This week for class we read about different approaches to teaching and assessment. I found this weeks readings really difficult to get through, not because the content itself was difficult to grasp, but because I felt like I was treading extremely familiar and well-worn ground. I don't have a formal background in education, but I have taught in many capacities over the years and my mother was a teacher. Maybe because of this these concepts of teachings students to go beyond memorization to actual learning and understanding are just old hat to me.
Don't get me wrong, I think that these concepts are important for educators, parents, and administrators to understand. But I guess to an extent I get frustrated reading about them, because it seems that the same conclusions are always drawn, and yet we're still stuck in a kind of catch-22 when it comes to education and testing, specifically standardized testing. Teachers to a degree have to teach to the tests because students need to be able to pass them, but to a huge extent standardized tests are still heavily based on memorization skills. The problem is they are the most efficient way for universities to screen incoming students. I would argue that course grades, writing samples, and portfolios will provide a much better view of a students abilities than any standardized test, but admissions councilors can't spend that much time on every single application that comes in, so standardized tests are still used if nothing else to weed people out. I don't want to go on too much about this because I feel to a large extent this is a futile argument, so instead I will switch gears to close out this post.
One thing I did find interesting in our readings was the mention of how different cultures view grades and assessment differently. A while ago I read an article that talked about the difference between education in North American mainstream culture and in East Asian cultures. The article pointed out pluses and minuses in both cultures and basically concluded that both sides could learn a lot from each other. However, there was one point that really stood out to me in their discussion of achievement and drive within students. The article said that within East Asian cultures the act of "struggling" to learn or achieve something is seen as a positive thing and that a students ability to preserver until they succeed is highly valued. While in North American school culture struggle is seen as a weakness and students who do not immediately succeed at a task are not praised as highly as those who do. I'm over simplifying this to an extent, but I think this concept of our culture being one desiring instant gratification is interesting and a real challenge to overcome in any educational setting.
Don't get me wrong, I think that these concepts are important for educators, parents, and administrators to understand. But I guess to an extent I get frustrated reading about them, because it seems that the same conclusions are always drawn, and yet we're still stuck in a kind of catch-22 when it comes to education and testing, specifically standardized testing. Teachers to a degree have to teach to the tests because students need to be able to pass them, but to a huge extent standardized tests are still heavily based on memorization skills. The problem is they are the most efficient way for universities to screen incoming students. I would argue that course grades, writing samples, and portfolios will provide a much better view of a students abilities than any standardized test, but admissions councilors can't spend that much time on every single application that comes in, so standardized tests are still used if nothing else to weed people out. I don't want to go on too much about this because I feel to a large extent this is a futile argument, so instead I will switch gears to close out this post.
One thing I did find interesting in our readings was the mention of how different cultures view grades and assessment differently. A while ago I read an article that talked about the difference between education in North American mainstream culture and in East Asian cultures. The article pointed out pluses and minuses in both cultures and basically concluded that both sides could learn a lot from each other. However, there was one point that really stood out to me in their discussion of achievement and drive within students. The article said that within East Asian cultures the act of "struggling" to learn or achieve something is seen as a positive thing and that a students ability to preserver until they succeed is highly valued. While in North American school culture struggle is seen as a weakness and students who do not immediately succeed at a task are not praised as highly as those who do. I'm over simplifying this to an extent, but I think this concept of our culture being one desiring instant gratification is interesting and a real challenge to overcome in any educational setting.
You might be tired of circling around the subject of tension between teaching for understanding and success with standardized testing, but I appreciate your insight into the problem that admissions counselors don't have unlimited time. I think another reason we like to use tests is because schools, teaching methods, and home environments are so different from one another that it can be difficult to compare one student's performance to her counterparts'. I don't like it any more than you do, but unless we're able to come up with a better way of assessing students on such a grand scale (or somehow reduce the need to do so,) I think we're going to be stuck with multiple-choice standardized tests for a while.
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