Audio Webcast Program #8
Making Mistakes and Moving Beyond Them is in the Scientific Spirit
Summary: In nearly every field of endeavor today, professionals are attempting to step back from their work so they can view it from a more neutral point of view. This is the scientist spirit. This practice of neutrality enshrines failure as the first step towards success. Using assessments to help students accept failure as a necessary step towards mastery is now seen as critical to using testing as formative instructional practice.
Introduction:
In our series of audio webcasts, we have been discussing how education professionals use science to make the art of teaching more effective. A number of experts have talked about practices and tools that help educators judge the comparative success of their efforts in increasing student achievement. This final audio webcast focuses on one element that is essential if the principles of science are really to inform teaching: emotional neutrality towards failure. Experimentation is an essential part of science, and experiments sometimes fail. But in education, as in life, failure can become an instrument of success as long as we are able to learn from it.
Listen Online (9:48)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: Program.mp3 (~9.8 MB)
Audio Webcast Speakers:
| Eliot Asp |
Douglas County, Colorado School District |
| Brad Duggan |
formerly, National Center for Educational Accountability |
Additional Audio: This audio webcast program includes
three additional audio segments.
Audio Webcast Transcript:
Host
Welcome to the 8th of our audio webcasts on becoming more objective in our work as educators. I'm Ed Janus.
As we've been discussing, in nearly every field of endeavor today,
professionals are attempting to step back from their work so they can
view it from a more neutral point of view. Today's professional is more
interested in getting to their goal than in how they get there. This
goal orientation is what makes the standards movement so important.
We've
heard about a number of practices and tools that help professionals
judge the comparative value of their efforts in getting to their goals.
But perhaps the practice that makes all of these possible is the
practice of emotional neutrality towards failure. In today's world,
failure becomes an instrument of success; as long as we learn how to
learn from it.
Rick Stiggins is the founder of the
Assessment Training Institute, an organization that helps teachers and
administrators learn to help students learn from their own mistakes: he
calls this "assessment for learning."
Stiggins
Quarterly
assessments that help us see which students have not yet met state
standards is a really good idea. But what that does is identify the
problem, it doesn't fix it. And the principles of assessment for
learning that we teach are about helping those kids close the gap
between where they are now, and where we want them to be. And that
requires continuous feedback.
The dimension of the
understanding of cognitive processes that we tap into is the need to
have the learner actively involved in the learning. And so, we want
them deeply involved in the assessment process, on a day-to-day basis.
We
want them to understand the learning targets from the beginning of the
learning; we want them to have continuous access to descriptive
feedback. So that in effect what we're doing is use the classroom
assessment process as a mirror to show students themselves growing.
This allows them to feel in control of the learning process, to feel
confident enough to take the risk of continuing to try. And that turns
out to be the key to the learning process.
In the assessment
for learning context, we want students to have continuous access to
descriptive feedback that informs them about how to do better the next
time. It's not that we're opposed to assessment of learning, or
summative assessment. We think that plays a critical role.
It's
just that during the learning, students need evidence of their own
current level of proficiency so they can understand how they're doing
in closing the gap between where we want them to be and where they are
now.
There are three conditions that need to be in place for
students to improve. The first is that they need to understand what
good work looks like. Secondly, they need to understand where they are
now in relation to the vision of excellence. And thirdly, they need to
learn how to close the gap between the two.
The only way they
can do that if they have that continuous feedback; that continuous
descriptive feedback so they can monitor and take responsibility for
their own development over time.
And you're talking, almost day to day perhaps?
I'm talking moment to moment here. Absolutely. When students are learning
to write for example, they're going to be producing pieces of writing
pretty much continuously. Each one of which is a valuable source of
information about how they're doing. If we carry out proper principles
of assessment for learning.
And what I mean by that is: they
would come to understand a student-friendly version of what good
writing looks like. They'd see models of strong and weak work, pretty
much continuously. So they can know where they are on that achievement
continuum. You know that it's the scaffolding that they're climbing on
their journey to being a good writer. In order to do that, one must
have pretty much continuous access to that evidence.
We're
constantly working with a student right at the edge of their
capabilities and helping them take the next step. It's that kind of
interaction that turns out to be critical.
Now, what we want
to get to, and in the lessons we teach about assessment for learning –
is you want to get to a place where students begin to be able to
generate their own descriptive feedback.
And it's this kind of
interaction, this kind of student-involved assessment, that's yielded
unprecedented gains in student achievement, literally around the world.
Host
As I understand it, humans are wired to get pleasure as they progress
towards an important goal. Can teachers use this "success-seeking"
system to help students learn?
Stiggins
It
feels good to succeed. In our principles of assessment for learning,
it's not that rewards aren't important – they're critically important.
But the one reward that counts, and the only one that counts in our
parlance, is the reward that comes from succeeding.
When the
human brain experiences success it feels good and we're wired to want
more of that. The mirror image of that is that when we experience
failure or most troubling, the humiliation of failure, it will cause
the human brain to lock itself down in self defense making learning
impossible.
So that's why we have to be very, very careful
about this behaviorist stuff about manipulating rewards and
punishments. The use of punishment to help kids learn, or want to
learn, is very tricky business because it teeters on the edge of
hopelessness. And that's the thing we've go to avoid.
You know
in the schools that we grew up in, a low level of performance was
called "failure." There was humiliation associated with it. And it
caused a lot of us to give up in hopelessness. What we're trying to get
to here is a place where people understand that when you first start to
learn something, you're probably not very good at it.
But what
we want to get to, again is that place where we understand and students
understand that early in the learning it's okay not to be good at it.
It's natural not to be good at it. It's just that we don't want to stay
there. We want to begin the progress now, begin the progression up the
scaffolding towards success.
So what we don't want during the
learning – it's not that students shouldn't be help accountable, they
should. But during the learning, while we're learning, it's got to be
okay not to be good at it to begin with. We don't want the word
"failure" coming into play here. It has nothing to do with failure. It
has nothing to do with the grade book.
This is why we start
with a student-friendly version and provide that descriptive feedback
and students learn to generate their own descriptive feedback. Because
we want them to see the difference between where they are now and where
we want them to be. So they can watch the gap being closed. That's the
confidence builder.
Host
How do we build this kind of assessment system that helps motivate students?
Stiggins
First of all what we need to do is we need to, as a foundation for
classroom assessment – teachers and the faculty need to take each state
standard and deconstruct it into the scaffolding that kids will climb
on, on their journey. The classroom level targets that are the building
blocks that students will climb over time to get to those standards.
Then
we want to transform those classroom targets into student-friendly
versions which we share with our students. So there is principle number
one. Standards, the scaffolding, the student-friendly versions.
And
then we want to make sure that classroom assessments are accurate. And
it turns out there are a series of specific design decisions that need
to be made to create accurate assessments. And then effective
communication. It's that kind of thing that we're talking about.
Host
Creating this new kind of positive assessment system in a school isn't something today's educators can easily do, is it?
Stiggins
Oh,
I don't think there's any question about that. And that has directly to
do with the lack of assessment training for teachers and administrators
over the decades. Yea. We are a society that is literally obsessed with
testing. But knows so little, even within the ranks of the educators
about what it means to do it well.
What most people don't
understand – most citizens don't understand it – is that we all came
through teacher preparations programs almost devoid of any relevant,
helpful assessment training. And it continues to be the case today in
many contexts.
And lest we believe that somehow teachers can
turn to their principals for help, let's be clear about the fact that
assessment training, even today, is almost non-existent in leadership
training programs across the county.
Host
The large-scale assessments for accountability are imposed on us; we
don't have any control over these. Can assessments for learning give us
and our students the kind of control over learning we know is
fundamental?
Stiggins
What we
try to do it to get people to center on those things over which they
have control. And that's the classroom level of assessment. Let's get
the right tools into the right hands and let's get the job done.
What
we don't want is we don't want kids giving up in hopelessness because
they believe the target is beyond reach for them. We don't want that.
In a standards-driven environment that just doesn't work.
You
don't raise test scores by practicing old state assessments. So what we
say to people is let's do the right thing in the place where we're in
control. Which is in the classroom. The evidence is compelling. Do the
right thing from an assessment and instructional point of view and the
test scores will take care of themselves.
Host
Getting our students – and ourselves – to learn from mistakes, and to do so
systematically, accurately and continually is, I would have to say, the
essence of the scientific spirit as applied to education. Once we have
committed ourselves to the pursuit of getting better; once we have
drained ourselves of the negative emotions that so often accompany not
being right, we can begin to really use the tools of science to give
our students the start in life they deserve.
For Center for
Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement at Learning Point
Associates, this is Ed Janus. Thanks, again for listening.
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