Let’s Focus on Growth, Not Judgment
What’s worth protecting more? Standards and expectations, or the learner?
An alignment between ideals and action is key when seeking cohesive practice. It’s no good being idealistic and then having the key metric by which teachers are measured – assessment – tell the story of old …
Of control.
Of obedience.
Of compliance.
Of replication.
‘Get in behind!’ the farmers call to their dogs down this way. Dogs that must be controlled, obedient, compliant. That must perform on command. That must work at the bidding of another to be seen as good.
Are our kids as dogs to a farmer?
For a dog is only as good as its ability to uphold and adhere to the standards others expect.
‘Good dog,’ we say when they do.
Jackson and Zmuda draw a distinction between compliant and engaged learners. Compliant learners
“follow directions, diligently complete assignments, and get good grades mostly because of their effort or adherence to directions”
This is easy to judge. All that needs to be asked is, ‘To what degree has the learner met these expectations?’ Expectations which have been standardised, turned into rubrics and tables to be ticked off.
‘Good kid,’ we say when they meet expectations.
Engaged learners, in the true sense of engaged, are more ‘difficult’. They
“tend to focus on the learning and share their thoughts unprompted, without consideration for those around them. Straightforward questions bore them, but questions that are personally relevant or that require teasing out ambiguity fascinate them. These learners take risks; they’re not afraid to try something new.”
This is much harder to judge.
I last wrote about how the vision is everything, how it must act as the sieve that sorts what’s best to do. And this goes for that hardest of all nuts to crack in education – assessment. That doesn’t mean it’s not uncrackable though.
Try this on for size:
“Assessment is more likely to be valid when the child is assessed by someone who knows them well.”
It comes from the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whariki. I remember being blown away when I first read it, initially because it challenged the one core understanding I had about assessment: it’s best when objective, when the personal is all stripped out and the work stands on its own.
But then, some time later, I saw the real reason. Yes, the subjective/objective dichotomy is there, and important. However, it’s the signal around what’s being protected that’s at the heart of the difference.
You see, the assessment model we have is based on what was in education (well, still is, for the majority). It judges the degree of compliance and replication in the learner, and thus is designed to protect the validity of what is expected in those areas. That is why objectivity is needed – it’s about where the learner sits in relation to a standard. The assessor needs to know the standard well to be able to make that judgment.
The farmer knows a good dog when he sees one. He’s not interested in the dog that doesn’t measure up, the dog that has a mind of its own and won’t ‘Get in behind’.
Te Whariki’s conception of assessment is different: it protects the learner. Subjectivity is required because if the learner is to try things out, experiment, fail, take risks, explore, they need someone there to support them, to know them. Along the way they will demonstrate many wonderful qualities, but it’s not likely to be packaged nicely on 23 November. Nevertheless, someone who knows them well will have seen enough, they will have witnessed growth, they will have a bank of many tiny witnessed moments to draw on. It’s the only way assessment can be valid if the learner is the center of things.
We must assess, in other words, for growth — not judgment — if an education approach that prioritizes experiences is to be realized. To tell a new story …
Of happiness
Of love
Of beauty
Of wonder …
we need an assessment model that supports the pursuit of those things; a model that allows us to notice and reflect back the richness kids are finding, and their potential for growth; a model that nourishes kids’ endeavours to get into the world.
Therefore, to focus on growth, our first assessment question should be
How rich is this learner’s experience?
And the second one
What might make it richer?
Do we need any more?
Probably — the possibilities are endless.
