Here is a situation I’ve been thinking about in my teaching practice:
The role of teacher has an inherit conflict of interest. On one hand, I am a coach. I help students move along in their learning. I guide them. I cajole them. I manipulate them. I push them. I support them. I praise them. Whatever seems to be appropriate for that time and place and task, I do. On the other hand, I am a judge. I report how well they accomplished the task. How many criteria they achieved. The depth of their knowledge shown. The level to which they completed the expectations.
Is it surprising that by the time I see students (Grade 7/8) that some have begun to be very reluctant to accept me in the role of “coach”? These are the most frustrating students to have in the classroom. They are “turned off”, and have seemingly stopped caring about school. I think many of these students have developed the coping mechanisms of deflection and delay. They realize that if they just delay their work (by putting in minimal, or no effort) they will uncover that their teacher “coach” is truly only their teacher “judge”. They may be consciously unaware of the dual role, but their behavior works hard to expose it.
Imagine working with a coach in a sport. The coach works closely with you. They assess your strengths and weaknesses. They guide you through exercises designed to improve your game. They give you “pep” talks to motivate you, and “get on you” when you’re dogging it. And then the game starts. The opponent? A general baseline of the skills shown by every other player at your “level”. The judge? Your former coach. It should be easy. It’s your coach. You should be able to ask for help. Advice. Examples. A redo. But…
The teacher is not simply a coach. The teacher must “report” on each student’s achievement level. The “Report Card” is still THE central part of all classroom reporting. It is still regarded as the most valid, most accurate, most important assessment. When writing the “report card”, a teacher is expected to be impartial. But where does that leave the power relationship between students and teachers? By the time they reach High School, every student has learned the “game” of school.
If teachers are to be true ”guides-on-the-side”, then the contradictory nature of assessment needs to be cleaned up. I don’t know how that is supposed to be done. How can teachers be expected to be coaches and judges? Should the same person be giving the day-to-day assessment/feedback and the end-of-term overall evaluation? Could there be two “marks” on the report card, one from the coach-teacher (assessing progress, effort, attitude) and one from a second judge-teacher (evaluating criteria, knowledge). I wonder how the teaching would change under such a system.
Thanks for writing this Neil. I also have difficulty with the “coach” and “evaluator” roles. I am looking forward to others adding to this discussion to find out how they are dealing with it.
Neil, this is an interesting issue, and a valid concern. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with the apparent contradiction? I guess that we’ve all grown up with the dual nature of the role and haven’t really questioned it that much.
I know that Deborah Meier in the U.S. has devised some options in her small school projects. Here, graduating high school teachers complete an exit portfolio that is presented before a panel made up of teachers from the school, parents, community members and folks from the University. As the student will have had many teachers throughout the course of the program, the conflict to which you refer would be mitigated to a large degree.
This idea seems to stand somewhere in between current practice and setting up external “evaluation centers”.
In a sense our attempts to separate the assessment and evaluation processes has resulted in this type of conversation. Not sure if this one would have emerged 20 years ago…or even 10!
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Stephen,
When I first read your comment, I thought the “here” was referring to where you are (not referring to small schools project) and got excited. I can already hear the cries of, “too much time” that must accompany these “conference” approaches to evaluation.
I think a problem is that some groups rely on the evaluations of students in ways they shouldn’t. Canadian Universities assume a certain evaluation means a certain thing. Teachers feel pressured to make it mean that specific thing. An 85% average is 10% better than a 75% average. What does that mean? Are there any studies done on the validity of these evaluations?
Having just read about 300 grade 6 written responses to our schools I.b. application (from 60+ peel schools) and then comparing the writing to each report card — I can say that there is only a “general” connection between the two. Our team decided that we would rate the written response much more heavily than the applicants report card marks.
Universities should design their own entrance applications. High schools should not allow universities to have such control over their assessment practices. I wonder what might change if the marks on a High School report card weren’t directly related to acceptance into a university.
You bring up a very interesting point Neil regarding the dual roll that we as teachers play. How do we maintain the relationship of coach and supporter when we have to become “the Evaluator”? I was wondering about the prospect, within our roll as coaches, of ‘coaching’ students on assessing themselves just as a sports coach would do. Students could then become their own evaluators. Would this impact their learning and development? Would it change how students view us? I would hope so however, it doesn’t address the issue of the university’s role and expectations regarding marks.
There is so much in this article, I’m not sure where to begin!
I’d take the dualistic nature of the roles in education further, into multiplicity.
Teacher as coach, leader, friend, evaluator, adult, actor, player, mentor, co-creator, oppressor?
Student as follower, vessel, apprentice, player, actor, mentee, youth, leader? co-creator, oppressed?
There are so many contradictions in the system that I see rooted in the hierarchies that make up the
structure of the learning environment and I wonder if we even need then at all.
In the yoga I teach, there is no teacher, more of a coach/guide who is practising WITH my student. As a life coach, there is no hierarchy, my client and I co-create on a level playing field. In both instances we get that it is all a GAME (a race against yourself is you wish) and therein lies the joke – the joke that youth aged 13/14 get too well and don’t even realize. I don’t mean to say this to diminish the importance of the work of teaching, but there is a whole world out there. Getting that it is a “joke” has my students/clients trusting me more, having a more relaxed attitude and yet more will, determination to strive for what they want to achieve in the REAL work of their lives. All because I jumped on the elephant in the room, barrelled out the doors and rode it around town.
Students think deeply about themselves, their worth, and their power – I think more than we know and we need to teach them the vocabulary earlier so they can learn to speak their truth, earlier. Coming back what Neil wrote at the top about “the power relationship between students and teachers?” and what of the POWER and MEANING we give a report card?
In saying all of this I realize that this may come across as not being “practical” or “actionable” but I deeply believe in APPLIED yoga, APPLIED philosophy. I propose practising an awareness of how we as teachers impose our beliefs and practices on students, call it out and letting the power shift take place so that students can take an empowered approach to their learning. Have students evaluate their own learning (until the system adopts the new wave) and have personal evaluation MEAN MORE than a report card, cause in the real world it’s the only thing that we can and should trust and build our worth on.
I think the best way to be the “guide fromt he side” is to find creative ways to get students to buy into formative activities. I find in high school, the most common thing I hear from enhanced students are “is this formative or summative”; translation: should I try or not?
When students are engaged and taking ownership of their learning is when they stop asking these questions about assessment and jump in. Recently, I’ve been adding elements of gamification into my classroom (ie. reward systems for completing homework on time, class voting and assessment among peers, etc.). This causes some reluctant learners to buy in, however, I am finding some learners that are usually engaged can become resentful. Perhaps their competitive spirit goes too far, I’m still working on figuring out a nice balance.
The dual role teachers play within institutional education seems inevitable.
We have the job we’ve been hired to do, connected to administration of Ministry standards.
And we have the person-to-person responsibility of making human connections with our students.
Within my own high school classroom, I’ve been getting students involved in program design. Towards the start of the semester, I show them the unit 1 Ministry expectations and make transparent why I’ve designed the unit as I have. Then we brainstorm other ways they could have explored and demonstrated the learning. As the semester goes on, students become more involved in designing the learning process, with a variety of student-directed projects taking shape within the same classroom space. As such, my role shifts from the front of the classroom towards support and encouragement, and because students understand the ministry expectations, we simultaneously achieve curriculum coverage and inquiry-based learning experiences.
I think the dual role is only inevitable because it suits the Ministry, not students. I think your plan is great, and I wish my High School courses had been so open. My question would be, at the end of the learning process (end of term), how is the evaluation conducted? How is the “B+”, or “81%”, or “C-”, or “65%” determined? Or is it simply “achieved expectations/did not achieve expectations”.
Does your role switch back to the front of the classroom at the end of the course when determining the final grade? It might seem inevitable, but I think that is only because that is the “traditional” role of the teacher. When I look around at other “novice/expert” roles in society, it is only in teaching that the “learner’s” results are so isolated from the “teacher’s” efforts. The student’s grades are their responsibility, alone?
The grade is the result of standing relative to the performance rubrics. Per Ministry KTAC expectations, students indicate how their projects will meet the curriculum standards at the same time they identify their project targets. So if I’m a student and I have an inclination to research skateboarding in Toronto for a history class, and I see that the Ministry standards are as follows;
• analyse how Canada’s relationships with France, Britain, and the United States have influenced Canada’s identity and culture;
• evaluate the role of east-west and north-south ties in the development of Canada;
• assess changes in Canada’s rural-agricultural and urban-industrial communities;
• analyse the relationship between major technological and social changes in Canada;
• evaluate the extent to which Canada has been transformed into a pluralistic society;
At the outset of my project, I’m going to set up a rubric that shows what knowledge, critical thinking, communication and application (initiative) might look like, and some of the concrete standards to target relative to grade standing. As teacher, I can provide a template that students can tweak for their specific project, and then I’ll offer feedback to the student rubric to ensure they are establishing appropriate standards for themselves. Then once the student hands in their final work (be it a written report, presentation, or some other means of communication), evaluation is made simple because I already have the student-developed rubric from which to measure the learning.
Teaching Middle School (and Thinking back to my own experience in High School, or even as a teacher today) I think the most difficult part of the process would be when “students indicate how their projects will meet the curriculum standards”. Running problem-based learning projects this year, I have come to realize that if the students choose a “real” problem/issue, it will connect to the curriculum (in many subjects). But, exactly how may not be known at the outset. And my students will not be able to make those connections independently.
But, I like the idea of setting up an assessment template for all the projects. And as the project procedes, the tweaking of the rubric is part of the ongoing learning. Very interesting.
In your experience, do you see a lot of this co-constructed learning taking place in High School? In my experience, personal (back-in-the-day) and professional (through many recent interactions with our local High School), I don’t see or remember any of these ideas.
Having students articulate their existing tools and aptitudes, interests and get-to-dos is something I’ve been exploring in my own classroom. It’s not something I see happening elsewhere, and in speaking with my colleagues, they resist on the basis of limited class time and prioritising their existing program models. To the extent that I’ve been able to engage my students in this practice, there has been some initial resistance, but the ultimate results have been terrific. Students have developed projects around diverse learning topics as the value of sleep, how to stay warm in the winter, why i love basketball, and healthy eating practices. The most compelling result was having students stand in front of their peers and speak with confidence and passion and design creative, interactive activities to engage the class in learning. As such, I was able to shift from the front of the classroom to the sidelines, and I think we were all better off as a result.
Sounds incredible. What kinds of creative, interactive activities did they come up with. Did you lead some kind of process for experimenting? Very curious….
The project I’m referring to was in a Grade 12 Economics class. Students were presented with a challenge to learn more about something they value, and be able to help others explore this value for themselves. Students took turns leading class, and subjects ranged as described above. Some of the activities they designed included bringing instruments into class and having groups of students create songs (the value of music), identifying the nutritional value in selected food items (value of good nutrition), basketball drills (held in the gym), breaking into groups to design games (the educational value of games), and a selection of game show type activities. My general impression was that the students were more interested in each other’s lessons that they were in any teacher-directed learning that we had done through the semester.
I will do a more thorough explanation in the project in an upcoming VoicEd piece that I hope will offer a more complete picture of this work.
AMAZING. I want to hear more! It’s these kinds of stories that make me consider going back to school. I will await your post.
I’ve found that over the course of the year the students have really stopped performing for the teacher, and are way more committed to doing a good job for their peers. The more open-ended the topic, the better the results.
It would take an investment of time to help the students develop their projects, and a leap of faith that they can be connected to the curriculum. But, the payoff comes at the end when every student will know their final grade before they present/perform their final product (unless they totally freeze up — and then they can just try again).