Harnessing The Dynamics of Public Education by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Education Crucible Returns

One of the primary obstacles to facilitating truly personalized learning is the overemphasis on standardized, high-stakes tests. Standardized measures have their place; however, balance is needed. As the futurist Gary Marx (2014) wrote,

Let’s admit it. On the one hand, standards can be helpful. Formative testing can guide us toward more personal learning and maybe even higher achievement. On the other hand, standards and standardized tests can potentially freeze the system into a lockstep that overlooks individual differences and the stark reality of a world that will simply not stand still, not for a minute. Few, if any, tests measure the full range of talents and abilities. Much of what we’ll need to know and be able to do in the future may not even show up on our radar, because we’ll have to invent it. (p. 289)

The lack of balance in our current system has frozen public education in place. While many education agencies and administrators push for individualized learning, differentiated instruction (both in pacing and delivery), or flipped classrooms, the success of these approaches is still measured by a single score derived from a multiple-choice test given on one day. As long as this is our primary tool for measuring success, all the creative and personalized approaches will be stifled. We propose a container model of accountability as a means of fostering personalization rather than stifling it.

The purpose of accountability is to ensure that schools are doing their jobs and meeting the needs of students. In other words, educational assessments should measure what students are learning and how they are progressing. The structure we propose for doing this in a comprehensive, holistic manner focused on personalized growth stems from a model for talk therapy.

Dr. John L. Garcia (1996) lays out a model for promoting positive growth and change in a therapeutic setting: the helping crucible. While education is not therapy, the two professions do share an overlapping goal: promoting positive growth and change for the individual. The model of the helping crucible can readily be adapted and applied to education.

In our lead-in story we compared our current system with a pressure cooker. The education crucible we are proposing is a very different container than a pressure cooker, although we will stick with the cooking analogy to continue to whet your appetite. A crucible is a pot used for melting. In the education crucible, the structure is created by the curriculum, the school calendar, the classroom, the school day, and the teacher.

These structures create an environment for learning that allows flexibility within the defined parameters. The teacher is no longer placed in the position of giver of knowledge; rather the teacher is the facilitator and modulator of the student’s learning. The teacher modulates the intensity of the heat for each student to help foster the growth and change.

To stick with our cooking metaphor, think of boiling an egg. The teacher ensures the water doesn’t boil over and ensures that the egg isn’t undercooked. Likewise, the teacher can modulate the boiling to produce a soft-boiled or hard-boiled egg depending on the preferred outcome.

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