Group items tagged

Last year about this time in an AAS/NZAS meeting an article about 10 short assessments was looked at. The team then created some suggested applications of these. This article has extended that list and has some good ideas for wrapping up the term. PS If anyone wants a copy of the concrete ideas from last year, let me know.

This is a great article that supports how rubrics can support the learning process.

Some of these might be interesting to consider not only for ourselves but also if we want to come up with our own set of Habits of Mind which are most applicable to our students....resilience, grit, etc.

integrating citizenship and 'global education' into a school.

This is a good reminder of why we teach. This is exactly what I wrote my Master's thesis on because education has lost it's inherent citizenship component. It seems as though politicians and policy makers think education only exists as a means of market value, or the market feeds off the exchange of knowledge for capital, thereby generating cultural capital, which can be commodified and further traded. I think people forget that the citizen arrived in the nation state only after the French Revolution and the restructuring of Merchantilism, which could be called proto-neoliberalism. The people revolted to create a center in which the citizen held certain entitlements to life and community built on education that challenged the state through reason, or what Immanuel Kant called, "Sapere Aude", that is, the courage to use your own reason. However, this center has been manipulated by education systems to systemize reason without courage, reason with exchange value, and reason for irrational privilege based on ethnocentrism (the creators of the world system) and technocracy (the maintainers of the world system). Finally, to answer your question, I do think this is an appropriate role for our college. I think education must question the possibility of education, and where it fits in the world we choose to live in. We must support our students and ourselves in the continuous investigation of our citizenship; therefore, our education.

I just read a quote from H.G Wells- "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (The Outline of History, 1920). The quote is at the top of a paper dealing with the role of education in 'mending broken Britain' and how education can contribute to a more cohesive society. The paper was a summary of a national conference held in response to the anarchic riots of 2011 in England. The conference concluded that educational contributory factors leading to the riots were a lack of moral education, deficiency in the creative curriculum and an insufficient priority given to citizenship education. A sense of alienation and disenfranchisement amongst the youth of disadvantaged communities and a more general feeling that their voice is not being heard were also cited as major factors. The overarching conclusion of 'Mending Broken Britain- Educations' response' is clear- that schools play a central role in shaping our youth and in creating moral, constructive, rational, responsible and active citizens who feel included in our diverse and interdependent society- and that if education fails in this fundamental role, we can expect more (and worse) riots and social breakdown in the future.Prof. Gus John gves an interesting analysis of how our youth have reached this stage and cites 'the grotesque influence of the culture of the street' which has displaced the respect for self and for others and he asks the question: 'How? How have we failed to guide and assist our children in standing for something and in letting that something reflect the basic human values of respect, fairness, justice, interdependence, compassion and integrity?'The conference recognised that schools are not merely the means of transferring knowledge and content, to be absorbed and regurgitated for assessment purposes, but are the key vehicles for the development of values, skills and attitudes.

An interesting paper summarising a conference held in England in response to the 2011 riots. It emphasises the role of education, specifically citizenship education in creating a more cohesive society.

I just read a quote from H.G Wells- "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (The Outline of History, 1920). The quote is at the top of a paper dealing with the role of education in 'mending broken Britain' and how education can contribute to a more cohesive society. The paper was a summary of a national conference held in response to the anarchic riots of 2011 in England. The conference concluded that educational contributory factors leading to the riots were a lack of moral education, deficiency in the creative curriculum and an insufficient priority given to citizenship education. A sense of alienation and disenfranchisement amongst the youth of disadvantaged communities and a more general feeling that their voice is not being heard were also cited as major factors. The overarching conclusion of 'Mending Broken Britain- Educations' response' is clear- that schools play a central role in shaping our youth and in creating moral, constructive, rational, responsible and active citizens who feel included in our diverse and interdependent society- and that if education fails in this fundamental role, we can expect more (and worse) riots and social breakdown in the future. Prof. Gus John gves an interesting analysis of how our youth have reached this stage and cites 'the grotesque influence of the culture of the street' which has displaced the respect for self and for others and he asks the question: 'How? How have we failed to guide and assist our children in standing for something and in letting that something reflect the basic human values of respect, fairness, justice, interdependence, compassion and integrity?' The conference recognised that schools are not merely the means of transferring knowledge and content, to be absorbed and regurgitated for assessment purposes, but are the key vehicles for the development of values, skills and attitudes.

Why does "test panic" cause some students to shut down and others to thrive? Why does that straight-A student turn into sand during standardized test season? The problem has a lot to do with the rate of dopamine-processing in the brain, and it can be mitigated by experience, so sayeth the NYT.

I've always been a worrier who shuts down. I can remember vividly running out of the music room in 6th grade crying as I was so stressed and couldn't handle the forced auditions to sing 'All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth...". I find my son who seemed to have no anxiety about MCing a school concert in front of a crowd of 1000 in Lao amazing.

This article is aimed at parents of young children, but there are some interesting ideas for educators about putting grades into perspective.