1. Collaboration means making decisions about what a child can reasonably be expected to do by bringing the child into the process to the extent appropriate to her age. Collaboration also means learning together. Studies show the benefits of students working in pairs or small groups.
2. Content means considering the nature of that request when a child's behavior does not comply with a request. Is it appropriate to their developmental stage? Is it in conflict with basic needs and drives? Is it really necessary and desirable or emerging from a background of habitual no�s and mindless obedience to mindless restrictions? With respect to schooling, it means primary subject matter needs to be meaningful, connected to children's real-life experiences and concerns.
3. Choice means working together to identify the problem, the source, a plan for solving the problem, and later review and evaluate it. In addressing inappropriate behavior, thinking out loud together about what is wrong, and why, is integral to the promotion of children�s moral development. With respect to schooling, choice refers to autonomy in the classroom, and shared responsibility for deciding what gets learned and how. This negotiation is a lesson in itself - an opportunity to make arguments, solve problems, anticipate consequences, and take other people's needs into account - as well as a powerful contribution to motivation.

When significant discipline problems occur, they can be transformed into intellectual challenges that make every child a legislator or a moral philosopher. Instead of exercises in the control of behavior, there are adventures in ethics. —J. Nicholls

And finally, choice is the opportunity for children to participate in real, controversial, and meaningful decisions about what happens to them.

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