To begin class Dr. Hlynka shared four relatively current blunders in the field of education and curriculum. I immediately asked myself the question...
What are we doing in today's classroom that we may/will regret in the future?
I couldn't help but think of the provincial educational debate regarding assessment. Teachers are no longer allowed to include behavior or participation when assessing assignments or deduct marks for late assignments. In theory this makes sense as each students mark would then represent their abilities or achievements regarding course content. For example, the report card marks I am in the process of calculating should represent the students abilities in English, NOT their classroom behavior. However, personal experience during this entire semester has shown it a struggle to motivate students to hand work in "on time." Students, contrary to popular belief, are quite bright, and it didn't take them very long to realize that I couldn't punish them for late assignments. Many people stronlgy disagree with this movement claim that we losing the chance to teach students the valuable lesson that deadlines are important.
Despite the frustrated tone you may have noticed in the above paragraph I am actually personally in favor of this new trend. That is, of course, as long as there is additional areas (in report cards, progress reports etc) for reporting and assessing student participation and behaviour. This format would give the best of both worlds....it would provide feedback on the students actual abilities in the subject as well as comment on his "student-ness."
I asked myself the question - If report card marks still include behaviour/participation and i found two students with identical 55%'s....from an outside perspective would that give me any indication of their abilities? What is one student was a bright kid who didn't hand assignments in on time and the other an ESL student who tried enough to fill the participation column of the rubric of each assignment but achieve few of the actual outcomes. Would it not be more valuable to see the two students' reports broken down the following way
Student #1 -
Academics --> Met all grade level expectations
Behaviour/Participation --> Rarely on task, struggles with attendance and participation
Student #2 - Not yet meeting grade level expectations
Behaviour/Participation --> on task, attends and participates in all activities
I feel that in time, as Universities will have to adjust their acceptance criteria as the traditional "marks" will have changed. Perhaps students motivation to hand in assignments in on time will increase if university screening processes take behaviour into consideration. Would they ever?
If you were a university would you rather have a "rough student" with potential or a slightly less gifted student with proven motivation? Any ideas?
Our discussion on the 3 methaphors of curriculum
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I completely agree that in the reporting system there should be opportunities to report on knowledge and skills AS WELL AS behaviour.
ReplyDeleteI also think it can almost be one of those "catch 22" type situations. When report card time rolls around, it can be difficult to assess "academics" when nothing has been handed in. Therefore, how can you accurately depict what the student knows? The low grade (due to no proof of learning) would actually be reflecting the fact that no work has been completed!
On the elementary music report card (at least in my division), participation is actually one of the descriptors - "Actively engages in creating and responding to music". I am so thankful that this is available because participation is vital to learning music. It makes sense, because if a child chooses not to participate in learning to play a melody on the barred instruments, he/she is also not meeting one of our other requirements - "Applies concepts and skills when making and responding to music". Students cannot achieve success in certain areas of music without participating, because it is not taught via note-taking, written work and homework. It is all active.
I'm sure there could be similar arguments for all other subject areas because learning should be active. Learning is not a passive activity. Participation and learning go hand-in-hand, so I'm not sure why participation and/or completing assignments would not be "report worthy"!
And of course, how are we helping our students to be successful in this world if they don't understand the concept of being responsible and timely with their work?!
Ryan somewhere in the recent past I read stats of the science dropout rate at the University of Manitoba...it was really high (60% or something crazy like that)...left me wondering...here are a bunch of kids who think they can handle science and are signing up for classes and don't have a clue what they are in for...so in what way were they being effectively prepared for the rigours of university...it seemed to me that the reverse was true and the system was in fact setting them up for failure...you are absolutely right that they will figure the system out in a heart beat and will do what they have always done, which is the bare minimum...currently the system seems to find that acceptable...unfortunate I believe...and as Ashley comments apparently modelling responsible behaviour is passe...
ReplyDeleteCome join Louis Riel School Division! We have to fill out academic comments and personal/social development comments for each child we teach. This means that we do get to comment on things such as the impact of misbehaviour on achievment and submitting late assignments. It is nice to have the ability to comment on both, since behaviour does affect learning.
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