It would appear everyone is looking for a better way to assess students. England is now considering getting rid of their national test, following the lead of neighboring country Wales.
What are these tests being replaced with? Teacher-led assessments. (Does this sound a bit familiar?)
The concern in Wales and England, not unlike here, is that rather than being taught what they need to succeed at the next level, students are being taught to pass a test. That’s never beneficial for anyone. The point of going to school is to learn the basics you’ll need to become a competent adult, but learning cannot take place when it’s crammed in.
Are these localized assessments going to serve as the key to improving education? I really don’t know right now, but I’ll be interested in following this.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 7:48 AM EDT
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With everyone so worried about meeting the demands set forth by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it’s nice to see a state that’s looking to bring their students up to standards without making that their only academic activity.
In this changing world, it is important to help our students become masters of reading and math so they can keep up with the demands of society. In trying to prepare students to pass their test, many schools forget that the students need these basic skills to stay with them throughout school and out into the real world. Nebraska, however, is granting the teachers the freedom to teach the skills to their students, and then to assess on their own. This has led to the development of an assessment program that relies on multiple choice testing, but also includes an authentic component that can catch more than a multiple-choice assessment alone. Apparently, it really works for Nebraska.
There are a couple of things to remember. The first is that no matter what, a school’s primary goal is to educate students, to prepare them for the next level of their education and for their life. If a child has their head jammed with what they need to pass a test, instead of allowing them to authentically learn the material that will be showing up for the rest of their life, then like all information crammed for a test, the student will more than likely forget the material. The next year, the teacher is forced to not only cram new information into the student’s head, but they lose time having to refresh the lost skills. The second is that preparing children to pass assessments leads to an inaccurate picture of how those students are doing. The point of the testing is to demonstrate what level the child is actually operating at, but it often doesn’t reflect that. A student who passes a test one year might fail math the next year because of that aforementioned forgetting of what’s been crammed into their head, or even worse, they may only know how to answer test questions.
Authentic curriculum leads to more authentic assessment results, which in turn could lead to producing the effect we want in all children- that they’ve learned the skills they need to move on.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility, Teaching methods at 7:52 AM EDT
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One of our goals as a teacher is to create a sense of self-sufficience in our students. We try to help them move from dependent on us to dependent on themselves for certain bits of knowledge. We assign them a score of how well they have mastered their independence over the knowledge.
What if we were able to lead them toward a more independent, self-directed assessment model? Not only are they proving their mastery over the knowledge, but they’re also looking for acceptable levels of work from themself to reach that mastery. In the post, the students are critiquing a project and working to bring the quality of their work to a higher level, but what if this could be broadened to incorporate assessing other learning activities? Yes, there will always be students who will only do what they need to skate by and ones who will misapply the rubric, swearing they’ve done everything at the highest level because they don’t actually understand the rubric, or want the best grade for the least work, but there will also be students who can be brought to understand what the rubric is asking of them, and through critical thinking and honest appraisal bring themselves to that higher level.
It’s an interesting thought on bring out one more level of thinking, of reflecting, of being independent in students.
Found via Stephen Downes
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 7:42 AM EDT
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When I first started looking at gaming as a vehicle for education several yeas ago, I was really interested in looking at the informal way gaming encouraged and built up communication and business skills. I was spending my weekends in a game shop watching teenagers navigate new games, teach each other how to play unfamiliar games, and negotiate fair trades. It was fascinating to watch, and I loved having a ringside seat. Part of me wonders what those kids (now college students…yikes!) have taken with them from those days of swapping Pokemon and Harry Potter cards.
More than that, the games these kids were playing, both at the shop and at home, were giving these kids an expansive set of reasoning skills. They were learning to plan out, to think ahead. They were learning that it’s okay to make a mistake, back up, switch tactics and try again. They were learning to teach. They were learning to take what they learned in one arena and apply it to the next. They were learning to set goals and work toward them. They were learning to identify problems and solve them.
For all the evils that games seem to be blamed for, research is showing time and time again that those who play games are actually developing relevant problem-solving skills that they end up transferring into their real-world lives. They see cause-effect patterns and devise a strategy to get the effect they want from their cause. They handle failure as one small incident in time that they move past quickly. They can transfer skills throughout different areas of their life because they’re used to doing it through their gamer life.
Games can often be some of the best teaching tools for soft skills not easily taught through “traditional” methods.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Games at 8:22 AM EDT
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