Education: Assessing or Stressing?

            The education system, schools in particular, is supposed to be a location of mistakes, exploration, experimentation, and discovery. That is how deeper understandings and true learning take place. Yet, we see schools more and more focused on administering tests and producing higher grades for greater funding. Clearly somewhere down the road we lost sight of what is truly important in society. We are at a stage in life (globally) where knowing the basics and regurgitating it on paper or in words does not offer much value. We need to get to the level where innovation, improvement, and creativity are more focused on in order for human kind to continue evolving, rather than staying at a stalemate. The world is in a time period where major change is occurring: culturally, gender roles, environmentally, population wise, and the list goes on. With so much change going on that is beyond we need to adapt as necessary in order to function effectively in society, otherwise we are doomed to be beaten by the changing world around us. Change needs to start at the beginning, which we all know our educational lives begin within the school system. By initiating change in the school system, the hope is that future generations will be able to make these adaptations and continue to make our world a better place.

This change in the school system is already underway, specifically with the way teach and assess our students. We have been so used to teaching our students in a way where we give them the vital information and test them to see if they remember what they have been taught. Slowly we are realizing that this is not the best way for students learn. Students are writing down information they see on the board and trying to memorize the material to be tested in order to get a good grade. By doing this, and I’m sure most of us feel the same way, we remember the information for only a short period of time before forgetting it and try to memorize information in a new unit or even a different subject. Through strategies such as Backwards Design, and recalling tips like Know, Do, Be (KDB), we can find better ways for students to actually understand the material they are hearing about. Backwards Design, where the goals of the unit are determined before creating instructional methods or assessments, allows for teaches to plan how they can get to necessary information into the students minds. Teachers are being more and more exposed to different methods of teaching, like guided discovery and more interactive activities. When students are physically engaged as opposed to sitting and reading/listening, they tend to gain a better understanding of the material as well are more willing to ask question when they are confused. This is the kind of atmosphere that needs to be praised in schools; unfortunately the formal curriculum really restricts us as teachers in how we can deliver our information since we have requirements to meet. However I won’t go into detail about this since teachers and many administrators have no control what goes in and out of the formal curriculum. We can control though how we assess and evaluate our students based on how we taught that specific lesson or unit. Sometimes testing is the best method, but teachers can’t forget about the active involvement part of teaching. Tests and evaluations can only take us so far; they are great for marks, but the assessment side of it has proven time and time again to be better for knowledge and skills building. With this in mind, teachers need to come up with their own ideas in how to do this effectively. With the help of the education system, we have the power to change our world in a more positive way. Here’s a great video of some people in the educational field and how they interpret authentic assessment and backwards design:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l5m66Y607U

Education: The Old Story to the New Story

            Education is so vastly prevalent in the global community that without it society would not be able to function. The problem is that in an ever changing world, education has not adapted as needed to new and challenging facets of the real world. The real world as we know it is not like the world of 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We can see cultural and societal changes year in and year out, yet the schooling system remains relatively similar. Only now are we just beginning to recognize the dire need for change in our educational system.

            When the education system was first implemented as tool for sharing information, it was at a time where society was appreciative of the opportunity to go to school and learn. The teacher was highly respected and could easily deliver information while have the uninterrupted attention of their entire class. However now we have reached a stage in life where the basics have become boring for students to learn and students are more and more unmotivated to intrinsically take an interest in the subjects they are being taught. There is a genuine lack of respect for authority as well, making delivering information effectively a real challenge for teachers. For this and many other reasons that I could talk all day about, the old “factory” model of teaching is simply not good enough anymore for achieving our national and societal objectives.

            There are many models that have been explored and theorized, like Traditional, Project-based, Holistic, Social reconstruction, Guided discovery, group work, lectures, concept attainment, and so on. But there is no one that has proven to be head over heels more effective than all the others. More often than not, the best method involves using parts of all the models depending on the learner, the teacher, the lesson being taught, and the general environment around. For example, lectures for exam review would be appropriate, while group work for learning about solving an application type problem would also be appropriate. The concept of personalization is something should be greatly considered while choosing your model of teaching. I really like the idea of students driving their own learning since it allows for them to make progress in subjects and information that is relevant to them. Through personalization, the student can get out what they put in (if they put in effort they will gain much more than those who don’t try). This puts the responsibility on the student for learning; the teacher merely facilitates and answers and questions the student might have. I honestly believe that virtually all students have great potential, but they don’t rise to the occasion since they are being force-fed information that they may or may not care about at all. Through personalization students can at least learn through methods that are effective to them about information that is relevant to them. In addition, encouraging good work and effort rather than trying to eliminate mistakes can lead to more productive work by students on future learning opportunities. We need to remember that mistakes are actually good; they facilitate learning and lead us to deeper questions and greater discoveries. Underlying this movement is the switch of focus from assessment of learner to assessment for and as learning. All 3 of the assessments are important for normal school functioning, but using assessment for and as learning are much more personalized, which in turn is exactly where I want to see education go in the future.