The story of someone who claims to be able to revolutionize a complex field without possessing relevant expertise seems to have some parallels in education technology.
I’m thinking we should have a similar “first do no harm” threshold for introducing technology into the classroom.
How much ed tech would pass that muster?
Source: The Theranos Story and Education Technology | Just Visiting
A great read on learning styles and cognitive imperialism. So much of the stuff I read on learning styles is out-of-touch with neurodiversity and social model communities, but this gets it.
Thus, charters have become the white flight academies of the South. National corporations whose workforce is diverse should avoid North Carolina, to avoid humiliating their executives and other employees. Jesse Helms, George Wallace, and Storm Thurmond would be proud to see their dream of school choice and segregation revived in North Carolina.
I updated “Hyperlinks and Education in the Disinformation Age” with a selection from “Tech, Agency, Voice (On Not Teaching) | Hybrid Pedagogy”.
How does the ability to add hyperlinks to text enrich the meaning of what we write? How does restricting that ability (like social-media platforms do) restrict the thinking of writers?
Source: Tech, Agency, Voice (On Not Teaching) | Hybrid Pedagogy
Working on my education education: bell hooks, Seymour Papert, Seymour Sarason, Ivan Illich, Maria Montessori, Paulo Freire, Patti Lather, Reggio Emilia, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kimberlé Crenshaw
If you’re still reluctant to stand up, this is the time to remember that your working conditions are students’ learning conditions. One of the things students learn at school is how grownups function in the workplace. And everything else they learn is colored by the atmosphere of that workplace. What do you want your students to learn? And what kind of atmosphere do you want them to do their learning in?
Source: CURMUDGUCATION: Making Trouble (or “Other Lessons of West Virginia, Arizona, et. al.”)
It is probably true that I would not have my job were it not for affirmative action. Many white women wouldn’t have jobs either! And of course, white men have benefited from white supremacy for years. But affirmative action is not white supremacy in reverse; it is not antiwhite, but pro-justice. It was created so that with my Ph.D., which I earned with distinction, I would actually be able to teach at a university. Affirmative action, in the case of black people, is a response to systemic racist disadvantages. It’s important to get that history right — not twisted.
Source: The Ugly Truth of Being a Black Professor in America – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Any turn towards research that completely dismisses the social sciences in such casual fashion simply sneaks values in through the back door under the pretense of being neutral science. Sociology tells us lots about the workings of power, about the relation between our individual lives and larger structures, making it invaluable for understanding education. However, we don’t see many right wing sociologists, and Nigel Dodd argues that’s down to epistemological reasons. Sociologists favor “accounts of the world that emphasize structure and social process, while right-leaning people favor accounts that emphasize “freedom of choice and agency”.
Source: What kinds of research matter to educators? – Long View on Education
Forced rankings abandon multiple variables, and they magnify differences that aren’t statistically significant. “Well, there has to be one winner,” they say, but of course, this isn’t true. It’s not a linear race, and the very concept of a single winner is forced.
When the US News college list started to get traction, plenty of college presidents spoke out in opposition. Over time, though, they discovered that being well ranked was profitable, and in an industry that touches billions of dollars a year, status leads to money and money leads to more status… Today, many colleges are intentionally gaming the system by changing what they originally stood for simply to move up.
High rankings do more than distort the behavior of those that seek to move up. High rankings attract the sort of people who don’t want to discover their own ‘best’. Who want to be around others that care about high rankings. Who will run to the next high rank the moment the world changes. And those that are attracted to the winner of a forced ranking change the very tenor of the place they chose. So now, that restaurant that used to be special is merely crowded. Now the company that only keeps its top performers is a horrible place to work.
The biggest problem with a forced ranking is that it’s forced.
My experiences with first-year and upper-level writing instruction have further confirmed that if you are grading, you may not be teaching.
Specifically, teaching citation and scholarly writing has revealed a problem that directly exposes why grading often works against our instructional goals.
First, let me stress again that the essential problems with grading include how traditional practices (such as assigning grades that are averaged for quarter and/or semester grades that are then averaged for course grades) tend to blur the distinction between summative and formative grades, inhibiting often the important role of feedback and student revision of assignments.
The blurring of formative and summative grades that occurs in averaging, as I have confronted often, deforms teaching and learning because students are being held accountable during the learning process (and thus discouraged from taking risks).
To briefly review the problems with grades and averaging, let me offer again what my major professor argued: Doctors do not take a patient’s temperature readings over a four-day stay in the hospital in order to average them, but does consider the trajectory of those readings, drawing a final diagnosis on the last reading (or readings). Thus, averaging is a statistical move that distorts student growth, deforms the value of reaching a state of greater understanding.
I struggle to break through students resisting the drafting, feedback, revision process because they have been taught to submit instantly perfect work; that their identifiable flaws are the loss of points-not necessary areas to learn, grow, and excel.
As I end my thirty-fourth year teaching, I cannot stress hard enough that if you are grading, you may not be teaching, and your students likely are not learning the very things you value enough to assess.
Source: If You Are Grading, You May Not Be Teaching | radical eyes for equity
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