Tags
assessment for learning, communication, giving, identity, learning horizon, learning objective, managerialism, National Curriculum, performance, performance management, professionalism, teaching craft, vocation
Assessment for Learning is not simply another government accretion brought-in-to-check-that-we-are-working-properly-and-measure-us-accountable-to-a-‘professionalism’-which-is-defined-despite-educational-values-and-teacher’s-morality … (breathe, breathe). It has come from the government, it is true, and it has been administered, so far, as yet another measure with which to beat the ever-disinterested donkey that is the modern teacher – blinkered, pulling a large cart, uphill, when it doesn’t think it should go uphill and would rather take the long way round and enjoy life a little. Nevertheless – quite by accident – AfL could be exercised as both a rationale and a practice which is at the very heart of teaching, something which might be hijacked by teachers to claim back the autonomy, the self-respect, the self-confidence, the prestige, the necessity, the indispensability that is the reality of a teacher nurturing her pupils in the million ways that he does.*
* The most damaging aspect of the ever-rolling-out Reform of Education was the seizure and exploitation of what constitutes teacher professionalism by Managerialism. It became increasingly apparent that those defining, measuring and administering accountability of teaching were not … teachers.
There is nothing new under the sun. And likewise in the classroom – no matter how much you try to mechanise the service by making it run to business models in the pursuit of economic prudence – you cannot escape the fact that teaching requires communication, communication requires flexibility and autonomy, flexibility and autonomy requires a workforce of people who have the vocation to GIVE and the vocation to Give needs a clear structure through which it can be exercised clearly, fairly and nurturing-ly. Teaching with ‘aims and objectives’ – even with just a title – has always been the means by which teachers train, and exercise, their skills and qualification. It is only recently, since the National Curriculum really bit down, that these means have been used to measure the teacher’s performance rather than to nurture h/er craft; to control rather than to enable.
Assessment for Learning is yet the latest way to tighten down the ‘business’ of teaching – to ‘tune’ the engine to reach maximum efficiency – but it has stumbled, in doing so, upon the very dynamic which makes the educative interplay between pupil and teacher possible. Assessment for Learning is nothing new – it is the means of getting ‘to’ the ‘aim’, of getting from the ‘aim’ to the ‘objective’; it is the controlled burning of fuel which turns the engine, it is the valve which circulates blood around the body to work. It is NOT a means to measure if the teacher is working hard- and responsibly-enough, it is the mechanism of teaching through which a teacher can wrest back the management of their own teaching and regain the honour which becomes anyone who chooses to grow knowledge in another.
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
managerialism & professionalism wormhole: Apologia
performance & teaching craft wormhole: a bit painful this
John said:
I agree with you 100% … this is very eloquent and well argued. However, I’d also add that ‘assembly line education’ does a disservice to the students as well … not all students learn at the same speed, or in the same way — trying to apply one curriculum across the board, and expecting all students to excel at it is unfair to students. I know from my own schooling experiences that I learn better left alone — just give me the book, and I can grasp it … listening to long lectures that over-explain just left me bored, and I’d drift off, and get into trouble because I wasn’t paying attention. Many of my teachers couldn’t understand how I did so well on tests and papers when they knew I wasn’t paying attention — they didn’t get that I mostly taught myself, reading the books, and supplementing anything I didn’t understand with a look at the encyclopedia, or a trip to the school library for further info.
Teachers are much the same — I can think of three teachers who were excellent, and actually kept my interest in class, but they all had different ways of teaching (this was back in the day, before there were all sorts of rigid standards). To judge all teachers by one set of criteria does them a disservice.
This is actually true in any job really — expecting all employees to accomplish their job in exactly the same way is wrong.
Very thought provoking Mr Redford … (I’ll admit, I started reading this as a poem, thinking “Oh, he’s going longform poem on us!” 🙂
LikeLike
m lewis redford said:
what a worked-through response: thank you very much, John … ‘Mr Redford’ indeed
LikeLike
John said:
Well, I didn’t know whether to call you Lewis, or M…. so I thought Mr Redford was safest. 🙂
LikeLike
m lewis redford said:
Mark
LikeLike