Over the handlebars #blimage

I vividly remember learning to ride a bicycle, even though I was quite young at the time. I remember Mum buying me some 'stabilisers', a small pair of extra wheels that were attached either side of my rear wheel to allow me to keep my balance. I rode around on these for quite a while before I eventually gained the confidence to ride without them. I wonder how much longer it took me to learn to ride because of those stabilisers?

To help my kids when they were learning to ride, I would run alongside them holding the frame, acting as their support until I thought they were ready to ride on their own without falling over. They learnt a lot quicker, partly because they were unaware when I had let go. When I was learning, my stabilisers were conscious scaffolding, and I knew when they were gone. It took me a lot longer to gain confidence and I tended to rely on those little wheels a lot more than I should have.

My kids on the other hand, gained confidence in riding because they assumed I was there supporting them, when in fact I had already let them go. Acquiring skills is like that. Students are often more capable than we think they are. Providing too much scaffolding can be counter productive, and learners can take a lot longer to gain their confidence. The quicker a learner becomes independent, the more confident they will become. Provide them too much support, or intervene too frequently, and they will take longer to discover their own balance.  
No amount of scaffolding or support could have prepared me for the incident that occurred when I was 18 years old. My mother had asked me to take a carton of fresh eggs to her friend, who lived a few streets away. I cycled over holding the eggs in my left hand while steering my bike with my right hand, which also controlled the front brakes.

As I approached the lady's house, a sudden gust of wind blew hard, and I veered into the kerb. Automatically, I grasped the front brakes with my right hand, and the bike stopped. I however, continued, over the handlebars, and both I and the egg carton went up in the air.

Oh the irony. My fall resulted in a fractured collar bone and I spent 24 hours in hospital while the doctors observed me for concussion. The eggs however, were unharmed. Make of that what you will, and then, if you are up for it, write a blog using this image for the #blimage challenge:

Photos by Darren Johnson (courtesy of David Hopkins) and Steve Wheeler


Over the handlebars by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England as a part of the #blimage challenge and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The numbers game

When you mark a student's work, do you give them a grade or do you offer them advice? Both, do I hear you say? If you are offering both, then you're doing well. But not all teachers do, and I should point out that there is a big difference between assessment of learning and assessment for learning. Assessing students' work can be tedious and time consuming, and it turns out to be the bane of many teachers' lives. But it is a vitally important part of pedagogy.

Assessment of learning focuses largely on the student's work and offers metrics - awarding a grade with a numerical value - that reflect how the work is measured against specific criteria. By contrast, assessment for learning focuses on the student - particularly recognising that their learning is an ongoing process - and seeks to inform learners on how they can improve their work in the future. Some would argue that giving grades reflects a product-based pedaogogy, while offering feedback supports a process-based pedagogy.

Ever stopped to wonder why we give grades? What value do students place on numbers, or letters? What does it mean to get a 'B' for an essay, or to achieve 50% in an exam? In higher education, students' efforts - whether they take the form of essay, project or an exam - are 'marked' on a 100 point scale. Anything below 40 is a fail, and anything above 70 is a first class result. The majority of students achieve grades somewhere between these two scores, because more often than not, students tend to produce average work. Sometimes it's because lecturers mark conservatively and don't like to fail students (that could reflect badly on their own academic reputation) or draw attention by awarding an outstanding piece of work a 95 or even a 100.

Why do we need to attach a number to someone's work? Is the numbers game teachers play a meaningful exercise or a nonsense? To reduce a student's work - which they have often painstakingly constructed over a period of several weeks or months - to a single number, seems a little unfair. Although a student's grade can be accompanied by comments on their work, it is the grade that usually takes centre stage, because ultimately, over a period of time, grades determine the classification of degree the student will be awarded. Whether employers value degree classifications as much as universities, is a moot point, and to be debated elsewhere. Assessment for learning can also incorporate grades, but the emphasis is on the feedback (some might say feed-forward) which is a form of scaffolding to support students as they strive to do better in their academic endeavours.

In the final analysis, marking of students' work is either about how their work measures up against standards, or it is about how well the teacher can get them to understand what they need to do better next time. The two outcomes are vastly different. They represents a clash of ideologies on how education should be conducted. They have their roots in the same battle for education I have previously articulated. Unsurprisingly, there were a few antagonistic responses to these posts, because some disliked my argument that there might be a binary and saw it as too simplistic. The arguments remains - that although we can all choose how we teach and assess, our decisions are often influenced by ideology and the culture we find ourselves immersed within. Personal views on the purpose of education shape professional practice. In reality, a range of assessment practices do exist, but as educators we should acknowledge that personal philosophy in education drives everything a teacher does. Without adequate feedback, students find it difficult to progress. Simply placing a number at the top of an assignment does little to support their development as learners.

Assessment is at the heart of education. If measurement of learning is done well, not only can teachers be reasonably sure how well their students are doing, they can provide evaluation on the effectiveness of the curriculum, teaching methods and resources. However, we know there is no substitute for good scaffolding of learning, and useful feedback is central.

Photo by Andy Barrow on Flickr


The numbers game by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.