Wednesday, March 23, 2011

A Restructuring

“Public Secondary Schooling” should be reconceptualized (structure, curriculum, and pedagogy) to be effective in 2025 in many ways.  It’s structure should be more flexible, and not be so divided across disciplines.  Assessments should be qualitative and there should not be such a focus on high stakes testing.  The curriculum in 2025 should be focused on the “big” picture of the content area.  As Oakes and Lipton say in Teaching to Change the World, the curriculum should “place the human story in a larger context” (p. 145).   Students should use their own histories to compare and contrast.  The focus should not just be on the powerful, but the powerless and include other perspectives.  The pedagogy of this curriculum should therefore include a more contructivist approach.  Classes should involve projects that force students to solve a problem.  Finally, the community should be involved. 



Cooperative learning to solve a problem

By having an interactive, interdisciplinary, cooperative and project-driven base in schools, the focus switches from rote memorization to understanding of content.  Tests will still have their place, but students, teachers and schools will be able to focus not on test taking skills but understanding. 



As the focus switches from testing to understanding, the content is not only taught, but important skills for 2025 are as well.  Students will be able to work together, communicate, solve problems and make connections.  On top of all that, students learn better in a cooperative setting.  “Even the strongest students make considerable intellectual gains when they work with students of all skill levels” (p. 192).  These are the skills that students, future adults, will need in 2025 and beyond as businesses and employers move from organizational charts, (the traditional pyramid) to networks (Draves & Coates, p. 129).  If students are taught those skills and they learn from them, then they can use them as adults in networks and continually learn.


Finally, in school systems (and states and nations) that focus on interaction and problem-solving projects and not high stakes testing, the surrounding communities will benefit.  In 2011, if a school does not perform, they may be “punished” by a withholding of funds.  This obviously will not help the flailing school.  If test scores are low, they might not get the money they might need to help bring those scores up, to help teachers focus more on understanding through projects and problem solving.  Additionally, if schools are not meeting requirements, that public information is made available which hinders economic and business development in the surrounding community and hurts real estate. Oakes and Lipton write, “All of the scores make headlines. …state policymakers proclaim a crisis  when their state’s achievement scores are lower than other states; federal and state government threatens to withhold funds when a school’s test scores indicate that it is ‘low-performing’; the real estate salesperson compares the local school’s test scores; advantaged parents trumpet high-achieving scores as irrefutable proof of their children’s merit” (p. 223).  I do not argue that test scores should be private, but they should not be such a focus.  What should also be made public are the projects and learning the school is doing.  The community should be involved which will help real estate and economic development.  

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Schooled.


The idea of schooling in 2025 will have changed.  I believe that as our world becomes increasingly connected, fast-paced and accessible, schooling focuses more on characteristics and skills and less on content.  Content will still have its role! Understanding biology, math, literature and social studies will still be very important, if not more so.  But more importantly, students will need to have certain skills to help them succeed. It will not be enough to get good grades and test scores.  Students (and the future work force) will need to be problem solvers.  They will need to be able to communicate effectively.  They will need to be flexible, understanding and tolerant.  These very abstract things will be more important in 2025 than the concrete data that seems to be the focus in 2011.

“Schooling” means not only learning in a formal school setting, but learning through experience.  It is really through experience that most of our “schooling” occurs.  We are motivated by good experiences.  Some would argue that true learners are motivated by the bad as well.   We remember experiences, not lectures, notes, tests, essays or homework.  It is exactly that that will engage ALL students in learning.  Teachers need to focus on providing experiences in the classroom to help understanding.  I think this is the true definition of differentiation.  By adding difference ways of experiencing the content, more students will be able to access it, understand it, analyze and synthesize it. 

There are many ways to do this.   In history, it can mean listening to the latest American Idol contestant sing a Gershwin song.  The students will then have experienced that song in their world, not in the 1920s.  It becomes relevant and accessible, and thusly, memorable in the larger picture of the Jazz Age.  It can mean using manipulation items in math to understand how things are broken down.  It can mean seeing the results of chemical change in a science lab.  Ultimately, I believe that by differentiating instruction teachers provide many ways for students to experience something so that all students can find a way to learn that is meaningful for them.