The student’s work environment influences their belief regarding choice (i.e., I can or cannot shape my circumstances), which becomes paramount to guiding their actions and thinking in the classroom. Students who feel powerless in shaping their reality at work bring those expectations to the classroom. Moreover,students exhibit discomfort operating within an ambiguous learning environment where the student determines classroom norms and learning goals.Because the students’ work reality shapes their expectations about their educational experience, they
create self-imposed constraints for behaving and thinking in the classroom. These self-imposed
constraints challenge students in believing they have choice or agency in influencing changes in their environment and reinforce the belief that they are simply products of it. The learning environment created at AMSC is designed to alter that paradigm