Week 9: What are the challenges in shifting content from "what" to "where" and "how"?

Based on the inservice I just had today, this question has some immediate frustrations for me.  The teachers were finally given a full introduction to the state's new Teacher Evaluation System. Naturally this engendered a lot of anxiety, especially the aspect of the evaluation that has to do with test scores.  Everyone was right on board for all of the other components of the evaluation, but when that innocuous little blue box at the bottom labeled "student learning standard" entered the conversation, all sense of logic and level-headedness left the room.  Naturally teachers are worried that a good portion of their evaluation as a professional may be determined by factors they feel are far beyond their control - absenteeism, special ed, poor test-taking skills - any number of things that we know can have an adverse affect on test scores now suddenly take center stage. These kinds of discussions make me anxious, for the same reasons, but also because in the larger picture, my biggest worry is that teachers will be operating in an atmosphere of fear.  This will motivate many teachers to do one thing - narrow their teaching to the test.  I can't fault this line of thinking - if you feel your job, your way of earning a living, and your sense of self as a professional in your field depends on this, it's easy to see how common sense might fly right out the window.

In our reasonable, logical minds, we know these tests are such a very narrow measure of what students know. As Thomas and Seely Brown point out, these tests are great at measuring the "what" of content.  Multiple choice and short answer are the easiest way to measure certain kinds of learning - mainly "what". Although I could point to a lot of things that ordinarily would make shifting the content from "what" to "where" and "how" a challenge, this is by far the biggest barrier, and now policy is making this shift more difficult than ever.

By way of contrast, author and blogger Will Richardson recently posted about a new school he visited called the Workshop School. As he points out, a major difference here is that the norms of the school are not created by administration - they are created by the learners - the staff and students.  The school is project based, and encourages students to pursue and explore areas of personal interest.  Richardson says of the school, "the vision is really clear: learning is about experience and doing and creating real, meaningful stuff together as a community." A far cry from most schools today, which look strangely like the schools of yesterday. Schools like this believe that inquiry-based learning that encourages critical thinking and creativity involves students tackling real-world issues and controversies, solving problems and creating solutions, and participating in the public creation and improvement of ideas and knowledge. Doesn't it follow that if students are engaged in these types of activities that they can probably handle a ridiculous multiple choice test without us demeaning their intelligence by focusing so narrowly on the "what's"?

An article that is a little old, but still inspiring to read, is one of Seymour Papert's from 1993.  In it, he imagines a "knowledge machine" as a metaphor for events close enough in the future that they should demand serious consideration now.  He is referring (in 1993) to the idea that technology will expand our knowledge and ability to explore in ways that will completely change our idea of what it is to learn and know. His argument is that pure focus on the 3 R's as a cornerstone for learning is wrong-headed.  He doesn't disagree that kids need these, but only that they are over-emphasized and given too much importance at the expense of other ways of learning and knowing.  He argues that, "The possibility of freely exploring worlds of knowledge calls into question the very idea of an administered curriculum." Most importantly, he points out what is now obvious, "A child who has grown up with the freedom to explore with such machines (metaphorical knowledge machine) will not sit quietly through the standard curriculum dished out in most schools today. Already, children are made increasingly restive by the contrast between the slowness of School and the more exciting pace they experience [outside of school]."

Papert wrote this 20 years ago, and we see it play out every day in classrooms everywhere. Yet we continue to put systems into place that make teachers believe they need to continue to operate this way. At this point it's counter-intuitive to almost everything we now know about how children learn.

As I read back over this post I can tell it's been one of those days!

*Note that in spite of my ranting, I am not against tests per se, but I am against high stakes tests that are used to make bad decisions that have far reaching, mostly negative, consequences for students and teachers. I don't think any of us went into this profession so that we could teach kids how to take multiple choice tests.


Resources:
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: CreateSpace?].

Richardson, W. (2013, October 1). Setting Norms. Will Richardson. Retrieved November 1, 2013, from http://willrichardson.com/post/62844851422/setting-norms?utm_content=buffera1280&utm_source=buff

Stephenson, N. (n.d.). Introduction to Inquiry Based Learning . TeachInquiry. Retrieved November 1, 2013, from http://teachinquiry.com/index/Introduction.

Papert, S. (fall, 1993). Obsolete Skill Set: The 3 Rs-Literacy and Letteracy in the Media Age. Papert.org. Retrieved November 1, 2013, from http://www.papert.org/articles/ObsoleteSkill