nuisances” (Thayer-Bacon & Bacon, 1998, p.24).  In my experience, there are often power dynamics among any group.  Often these dynamics are the result of several factors.  If teachers are providing students with input through class meetings a possibility exists that a student may use their power to influence decisions being made; the classroom therefore does not become a representation of the whole, but rather, the representation of a handful.