I can't wait for the day that young people are able to learn for the sake of learning, and not for marks. Or maybe it's parents who want the marks. Or administrators. Or universities. Regardless of who wants them, I would be happy if I didn't have to give them. Isn't it possible to learn without needing a grade assigned to your learning. I mean, either way you look at it you know what you know and no mark is going to change that.
Now, I don't want you to misunderstand me, because this is a matter of my career and profession we are talking about (a career and profession that I absolutely love): I am saying that I'm not a fan of assigning grades, NOT that I disagree with assessing what students have learned. There is a difference. Assessment is imperative to learning, and a fairly recent development in education is something called "Assessment FOR Learning" rather than the old idea of assessment OF learning. I am in total agreement with assessing students (and myself for that matter) for the purpose of seeing where errors are being made and providing opportunity to learn from those errors and make corrections. Really, what is the point in knowing that you don't know something if you're not going to go back and figure out what it is you don't know?
Assessment is key to learning, but marks just rank how your current understanding compares to that of others; and I find that to be an unnecessary statistic at best, and a destructive statistic at worst.
If you are wondering where this new rant is coming from, I'll tell you: It's report card time! I hate report card time. Teachers get cranky because they are trying to finish off a unit and have assignments completed and give tests so that they can have all the marks possible to report to parents. Then the kids get cranky because they are getting overworked with homework and studying for tests. This makes the teachers more cranky because the kids are complaining, and the stress of it all in the end is most likely skewing the results we get anyhow. I hate report card time. And yet, for the last year and a bit (or should I say my first year and a bit) I have fallen into this same problem despite my best efforts to avoid it. Lessons take a bit longer than planned, special days creep into the schedule, kids need a bit more time for consulting with me, and all of a sudden, the unit that should have been completed 2 weeks before report cards is finishing 2 hours before the marks need to be in . . . and then I have to mark their work.
It was kind of funny today when I had a student complaining they would be pulling an all-nighter to get their work in for 2 classes tomorrow and I replied that my all-nighter would be Tuesday night trying to get my marks in for 5 classes. It was a bit of an eyeopener for the kid as he realized that he has one assignment to complete for each class, for a total of 6 at the very most but us teachers have 6 classes worth of assignments to grade with 15-25 kids per class. I'm wasn't kidding about the all-nighter. He finally understood why the cut-off for my classes is the Friday even though report cards don't come out until a week later (and it takes our wonderful and under-recognized administrative assistants a day or two to put all those marks together and create report cards for an entire school). Hopefully, as I gain some experience in teaching, I will be able to perfect a schedule that will help me avoid this problem.
Or maybe I should just stop blogging and get back to work.
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8 comments:
ok... here's the thing. I was the type of kid (student) who excelled in school and, to me, my marks were my motivation to keep excelling. I wanted to get the best possible mark I could and sooo if you took away marks, I would probably not have worked as hard in school. I mean... what would be the point in working hard to achieve if there was nothing to actually achieve. And, don't try to tell me that you would leave comments, and only comments, on my work for me to gage how well I was understanding... because that is not the same thing as actually getting a percentage to be proud of. It is funny, though, for someone who did work ridiculously hard in school to be a dance teacher instead of a different career, in which school would have actually mattered!! HA ;)! SO... keep those marks coming for all of your students! And not to worry, it will soon be over and you will be on to parent teacher interviews!!! Hang in there!
What you are describing is called "extrinsic motivation." You are motivated to do things by getting something unrelated to the task you are doing. Extrinsic motivation includes things like approval from others, money, rewards, and grades. This is opposed to "intrinsic motivation" which is doing something because of internal desires related to the task. This includes things like getting pleasure from the task, wanting to learn and develop skills, or because you feel that what you are doing is morally correct.
It is understood that children, and adults alike, who are intrinsically motivated to do things achieve better than those who are extrinsically motivated. Intrinsically motivated people are willing and eager to learn new things, and they work harder and go more in-depth to learn all they can.
While I will admit that most students would fit in the extrinsically motivated category, is this really a good value to be teaching students? I would say no. Children who are extrinsically motivated grow up to be adults who are extrinsically motivated and require bribes and rewards to do their best work. they are lazy and not self-disciplined. One of my biggest annoyances as a teacher is the question: "Is this for marks?". Why should it matter if it is for marks? Why do you care more about your mark than you do about learning what they need to learn to succeed in life? And then it becomes a matter of increasing the number of marks, because working hard for 5 marks is not enough, then 10 marks is not enough, and so on and so on.
I am not saying that we should change the system overnight, but it is something that I think we should gradually be working toward.
Is it not impossible to be intrinsically motivated in topics and work you don't care for? I am only intrinsically motivated in areas I enjoy. For everything else I need marks, money, etc. For that reason I don't think it's possible to get rid of extrinsic motivation in most schooling or work.
Dave
I disagree. In order to be intrinsically motivated you simply need to understand the importance of doing the things you don't like doing. It's not a matter of liking it, but rather of realizing the benefits you will gain down the road by learning the skills now. You do it because you know you need to do it, not because you are being bribed to do it. But this is a concept that kids don't get, mainly because they are not being taught it (at school or at home). How many times do we tell our kids to do something or . . ., or to do it and then they'll get . . . . Schools are beginning to go this way wat the earlier levels. Kids are getting report cards that tell them if they are meeting, exceeding, or needing to work harder to achieve expectations. The groundwork is being set (I hope) to continue this through junior, then senior high.
You wrote,
In order to be intrinsically motivated you simply need to understand the importance of doing the things you don't like doing. It's not a matter of liking it, but rather of realizing the benefits you will gain down the road by learning the skills now."
My response is that this is not truly intrinsic motivation either because it still depends on benefits/rewards down the road. I would also say that most people, and especially young people, have trouble seeing tomorrow, let alone a few years from now or eternity. I agree that this is what is needed. I see it as much in my own life and those of other Christians as you see it in your students. The Bible constantly reminds us to live in light of eternity, not just for this day or this life. It is absolutely necessary to live righteously. But I still say that is not intrinsic motivation.
Dave
My own desire to learn just for the sake of learning did not come until I was out of school. I think that my schooling was valuable in that it gave me the grounding for "real" learning in later life. IOW, my school learning was mostly rote, "mechanical" learning, if you like, but without it I would not have had the tools (or perhaps even the desire) for education in areas of real interest later on. What you are doing now, even if some seem to begrudge it now, is equipping your students for their own, 'real' education which will carry them the rest of their lives.
And that is what I try to do with my lessons and assignments--preparing kids for their lives after school. I try to relate everything to how they can use it later in life (though with English most kids seem to think none of it is useful later on, even though this is the one subject necessary in ANYTHING they choose to do in the future), I bring in television programs and other media that relates to life after school and discuss how it relates to what they are learning, and I try to create "authentic assessments", another popular term right now (and a very important one) that asks kids to complete tasks that relate to the types of things they will do once out of school.
My philosophy for teaching, right from day one, stemmed from the topic of my blog: providing students opportunities and learning that would enable them to move out of their harbours and into the world beyond, wherever that may be, whatever they may choose to do.
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