Watson,
P., Abel, C., Alexander, V., *K Mayo (2002) Stories from the Shadows: High-Stakes Testing and Teacher Preparation,
Language Arts 79:3
Accountability
testing casts a long shadow over teachers at all levels. This article provides the personal stories
of four reading professors in a large teacher preparation university in Texas
who experience pressure from the ExCET
requirements on their curriculum. All
four instructors are committed to teaching that is learner centered and
performance based. However, their
university program is threatened to lose accreditation if they are unable to
raise their students’ ExCET scores within a year. Their struggles to remain true to their understandings of best
practice while the threatening shadow of high-stakes testing looms can be both
an encouragement and an example to others.
In addition, these stories lead to thoughtful reflection regarding
current practice and beliefs about learning and teaching.
All
four reading professors resist the temptation to mold their curriculum to
directly reflect the test, even though it is assumed that this may be the most
efficient means of improving test scores in their students. Responsible for a different aspects of the
curriculum and having various teaching styles, each finds a way to resist;
though it is easier for some than others.
One professor engages her students in designing the content of the
course so that it will both reflect the ExCET standards as well as meet individual
interests of her students. Another
vociferously objects while bending to the inevitable information transmission
model too many times for comfort.
Specific
strategies that the instructors use to engage the students in constructing
knowledge include collaborative learning groups, teacher-student collaboration,
posing problems to be solved and engage critical thinking, debriefing and
reflecting on what is being learned, stories from literature, and paired
learning with students from another university with different cultural
backgrounds.
This
article grew out of regular meetings that the professors held during the year
as they grappled with the issues. They
became learners together while grappling with their problem, and in the process
they individually clarified their personal beliefs about teaching and learning,
and adjusted their classroom practice. These teachers model resourcefulness,
creativity and commitment to their ideals.
They are honest about their frustrations and are valiant in their
attempt to solve the problem together despite different approaches and
attitudes toward the problem.
Though
all four teachers discover there must be some amount of time dedicated to
experiencing questioning and information transfer in a style that is similar to
the ExCET test, they find that they can place this experience on the
scaffolding of real learning attained in a constructionist framework.
The
article was obscure about exactly which university had accreditation problems,
so I just had to do a bit of sniffing … an internet search for the professors
shows that three out of the four are currently teaching at Stephen
F.
Austin State University. SFA began as
and always has been primarily a teachers college. It’s my alma mater, so I’m a bit chagrined (even if I did
graduate back in the dark ages).
I’ve
taken two courses in this program previous to this semester, and have been
noticing the course design. It has been
a while since I was in school last (1978) so the turn to collaborative teaching
at the university level has occurred while I’ve been otherwise engaged. I had thought that the difference was
between graduate school and under-grad work.
Also, my under-grad work was in speech pathology – a very task oriented
field compared to literacy and general language development. These factors may be part of the difference,
but certainly there has been shift away from the high information transmission
model (especially in this course J ) I’m enjoying the experience and learning a
lot through the modeling.
This
spring I attended a training of trainers workshop based on the adult education
principals that Jane Vella proposes in “Learning that Lasts”. The workshop was very focused on application
and doing rather than theory. I’m
seeing many of the same principals pop up in this article and others that I’ve
read recently. Vella gives me some
structure for planning to hang onto as I think about how to set goals and pose
problems that encourage learner construction of knowledge. I can see some of her methodology in the
strategies used by the professors in this article.
And
about those elusive “electronic portfolios” we have to do … now I get it. We are being engaged in applying our own
knowledge to the required standards…very clever.
Besides
shared commitment to learner centered instruction, the professors also agree
that testing is here to stay. It won’t
go away; we aren’t allowed the privilege of choosing between idealistic freedom
in the classroom and test-driven drudgery.
We must each figure out how to find the middle ground. As I think about this, it is tempting to try
and figure out where I’m going to plant my stake and identify myself along the
educational scale from “Summerhill” to
“Drill and Kill”. However, it seems
reasonable to expect that each class population will require me to slide a bit
one way or the other. What do you
think? In the SFA situation, only one
out of seven subgroups failed to make the 70% mark so the whole program was
under review for two years. I doubt
that anyone at the other (first tier) universities was teaching much
differently. SFA takes students that
can’t get into other schools … was this affecting their scores? And if so, I wonder which differences in
their adjusted program made the difference.
Was it what was happening inside of class ….or was it what was being
additionally offered outside of class?
Was it a problem of teaching style?
of content?
One
of the professors asks: Does the test influence
teacher education programs to teach in ways that may not be in the best
interest of our students? This brings up
the question of WHAT is in the best interest of students? Is it in their best interest to spend money
and time on a program that doesn’t prepare them for professional examination?
This
article fueled some interesting discussion between my husband and me. He is a very concrete thinker. Things are black and white for him. The engineering type. He has always been skeptical of education
programs because they are so “airy-fairy” and have not historically required
teachers to be true scholars in their field (he always uses the example of Math
teachers who never had to take higher level mathematics in college, because of
all the math education courses that could be substituted) Education specialists apparently want to
maintain a conceptual curriculum while the public cries for concrete
demonstration of achievement and knowledge…I wonder if part of the problem is
that we are just different learners? Do
some kinds of students just need to have more help connecting the dots?