And so we come to the final chapter of Cooper's Talk About Assessment, which on the whole, was a lot more enjoyable than the bland cover and boring title would have suggested. This final chapter deals with Implementing Change, and true to form, suggested some good ideas, but remained rather vague in a lot of ways. Of course there is no real way to quantify how much change is needed in education, as the entire system is affected by any number of factors, and focusing on one, or even several, never produces results like in a vacuum. School boards, curriculum's and whole societies routinely go through flavour of the month style approaches to education. "Open concept", student driven, rigid, standardized testing, complete freedom and creativity, etc etc. And they bounce students around and back and forth and mix them up. Oddly enough though, one outcome is predictable and stable, inevitably, students end up learning. Not all of them, but the vast majority will learn regardless what system you implement. That, I'm sure, comes down to teacher quality and people who care about education.
I do believe the outmoded system we've been brought into, the Industrial Revolution model designed to produce workers (and being perfected in a lot of other countries, like the Chinese school system, and those in Korea and Japan) needs to be completely reworked and updated. Unfortunately, that isn't about changing a system, but rather changing a society. Good luck. Change on these instances must occur on a much smaller scale. Montessori schools, nature schools (something I'm more and more in love with), are viable alternatives and provide unique learning experiences that have measured, proven results. An issue for why these will probably always remain local, small solutions is that education is also A HUGE industry. The amount of textbooks, documents, studies, etc. that rely on our current educational model, as well as teachers, boards, unions, staff, infrastructure, Universities, etc., is staggering. That tried and tested model is entrenched for a very specific reason, for self survival over results and actual efficiency. Okay, I'm definitely going off a bit, tying this back into Cooper's actual chapter, I did find his portion on Collaboration to be quite intriguing. Why is it that there is SOOOOO little collaboration across school boards and schools for teachers? Why are lessons seen as individual projects we all have to develop on our own? Is there any real evidence showing that a lesson plan from scratch, or based on solely one persons involvement, is superior to those shared in a group? I'm guessing no. Currently there are a lot of lesson plans available online, but they usually seem to be cursory kinds of lesson plans, with lower quality materials and structure. I would love for actual school boards to create indexes and catalogs of their lesson plans sorted by subject and grade level. This would definitely help spread best practices and help new teachers develop, while also helping to spread proactive teaching techniques and change teaching practices in a good way. Obviously outdated, ineffective and bad lesson plans won't be spread as much and not adopted, so they will naturally phase out without having to target teachers themselves. Finally, the final part on Fairness and Humour was a welcome ending point. I feel that while many teachers believe they can be funny as an effective teaching tool, fairness isn't often as highly regarded. Teachers who enjoy being the center of attention will use humour to either have students like them, or hopefully like the material. However, humour, especially sarcasm, can go too far and often has unintended negative effects. Students can lose respect for the teacher, feel uncomfortable, or even it can be a form of bullying. If fairness is kept in mind, and valued from all standpoints, then the classroom dynamic and well being will reflect it positively. Fairness also means acknowledging the limits and restrictions of a teacher, our own personalities, and what to expect from the students. I see so many teachers with unrealistic expectations on their students achievement or behavior, and often blaming students for any failures or problems. Blame should never be a part of a classroom, and moving beyond 'right or wrong' and assigning fault is a hallmark of a truly effective, and forward thinking teacher. I wish I could say I've retained all the lessons and information from Cooper, but honestly, a lot of it is already out the door. But I know that as I step into the classroom, and move along this journey into teaching, those ideas and foundations will crop back up, and help me address my own needs as a teacher. It was an interesting read, even enjoyable at times, but I won't pretend I'm not glad it's over now :P Thanks for reading, Peter
1 Comment
linda radford
12/18/2015 11:03:12 am
Thanks for writing Peter! I think Cooper is the first text book I ever read cover to cover too. I hope you are moving on to reading more youth fiction now :)
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