In Standards
for Authentic Achievement and Pedagogy, Nemann et al.'s goal was to encourage
authentic achievement, which depends on construction of knowledge, disciplined
inquiry, and value of learning beyond school. I appreciated that they acknowledged
that conventional methods have allowed for a lot of meaningless work to be assigned
which exposes students to hundreds of "isolated pieces of knowledge" and
provides them with superficial understandings of complex topics and doesn't
prepare them to use this knowledge in the working world. They advocate for
students' construction of knowledge, by encouraging students to produce their
own original works rather than simply asking them to regurgitate what others
have produced. The disciplined inquiry involves building upon students' funds
of knowledge, digging deep into topics, and expressing one's findings through
elaborated communication. Lastly, teachers should strive to teach in ways that
show the value of their field beyond the classroom. This called to mind the
final portfolios that students had to prepare in The Flat World and Education that they presented to real
professionals, which gave them the opportunity to see the relevancy of their
work. An important qualifier they included was that they don't expect all
classroom activities to meet these standards at all times because sometimes
repetitive work is necessary; but still, we should keep authentic achievement
in mind as the ideal end goal. Some of the examples of authentic learning that
I liked were having students write letters to senators about local issues and mailing them and taking students to an
amusement park to conduct physics research and brainstorm ideas for creating their
own park. These examples showed that teaching that yields authentic achievement
can be done. I believe that it's not a question of what students are capable of
producing but rather what we ask them to produce.
First off, I really like your quote at the end, with which I 100% agree! Towards the beginning of the article, the authors spend a good deal of time drawing connections between authentic achievement and work achieved by adults in the real world. Essentially, the authors proposed that we hold youths to the same standards that we would hold professionals. Rather than asking adolescents to replicate information, or piece together superficial answers based off of poorly-connected material, we should push them to treat their work as would an adult.
ReplyDeleteI too really enjoyed many of the examples of instruction the article provided, as I was able to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each insofar as they held up to the standards. You were right to emphasize the mailing of the letters; I think that doing so adds a level of accountability, which in turn causes the students to expand their knowledge base, do research, and peer-review.
You mentioned that they did not expect every single activity to achieve each standard, which is definitely important! How daunting would it be to have to fit all standards for every single activity you created! Another qualifier that they used that I appreciated was that not all inauthentic material should be discarded. This made me think of the value found in language study of verb tables and charts and vocabulary repetition. Though it is incredibly hard to spice that up at all to achieve the standards, that kind of work is irrefutably useful when establishing a knowledge base.
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ReplyDeleteSarah, I think you provided a great snapshot of the reading. I can tell you are just as excited to incorporate authentic learning into your future classes as I am. The most pivotal point of authenticity for me was also to show the value of the work beyond the classroom. I'm excited to see that our group project is already doing that by having the kids' projects judged by an outside professional in the field.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite aspect of the reading was the encouragement of ambiguity. As an English teacher, students need to understand ambiguity in order to see the value of reinterpreting texts that have been around for years. How would you value ambiguity in your classroom?
Great thinking going on in all these comments! I think what still resonates with me is the idea Katy reminds us of about the difference between replicating information or creating new meaning. When it is stated that simply, for me, there is no question which I would rather do. There is definitely a time for replication, but it should be as a building block towards creating some knew meaning.
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