Hi readers
Just a thought to see if I get any replies.
Educational Assessment, how much pressure are we putting on our students?
As a secondary school teacher, assessing to the NCEA, I am often frustrated by the responses I get when summative assessments are required. There is such a range of responses/attitudes from student, I wonder if there is too much or too little pressure going on them. One example, perhaps because of a lack of pressure taken by some students is a 'who cares attitude'. "I'll do as much as I need to to pass (That is get an Achieved), its worth the same credits as an excellence".
These days our students appear not to put education at the top of their priority, rather it is balanced between, sports, afterschool jobs for money and socialising.
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Like you Sandy, I get somewaht frustrated by students who, when beginning summative assessments want to know all the points that are going to be assessed. My question is where does the learning come in. Are we simply giving facts and information in order for it to be given back or is it not more importanat to facilitate the learning of the individual so that they can direct themselves?
ReplyDeleteMmmm in fact what are we 'teaching' students by this? Often during an internal assessment the amount of effort put into this by students is dictated by how many credits it is worth and if they already have 'plenty' of credits they can spend 2 weeks doing nothing and these are 7th form NCEA level 3 students....
ReplyDeleteHow can we change this? We have been able to offer some of these assessments at the beginning of the year but that then puts other subjects in the same position.
What do you think?
Hi Liz and Marie
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking part in this blog.
Over the past 18 years (thats how long I've been teaching), education has had many changes. One of the biggest in terms of secondary school academics is the assessment system. In the beginning of my teaching career, the students put education at the top of their priority list and rewareded themselves with such things as leisure time, sport time, socialising time when their school work was completed. Today our studetns are a different species. Wanting to know exactly what is being assessed. What is important to learn 'for the credits'. The joy of learning is no longer the top priority. And like you say Marie, with often 6 subjects offering 20 credits, students could be in a position to gain 120 credits, they only need 80 credits to gain the level they are studying at. And only 60 of those must be at that level, the other 20 can be the level below. This fact (over crediting our students so they have a complete timetable) and TIME to fit all that the 21st century offers does have an impact on their priorities.
Marie your question; HOW CAN WE CHANGE THIS? is the million dollar question isn't it. I play devils advocates when I ask, SHOULD WE BE CHANGING THEIR ATTITUDE? or should we be changing our attitudes as teachers. Student voice should seriously be taken into account. Is it time we delivered the credits required and then instead of overloading the academic, placed emphasis on the joy of learning, and taught with no pressures of exams or testing or assessments and let students lead their learning. That being teaching and developing their interests, topics nad real day projects that relate to our curriculum area and life needs.
WHAT DO THE STUDENTS REALLY WANT, WHAT DO THEY REALLY NEED IN TODAYS' SOCIETY? That is the question, the person who answers this and can keep the ideal of students as unique individuals will have the winning formula.
What do you other keen educationalist think?
Hi there
ReplyDeleteThis is indeed a vexacious issue. Having 30 years in education I have witnessed quite a change in the assessment scene. The bad old days of various qualifications at senior secondary level needed to be changed, but isthe NCEA model right for our students? It appears boys do not cope with the relentless barage of assessments, and i worry at the workload of teachers. In theory, the tapestry of assessments, all bound by accumulating credits, is great.
What appears to be missing is the anxiety and fear that students felt in the 80s and 90s if they were below the mark. Is everything too easy?
HI there
ReplyDeleteMaybe as teachers we are the ones that need to reassess our attitudes. Focus more on the joys of learning rather than being governed by assessment. It does seem that every year the expectation of the teacher to produce programmes that are varied, interesting, challenging and have a drawcard to get the student to choose the course, is creating more work for the teacher. Whereas the student seems to want to work less and still get the same grades. I sometimes think that we expect too much from our students and create to much work for ourselves by producing assessment criteria based on our individual/dept interpretations of the NZQA criteria. I know it is good to have a high expectation, but these vary greatly between schools and at the end of the day the student still passes with a basic grade of Acheived.
Level 3 NCEA teacher.
Hi Sandy and Kim
ReplyDeleteI agree that we have a problem and maybe this is just a stage of development that we have to go through. Once, there was a great deal of importance placed on achievement in secondary schools. Society valued that students needed formal education and this was en expectation for those wanting to go into university. Now society criticises the assessment (NCEA) for a range of reasons. Won't it be natural that students then also see little value in it if their potential employers think its a farce and if you can have free entry to university at age 20. What's the value?
I agree, what is the value of working hard in primary and secondary so that you can move on to university when there could be free entry at the age of 20.
ReplyDeleteI am Maori myself and I feel it would not be fair if Maori students get free entry to university. I see the effort to help Maori students go to university but I think if Maori students dont do well at primary or secondary this raises the issue, will they succeed at university? As you noted Bill, What is the value?
What about those that work hard?
Hi Sandy,
ReplyDeleteCarolyn D here. Sorry it's taken me a while to respond to your blog. I am interested in the issue of how much pressure students are under with NCEA.
On the one hand, some students seem really stressed out and you don't want to tip them over the edge by being inflexible about deadlines or unreasonable about workload. On the other hand, some are so laid back they seem to need a bomb under them!
There is a group photo of me and my fellow ballerinas at the tender age of seven. The photgrapher told us to "sit up tall". So I sat up tall. He repeated it, so I lifted my head higher. He said it once more so I stretched my neck and spine as high as I could. In the resulting photo, I look like a girraffe, while the girl beside me is completely slouching. It seems he was talking to her, not me.
So my dilemma is, if I nag/hassle/cajole a class to "work harder, do more homework, make more effort"... the kid who I am really aiming my comments at just ignores me (like the sloucher) while the kid who is already working hard enough will feel pressured to stretch harder and harder - to an unreasonable level.
As a result of this I came up with a student voice tool which I've pasted below. It comes out of my desire to keep a "helpful" level of pressure on kids who need a bit motivating while not pushing genuinely stressed kids over the edge.
Here it is...
Name:
1. How motivated do you feel about school: (circle)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Not at all Very motivated
2. How motivated do you feel about English: (circle)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Not at all Very motivated
3. What motivates you in school? What kind of lessons do you enjoy?
4. What could I (CRD) do more of or less of that would help you be more motivated?
• More of:
• Less of:
5. What helps you be more motivated to write essays? Or what stops you being motivated?
• Helps motivate me:
• Stops me being motivated:
6. “If the teacher keeps the pressure on, it helps you to get things done, finish the task and have academic success”.
Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?
7. Goals for the end of year exam (English) Write in the grade you are aiming for.
• Visual text essay (Gladiator):
• Extended text essay (Hamlet):
• Short text essay (we haven’t done it yet):
• Unfamiliar Text:
8. How do you feel about revision for exams? e.g.Will it be hard to get motivated? Are you too busy? Do you feel like you know how to revise?
9. Do you think you will take English next year?
Kia ora Sandy and others,
ReplyDeleteI don’t have the answer!! But I think there is always a place for asking the students, as Carolyn is doing – their perspective and interests, must help.
I am wondering what is happening to our students as they move through the education systems? The focus of education in Early Childhood is to help students to feel positive about learning, “to grow up as confident and competent learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society” (The aspiration statement in Te Whariki/ Early Childhood Curriculum).
Our focus is on: working with children’s interests, developing learning dispositions, fostering inquiry based learning, children able to become independent learners and engaged in the learning process, with self-defined learning goals as important as performance goals.
I am sure that we don’t always get it right in EC, but we do try to keep students at the centre of the learning process and build on their individual learning interests. I wonder what happens between EC and secondary …to the spark of the young children so inquisitive and enthusiastic, in control of their own process of making meaning of the world around them? … to the love of learning? As Kim suggests- where has the joy of learning gone?
Or is it just that it’s easier to motivate young children?
Csikszentmihayli(1990) writes about how the chief impediments to learning are not cognitive. It is not that students cannot learn; it is that they do not wish to. In EC we remind ourselves that if educators invested a fraction of the energy they now spend on trying to transmit information, in trying to stimulate the students’ enjoyment of learning, we could achieve much better results.
Jill.