I frequently use a manufacturing model to describe our education system. Our students roll down the assembly line where we install math on them, and we install reading, and science, and social studies, and at the end of the line our quality control engineers measure each product to make sure that it complies with the blueprints — to make sure that every student knows exactly the same things.
Yesterday, I suggested that assessment should be much more like the performances that I saw in the universiity theatre the other night, or my son’s band performances, or my daughters ROTC drill team. I’m not sure what this would look like for reading, math, science, social studies, and health. It would take more creative minds than mine to paint that picture.Â
I think I’m suggesting that we turn things around a bit, and make our students the machines, and make it their job to perform the product. Turn the students into the engine and teach the kids to work, not just learn. Rehersals are very much like the learning engine that I envision. The students work together, performing their parts, feeding off of each others work, knowledge, and experience, to enrich their own performance, regardless of whether they are an actor, lighting technician, director, muscians, etc.Â
Again, I’m not sure what this would look like in a science class. But I think there is a way.
Comments?
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I think we watch our students perform everyday. Whether it’s listening to a child read and keeping record of his/her progress over time, looking at the writing skills and how they’re developing, observing students skills with scientific method or the research process, or even observing their ability to work, talk, study and play collaboratively with others.
I like the idea of a learning engine. Currently, we do “install” a lot of learning on our students but we could do better at designing ways of looking at how they make the learning work for them and we could do better at giving them an opportunities to use information to be innovative or creative.
We still have much work to do in our schools to help teachers change their pedagogy to reflect the changing world around us. I’m seeing some signs of this around me…
Diane,
You make an excellent point, about how teacher see their students performances everyday. How might we externalize those performances?
Hi Dave,
Externalize….do you mean to make it more public such as the performances you’ve pointed out in your last few posts? The most logical answer is through some of our web 2.0 tools. Those that archive student work are most naturally the ones I think of. So, let’s say we have a first grade class using a blog as a writing tool. We (teachers, parents and others) can go back through the archive of student’s writing and look at the progress over time. What we determine is an assessment is all dependent on how you define the term. Unfortunately, we use the word assessment for those once a year tests too and we don’t get the results of those in time to do much about it except to try to keep remediating the unmet skills on the test. But, how do we “test” writer’s voice, writer’s style, writer’s development as a creative individual.
Back to externalized performances from your postings: I have two daughters who were both in marching band all four years of their high school careers. I wouldn’t replace that experience for anything. You could sit in the stands on any given weekend and see their progress from week to week. What would you assess? Their ability to get every note exactly right every time or their ability to work together as a group toward a common goal? Or their ability to let their voices be heard through their music. In this case, a group could play every note just right, place their feet in just the right places on the field and still not portray the music in such a way that those assessing it (the audience) would feel compel to stand and applaud.
I know this is a long answer but my brain is finding all sorts of connections to what you’ve been posting about and it’s given me lots of food for thought. Thanks for the conversation today!
I always thought that learning should demonstrate mastery of the subject. Perhaps this idea of performance would go along with that idea. What about all the students that have anxiety over or during performance or demonstration of these skills? I know many students who would prefer to write the exam and move on.
An exam would be easy. I often point out, when I play a movie trailer produced by a group of high school students in New York, for the play, Othelo, for their Literacy class, that writing the report would have been easy, compared to producing a movie trailer that was limited to thirty seconds.
I guess the question is, do you want to hire someone who can remember things, or who can do things?
Students who are not accustomed to performing (whatever shape that takes) would have to become accustomed.