Monday, 21 March 2016

Vignette 4

I think it's important to report on all factors involved in learning, including work habits, but not lumped together into the achievement grade.

For example: it's unfair to mark a student's grasp of outcomes from the Program of Studies, and then take away mark because they are habitually late.  If the student's work showed they had a healthy understanding of the course material, it is obvious their tardiness is not affecting concept attainment.  As far as the Program of Studies is concerned, this student is succeeding and is understanding the requires concepts.

My opinion, however, is that this student's learning has not ended there.  As teachers, we are not only teaching prescribed content, we are also preparing students for life outside of school.  For this reason, we need to track, separately, other factors, including work habits.  Tracking these factors demonstrates to the student their importance in the learning process.  By bring attention to work habits, the student sees that their actions are also important within the classroom.

Tracking these factors can also help a student who is struggling to grasp the course material.  Their achievement grade may be low, however, their motivation can still be kept up, because they see their work habits are acknowledge.  Acknowledgement of this student's hard work ethic could be the only factor which keeps them motivated to keep trying to understand, instead of shutting down and quitting.    

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