No Grading, More Learning – I’m totally going to do this. Will it work in Korea?
No Grading, More Learning
May 3, 2010When Duke University’s Cathy Davidson announced her grading plan for a seminar she would be offering this semester, she attracted attention nationwide. Some professors cheered, others tut-tutted, and others asked “Can she do that?”
Her plan? Turn over grading to the students in the course, and get out of the grading business herself.
Now that the course is finished, Davidson is giving an A+ to the concept. “It was spectacular, far exceeding my expectations,” she said. “It would take a lot to get me back to a conventional form of grading ever again.”
Davidson is becoming a scholar of grading. She’s been observing grading systems at other colleges and in elementary and secondary schools, and she’s immersed herself in the history of grading. (If you want to know who invented the multiple choice test, she’ll brief you on how Frederick J. Kelly did so at Emporia State University and how he later renounced his technique.)
But it was her own course this semester — called “Your Brain on the Internet” — that Davidson used to test her ideas. And she found that it inspired students to do more work, and more creative work than she sees in courses with traditional grading.
Her approach — first announced on her blog — works based on contracts and “crowdsourcing.” First she announced the standards — students had to do all of the work and attend class to earn an A. If they didn’t complete all the assignments, they could get a B or C or worse, based on how many they finished. Students signed a contract to agree to the terms. But students also determined if the assignments (in this case blog posts that were mini-essays on the week’s work) were in fact meeting standards. Each week, two students led a discussion in class on the week’s readings and ideas — and those students determined whether or not their fellow students had met the standards.
I heard about this when they first posted about Davidson’s plans and I thought they were a good idea. Nothing revolutionary (though this author seems to think it is), but I like the approach that she took.
First, she establishes a general learning contract stating that students who fulfill all of the assignments get an A. Not submitting an assignment or not meeting the criteria, results in a lower grade (not set in stone).
Next, she assigned students into expert groups. Their groups are responsible for a topic, which is about a week long. The other students are then given assignments related to the content from that week (in this case, a blog posting). The expert group reads the blog posts and determines whether the student fulfilled the requirements or not.
I’ve done group grading before in which members assigned a percentage grade to their peers (I then averaged the grades and that’s what they got) as part of the total grade for the assignment. It was terrible. The biggest problem was the differences in groups. Some groups has much higher expectations than other groups. Even when performance was high, the grades were low. This was a serious point of contention among the students (as seen on end-of-course evaluations) and something I will never repeat.
Davidson’s approach does 2 things that make it much better: (1) they only judge whether the criteria were met or not (not giving a grade). A good rubric would make this a relatively easy task. (2) It focuses on frequent, smaller assignments rather than bigger projects.
I’m going to give this a try next semester, but I have to find the right class to do it with. I will teach a pedagogical English class that this might be perfect for (same class peer grading failed in last time). Smaller, bit-sized, weekly assignments graded by weekly “expert” groups.
A hole that I see in this is the way this compartmentalizes learning, though. Weekly topic groups don’t necessarily do well at synthesizing information from previous topics. These higher order assessments might be best implemented as midterm and final projects, larger assignments that require demonstration of knowledge gained throughout the semester.
In this case, there would be two parts, student-graded work and teacher-graded work. The percentage of these two would be around 80% and could be split in half (maybe), with attendance/participation rounding out the last 20%.
This is going to require a little more thought, but I like where it’s going. I want students to take more responsibility for their learning AND the learning experience their classmates have. I feel that being engaged as both producers and critics will motivate them to go beyond the simple requirements of the course and will provide the course with more diverse perspectives on teaching and learning language in Korea.
Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency
PHOENIX—As the academic year winds down, Creighton School Principal Rosemary Agneessens faces a wrenching decision: what to do with veteran teachers whom the state education department says don’t speak English well enough.
The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.
State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.
via online.wsj.com
Really, they are not grading on fluency. At least in this article, fluency is not really addressed. They are really looking at some sort of target accent and grammar use measures. I’m really wondering if the WSJ just didn’t report this with enough accuracy. I can’t imagine that they (the Arizona DoE) would be that messy in proposing evaluation measures.
Honestly, I don’t know what to think of this. The racist scumbags are out in force if you take a look at the comments section, and this is enough to make anyone thing this is a bad idea. However, it is much more than an issue of race or even language identity. This is the ongoing, knock-down, drag out fight on the issue of NESTs (native English-speaking teachers) and NNESTs (non-native English-speaking teachers) in ESL classrooms.
This debate has been hot in TESOL for many years. The growth of interest/belief in World Englishes has kept it at the forefront of criticism, theory, and practice discussions in recent years.
Ordinarily, I fall on the side of the NNESTs on this argument, but my opinion differs depending on the context and the goals of the organization. The policy, at first glance seems reasonable. Teachers with an accent or grammar that impedes communication, should be removed from the classroom (Arizona is only proposing that they are removed from ESL classrooms). This is completely reasonable, BUT….
Oops, we now have the problem of rating these teachers. Should all teachers be accessed by this measure? That would only make sense. There are plenty of native English-speaking teachers out there with terrible grammar and writing skills (also referred to in the article). We should get rid of them to. Or, should the people evaluated just have to be as good as the worse of the native English-speaking teachers? That would set a low bar, wouldn’t it?
What about a teacher with a heavy Scottish accent? I mean, have you ever seen Trainspotting? It may be English, but it’s pretty tough to understand for most Americans. I’d even venture to guess that most Americans understand English with a heavily influenced Spanish accent better. Really, we hear it much more often. So, the Scottish are out. While we are at it, the English, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans should be out, too. If they don’t speak American they shouldn’t be teaching our fragile children. Oh wait. Canadians. They’re out too. What’s up with that “aboot” thing. That ain’t American, ya know? They’re gone.
OK, so I lapse into a good deal of sarcasm. The question is left unanswered, though. What is the target? This is the slipperiest of slopes in a country where there is no standard. No matter where you live, everyone will insist that their English is standard. That doesn’t mean it won’t impede comprehension when interacting with students from other regions. If we have this much variability at home, what is the standard that we shoot for?
I don’t outright disagree with the Arizona policy; however, I am doubtful that they can come up with a fair assessment of these abilities that take into account the many factors that make a good teacher of English.
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
Wednesday 14 April 2010
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Jose Kevo, emurray)There has been a long, though declining, tradition in the United States in which public school teaching was embraced as an important public service. It was assumed that teachers provided a crucial foundation for educating young people in the values, skills and knowledge that enabled them to be critical citizens capable of shaping and expanding democratic institutions. Since the 1980s, teachers have been under an unprecedented attack by those forces that view schools less as a public good than as a private right. Seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.
via truthout.org
I love teachers and teaching. That has to be put up front, especially since I am often quick to criticize education policy, administration, and even some groups of teachers. While I reserve the right to criticize the actions or in-actions of some, I really do respect teachers and the profession (yes, profession) of teaching.
Read the article to better understand why I worry about the profession and the teachers who make up the profession.
Bruce Lee on Simplicity – garry’s posterous or Bruce Lee on Teaching (ht @daylemajor)
Click to view largeDownload full size (200 KB)In Jeet Kune Do, one does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity… It is merely simplicity; the ability to express the utmost with the minimum. It is the halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation. Jeet Kune-Do is basically a sophisticated fighting style stripped to its essentials.
Art is the expression of the self. The more complicated and restricted the method, the less the opportunity for expression of one’s original sense of freedom. Though they play an important role in the early stage, the techniques should not be too mechanical, complex or restrictive. If we cling blindly to them, we shall eventually become bound by their limitations. Remember, you are expressing the techniques and not doing the techniques. If somebody attacks you, your response is not Technique No.1, Stance No. 2, Section 4, Paragraph 5. Instead you simply move in like sound and echo, without any deliberation. It is as though when I call you, you answer me, or when I throw you something, you catch it. It’s as simple as that – no fuss, no mess. In other words, when someone grabs you, punch him. To me a lot of this fancy stuff is not functional.
A martial artist who drills exclusively to a set pattern of combat is losing his freedom. He is actually becoming a slave to a choice pattern and feels that the pattern is the real thing. It leads to stagnation because the way of combat is never based on personal choice and fancies, but constantly changes from moment to moment, and the disappointed combatant will soon find out that his ‘choice routine’ lacks pliability. There must be a ‘being’ instead of a ‘doing’ in training. One must be free. Instead of complexity of form, there should be simplicity of expression.
To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.In building a statue, a sculptor doesn’t keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiselling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Thus, contrary to other styles, being wise in Jeet Kune-Do doesn’t mean adding more; it means to minimize, in other words to hack away the unessential.
It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential.
This post was for the design realm, but it took on new meaning when referenced to teaching, particularly post-method perspectives. Following passage was particularly interesting.
A martial artist who drills exclusively to a set pattern of combat is losing his freedom. He is actually becoming a slave to a choice pattern and feels that the pattern is the real thing. It leads to stagnation because the way of combat is never based on personal choice and fancies, but constantly changes from moment to moment, and the disappointed combatant will soon find out that his ‘choice routine’ lacks pliability. There must be a ‘being’ instead of a ‘doing’ in training. One must be free. Instead of complexity of form, there should be simplicity of expression.
Over-reliance on set methods strangles creativity. Unfortunately, this is now how teachers are currently trained. Most teacher trainers understand the need to vary approaches (yes, I’m using these interchangeably. Don’t freak out) and move beyond method, but the tendency is for teacher education classes to focus on distinct methods. I understand why. We want to provide a foundation for teachers to base their practice on. The problem is that this presentation of methods ends up convincing students that they have to pick one (usually the one the teacher is pushing most–we all have biases).
The end result is batches of teachers who strive to stick to a method even in the face of realities that suggest changes in method, or strategies. Dogma is dangerous: dogma is stubborn, dogma doesn’t bend, and dogma unrealistic.
We need to focus more on the art of teaching than the practice. Pedagogical ecology (Daniel & Poole, 2009) is probably a better approach to both teaching, not only in teacher education but the broad range of teaching and training contexts.
On Language – Social – NYTimes.com – and a short post on language change and variety
Leslie DavidBy BEN ZIMMER
In our Web-driven era of social media and social networking, we are all learning more sophisticated ways to “socialize” that go far beyond cocktail-party chatter. But being social in the 21st century can sometimes be downright unsettling.
Consider the anxieties over a linguistic trend that The Wall Street Journal’s Overheard column expressed last month. “A new catchphrase in meetings is ‘let me socialize that,’ ” The Journal wrote. “No, they aren’t suggesting they will see if they can get a government bailout. Or introducing some left-wing political theories to business. Instead the phrase means ‘I’ll discuss this with my colleagues and circle back to you.’ ”
via nytimes.com
Fun (for the linguist in me) treatment of the word “social”.
The changing uses of words makes it difficult to teach language. Regional, age, and SES differences (to name a few) all influence language use. This is why learners fluent in English can have such a difficult time communicating at a fast food restaurant, in the dorm with undergraduates, or with any language variation outside of the standards they have had exposure to (difficulties many native speakers face as well).
How can I teach a language that is always changing? As with most teachers of English, I focus on academic language that, while it changes over time, is more much resilient to change than less formal domains. I fall back on standards (as ephemeral as they are) to provide a foundation.
The foundation is not enough, though. Standards create expectations that, when challenged, cause communication to falter. This is where variety comes in. Language variety increases exposure to language outside of your classroom standards. It’s faster/slower, drawl/clipped, enunciated/mumbled, male/female, formal/informal, and all the other wonders of language variety. Working outside of your classroom standards can encourage skills to process non-standard varieties, thus providing tools to learners to interact with the greater world of English speakers.
Most of us in EFL contexts are preparing learners who are less likely to interact in English with someone who sounds just like us than they are to encounter a fast network of global English speakers. In my neck of the woods, Korea, learners are more likely use English with Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Malaysian, and Thai speakers of English than they are with Americans, Canadians, and speakers from the other (preferred) English-speaking countries. The reality is that we do them a disservice if we teach them otherwise.
This post went way off topic, but I’m procrastinating, so whatcha’ gonna do? 😉
Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say – rationale on p.2 could be student teaching
Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.
I’m not comparing these unskilled internships to a teaching practicum, but the rationale on p.2 that lower income students are disadvantaged by this practice, isn’t much different from student teaching.
Think about it, for 3+ months, students not only have to work full-time at a school for no pay, but they also have to pay tuition to the tune of thousands of dollars. How many people (both the haves and the have nots) have decided against teaching for this very reason?
Not only do aspiring teachers have to pay to work that semester, but they also need to either load-up on courses the other 3.5 yrs or add another semester onto their 4 yr degree. This is an antiquated and unnecessary requirement that should (and likely will) die off in coming years.
While this experience can be (not always is) beneficial, the investment simply isn’t worth it. For most student teachers, the experience is nothing more than an introduction to the teachers’ lounge and the teaching of a unit and not the apprenticeship under a master teacher as many would like to claim.
Why not pay student teachers. If they are ready to intern, they are certainly ready to be teacher aides. Pay them as such. Instead of the lump taking notes in the back of the class for a month or so, have them monitor students, give feedback, and generally increase teachers’ ability to individualize instruction and then pay them for it.
For their part, universities have to stop treating (and charging) student teachers as full-time students. A fee is certainly called for, but the full cost of tuition, which most have to pay, is a terrible burden. The rising cost of university education is already putting these students out into a world where they are only going to make as little as $18,000 in some areas, yet they could have many thousands in student loans. The most unfortunate students will be paying these loans longer than the mortgage on their homes (if they can qualify for one with an already huge debt load).
There are programs that are doing this, but most are for those who already have degrees and are getting MA’s or advanced certification, or those who are in under-served fields or regions. These need to be the norm and not the exception in our teacher education system.
It is unwise and immoral to continue as we have.
What do you think? Not a fully formed idea, but certainly an ongoing concern of mine, particularly the role that I do and will continue to play in this.
An Open Letter to Educators
An entertaining video to get the point across on the need to change education. These are talking points that most teachers involved with 21st Century learning skills have hurt many times, but it’s an energetic plea that might make others interested too.
My favorite quote:
“society no longer cares how many facts we can memorize”