May 23rd, 2009
One challenge for the teachers who dabble in the inquiry-approach is how to assess something that looks so very diverse, open-ended and fluid, in some ways. How does a teacher align the inquiry with standards and expectations, school-wide, provincial or national?
Although student-initiated and teacher-facilitated inquiry process seems to be a highly personalised experience, the teacher can build structure and measurable elements into it. This can be in the form of provocation that the teacher provides during the inquiry or the choice of resources. For instance while doing a unit on accessibility of water; the teacher can bring in resources, human or material, about the journey of water to our homes or those about the accessibility of water to different people in the world, depending on how narrow or broad a focus she wants in the unit. This focus in terms of content can be determined by the standards and expectations while the construction of meaning and understanding for that content can be harnessed by the inquiry approach.
The fair, valid and reliable assessment for inquiries or any aspect of student learning has to be both formative and summative. This ongoing nature of the assessment affords the teacher the opportunity to assess the process as well as the product. The inquiry cycle, for those who use it during the inquiry process, provides ample scope for assessment at almost every step. The feedback provided to the student to shape his learning, the students’ response to that feedback, the teacher using the feedback to inform teaching-learning in the classroom – all this forms crucial and realistic modes of learning.
Unlike a standardised test, inquiries can be best assessed by self, peer or teacher. This makes assessment a holistic and learning experience in itself. Teachers often build reflective tools into the inquiry cycle where the student reflects on the findings so far and next steps. This makes scaffolding not just a teacher regulated process but a deliberate exercise on part of the student. I cannot think of any traditional assessment strategy that, in itself, is so rich and reliable.
The product of inquiries, itself is very varied and complex to merit a simple letter grade or a mark. What helps in that case are descriptors in the form of rubric providing concrete and meaningful insights, to both the teacher and the student, as to what the student has understood and can do and what student hasn’t demonstrated in terms of understanding and skills. Although it sounds rather simplistic, making rubric to assess the outcome of inquiries can be a complex and interactive process. A letter grade or a mark pales in comparison to the complexity of the learning and is ambiguous, incomprehensible and therefore seems arbitrary.
Tags: assessment, formative learning, inquiry approach, inquiry cycle, learning, reflective tools, student, student learning, student-initiated inquiry, summative learning, teacher, teacher-facilitated inquiry
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May 18th, 2009
“The school needs to have more student-initiated inquiries than teacher-driven ones”, was the observation of the visiting team of IB experts who had come to study classroom practices in the school that I work with. Teacher training is an important part of my job description and is one of the aspects of teachers’ professional development that I have struggled with for the past couple of years. Coming from veterans in the field, persons whose work I have been following for a number of years, made me reflective and empathetic to see it from the lens of the teachers in the classroom who are trying, with varying degrees of success, to adapt to the inquiry-based approach of teaching-learning.
Our perception of adults in general and teachers in particular, is that they ought to know better than children. As adults, we have experienced life more and therefore ought to have all the correct answers. So in our interactions with children, we assign ourselves the role of “answer provider”. Since there is only one “answer-provider” in a classroom, by implication there can only be one correct answer. Also then only some kind of inquiries can be raised, the ones that the “answer-provider” knows the answer to, and the rest are discarded and disdained as “silly” or “impertinent” or “irrelevant”, no matter how intelligent and relevant they are to the question-poser.
Even when we do, there is little patience with or faith in the child to facilitate his search for the answer or construction of meaning. It is so much easier and acceptable to provide the answers to the child. Then there is the other element of student led enquiries – how does a teacher assess the work of the student when there is “multiple correct answers”? I will elaborate more on this topic in my next blog.
Some of the difficulty in letting children initiate and take charge of their inquiries stems from our difficulty in accepting that the child is an individual today with his own perspective, and education should bring out more of his individuality. The urge is to mould him into our image of “a somebody”, so that he can be “that somebody” in the future – with complete disregard to “the somebody” that he is a today.
Teachers trained and raised with such beliefs, therefore, find it very difficult to adapt to the inquiry-approach which celebrates “multiple correct answers” as the child directs his inquiry and charts the course of constructing meaning. Unlearning the teacher-taught methodology takes longer and is more difficult than learning how to help students generate and find their own answers to those inquiries. But the latter cannot happen without the former.
So, to the teachers who are working to adopt the inquiry-based approach to teaching-learning and adapting yourselves for it, I commend your efforts.
Keep up the good work……it only gets better!!
Tags: classroom, classroom practices, IB, International Baccalaureate, learning, professional development, school, student, student initiated, student initiated inquiries, teacher, Teacher Training, teaching, teaching-learning
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May 13th, 2009
‘The e-portfolio is the central and common point for the student learning experience… It is a reflection of the student as a person undergoing continuous personal development, not just a store of evidence.’
Geoff Rebbeck, e-Learning Coordinator, Thanet College
e-portfolios provide learners the opportunity to personalise even the most prescribed curriculum by customising the learning process based on preferences and needs.
One of the main benefits from using e-Portfolio in learning is the ability to share developing ideas and receive prompt feedback, thus increasing the learners’ ability to understand concepts that were initially unfamiliar. When effectively embedded into practice, the dialogic functions commonly found in e-portfolio systems support a learning community to enhance the performance of both, individuals and teams.
A model of e-portfolio-based learning, adapted from Kolb (1984)
As learners experience critical moments in their learning, they can express their responses, collect and organise information and plan their next steps, potentially within an integrated digital environment. One of the more important skills fostered by e-portfolio is of reflection and forward planning – skills that have relevance across all subject disciplines.
E-portfolios facilitate the recording, organising and storage of narratives about self which develop over time to provide a record of the learning journey that each learner is engaged in. Learners gain knowledge about self and environment by exploring aspects of their learning and wider life experiences.
Last but not the least, e-portfolio use can generate many of the skills that learners need to effectively navigate their way through the complex demands of an information age.
Note: Sourced from a report titled Effective Practice with e-Portfolios, published by JISC
Tags: development, e-Learning, e-portfolio, e-portfolio systems, learning, student
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