Moving right along…we’re nearing the end (for now). Here assessment has spilled right out of curriculum altogether, and into questions of teacher and program assessment. Then, after considering assessment and teacher identity and assessment regimes beyond this jurisdiction and their contrast to British Columbia’s, we return to conclude with structural and curricular challenges to a responsive and creative practice of assessment worthy of children’s gifts and dreams. All this we are taken through by two superintendents of schools, two school principals, one teacher and (finally!) a student. Can we at least say, students are having the (a) last word here? Ok, maybe not…truth is: mostly it was educators who have discussed assessment with us.
Some questions to consider (we recommend brief small group discussions that can each then ‘compare notes’ about the different directions opened in how such ‘complicated’ conversations can go):
How do you respond to this video?
What does it bring to mind for you?
Was assessment in your education more ‘machine’ or ‘huge possibility’?
How has your thinking of assessment changed so far through the journey of the pathway? What trajectory would your ‘pathway of inquiry in assessment’ take?
How do teacher and program assessment differ from student assessment? What inherent differences, if any, are there? What similarities and echoes of one in the other do you hear, as you ‘reengage’ assessment? Why do such questions matter?
Be honest: Have you ever heard lack of formal evaluation as ‘honouring professionalism’? Why might this be entirely appropriate in education?
‘Curricular outcomes are unimportant to me’: Heresy…or praxis of freedom? Why? What is going on in this provocative part of the discussion?
Is it ethical, or unethical, for education to not ‘know where it is going’?
Consider together Coulter’s (et. al.) notion of educational leadership as “instigating difficult conversations.” In your view, what specific supports do educators require to lead?
Of what relevance is changes in ‘teacher identity’ to education?
How can you imagine the timetabling of education to be changed to recognize the complexity of student work and its emerging commitments?
In your view, and perhaps also some of those here in this step’s discussion, how can a ‘culture of assessment’ become an ‘engagement in culture’? Should it?
With Brooke, may you also “feel like you’re making headway…”
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