Maybe the evidence is coming from standardized test designed by professionals to measure those select standards. These tests will have been proven to be valid and reliable when testing for the standards. With this evidence, I can more firmly believe that the teacher is doing his job. But there's one more problem with this evidence. What if the teacher is teaching to the test or the students can reason through a story problem with math skills and linguistic skills instead of actually understanding the concepts?
Frank Noschese mentioned that there exists Conceptual Diagnostic Tests for this reason. He states that, statistically, students far underperform on these tests as compared to what would be expected with other means of assessment. In other words, students can do well on classical tests and exams without knowing the concepts. Noschese suggests that taking this CDT as a pre and post test will show how much physics a student will actually understand and how well you taught it. When a teacher examines the data of poor performance, he/she will realize that something needs to change. This would be the best way to convince teachers who are long veterans that something needs to change.
Will I enact this? Hecks yeah I will. I will add it to my Evernote list of must do teaching practices.
Vi, I'll just say that Noschese's observations, which you capture nicely, illustrate the difference between what we might call "coverage" and the more important target of student understanding. For those who are critical of a test-driven curriculum, the tension that Noschese identifies is precisely where the problems (at least potentially) lays. I should also add that every teacher continually seeks to navigate the jagged terrain between having taught something, with specific curricular benchmarks in mind, and the ultimate goal of student understanding. There's a lot of pressure on teachers to cover topics, quickly and efficiently, and this ideal is often complicated by both the vagaries of the human teaching and learning interaction and actual students sitting in front of us who may not learn (or may not be ready to learn) on an optimally efficient schedule.
ReplyDelete