If.. Then.. Because....:
If teachers are assessing students based solely on knowledge and not evaluation then students will have trouble motivating themselves to pursue higher learning achievement because the teacher themselves is having trouble with their own motivation in continuing education and learning from their students.
T2P:
Learning is not just about how students learn and their preferences for styles, but how learning is assessed in the taxonomy of learning. Gaging student's learning on knowledge and comprehension does not tap into their deeper yearning and drive to further their education. They are able to regurgitate information and pass a unit test. Educators should strive for more evaluation and synthesis learning that pushes the students to go beyond the facts and formulate ideas and relationships between terms and theories. Essay type questions and science hypothesis ask students to really relate everything they have learned and put it together in a way to share ideas and make speculations on those ideas.
As educators, we strive to make our environment for student learning relevant, competent, and safe. We need to use motivation in ourself to foster motivation in our students. You can only motivate your students to the highest level they can reach if you yourself know the limits and benefits to your own motivation. We are learners of our students as they are learners of us, and we must find the balance of emotion and motivation in our classrooms. We strive for a sense of self-actualization in our students and ourselves, maybe not the way Maslow described, but in a personal sense of accomplishment and satisfaction for the truth of our higher learning.
Kelly,
ReplyDeletePlease restate this: "If teachers are assessing students based solely on knowledge and not evaluation" I'm having trouble understanding how you are defining knowledge and evaluation and the difference(s) b/t the two.
One key phrase I will offer you:
I am a student of students.
What does that mean (if anything) to you as a teacher?
Keep pressing!
GNA
GNA, I recognize the difficulty in understanding this statement. I was going for the idea if you teach the classroom in a Bloom's level 1 taxonomy type of questions instead of the higher levels. So I should have used the word like comprehension. Knowledge is a level 1 taxonomy level but has so many other meanings it would just be easier to say, "If teachers are assessing students based solely on comprehension and not evaluation...".
ReplyDeleteI am a student of students. To me, as a future educator, that means that I am not teaching to just teach but that I am teaching from what I learn from my students. I am not always this high figure above my students but that the students learn from me as well as I learn from them. Ultimately this statement to me means that I can not just teach to pass knowledge onto my student but I have to take what my students bring to the mix and their views on matters in the classroom setting. In all, teachers must always be able to adjust and change their teaching habits based on what their students are bringing to the mix and the type of learners that they are.