Friday, July 18, 2008

Gotcher Back

For those of you who worry that ed-tech bloggers are too much of an echo chamber, you might check out Ken DeRosa's critique of, well, not so much Chris Lehmann and Science Leadership Academy in general, as much as a particular example of student work from SLA's website.

What is truly mean-spirited about DeRosa's analysis is that he focuses much of his scorn on the students work -- "superficial analysis," "unaware," "fixates on inflammatory language," "fails to cover any of the important issues" -- without seeming to notice that the student's response perfectly fits the assignment. In fact, DeRosa doesn't seem to notice the assignment at all. He presents his example of what he thinks "a decent high-school level analysis of Dred Scott" would look like, but his work would not be an acceptable response to the prompt. He doesn't answer the question.

Now, he may think that the prompt was lousy. Fine. But go after the adults, not the kid. The student read the assignment and fulfilled it, with panache. DeRosa didn't.

11 comments:

KDeRosa said...

Here we go again.

I did not claim that the student's reponse failed to fit the assignment. I claimed that it did not demonstrate mastery of both the skills and knowledge that are critical to master the subject and a deep level of understanding as claimed in the family handbook.

I also did not claim that my analysis fit the assignment. I claimed that the analysis I provided demonstrated deep understanding of the decision. A student reponse that fit the assignment AND demonstrate a deep understanding would contain an analysis similiar to the one I provided.

I also indicated that I did not think that a novice high school student would ne able to perform such an analysis on his own given the apparent constraints of the assignment. I considered the superficial analysis (which BTW did not fully describe all the relevant holdings in the decision) provided by the student to be typical of what a high school student using "inquiry" methods would give.

Also, I'm not goung after the student, I'm going after the adults using the demonstration of the learning shown by the student's work. The teacher hasn't taught if the student hasn't learned.

Tom Hoffman said...

What makes you think that the assignment is meant to demonstrate mastery of the intricacies of the Dredd Scott Decision?

Have you read the Pennsylvania American History Standards?

KDeRosa said...

The assignment asked for the student to "explain the [Dred Scott] decision" and to provide "[his] perspective."

The relevant PA standard is 8.3.9(C): Analyze how continuity and change has influenced United States history from 1787 to 1914... Politics (e.g., election of 1860, impeachment of Andrew Johnson,Jim Crow laws).

The Dred Scott decision was one of those "changes" that affected United States History.

Tom Hoffman said...

What about:

Social Organizations (e.g., social class differences, women's rights and antislavery movement, education reforms);

and

Belief Systems and Religions (e.g., 19th century trends and movements)?

Your reading of the assignment is shallow and assumes that it is simply a chrome-plated question about the law. You assume, for some reason, that the goal is to demonstrate "thinking like a historian," when the assignment clearly and unambiguously asks the student to think like a citizen situated in a historical context. Specifically like an abolitionist.

The student shows "deep" understanding of the abolitionist movement because he or she can convincingly write as an abolitionist would think and speak. To not just rattle off facts but put him or herself in the shoes of members of a historical movement. In particular, his or her skill in doing so itself strongly suggests a study of additional primary source materials -- abolitionist texts.

The students response reflects an understanding of the belief system of the abolitionist movement, and beyond that, a passionate voice for core American values and human dignity.

That is what, it its heart, what I would hope to see in my child's writing and any other ninth grader. I'll take that every time.

KDeRosa said...

What about those? The student didn't demonstrate a deep understanding of either the social orignaization or belief system aspects presented by the assignment, to the extent they even were.

I don't see the student drawing in any understanding of that abolishinists were largely inspired by religious beliefs. And the student's understanding of the abolitionist causes can be summed up in one sentence: "Abolitionists were people who wanted slavery stopped, throughout the U.S." This is not exactly a deep understanding, but then again it's nor clear that the assignment contemplated anything but a simple understanding sufficient for the student to take a position on the larger historical question presented.

Good attempt to shift the goal-posts though.

My reading does not assume that the assignment relates to a "a chrome-plated question about the law." The legal and the historical questions are different. The legal questions relate to subject matter jurisdiction and federalism, something that high school students aren't expected to understand. In any event, Dredd Scott, isn't a seminal case on these issues. Dred Scott is important for historical reasons and since this was a history class, well, you can connect the dots. Or maybe not.

I also don't assume that the assignment called for demonstrating "thinking like a historian." What I wrote was that the student would have to be an historian to accomplish the assignment showing deep understanding due to the "inquiry" method employed.

To the extent the student showed thinking like an abolitionist, I'd agree, as long as you qualify it "like an abolistionist without a deep understanding of the historical context or relevant facts."

Any student response is going to rattle off some facts, but what separates the superficial response from the one with deep understanding is a deep understanding of the abstract functional relationship between the facts instead of an understanding confined to the surface structure of the facts. I made this point in the original post, but it appears to have gone over your head.

What is evident is that you and SLA don't expect much from high school students. What you indicate as representing "deep undersatnding" is merely superficial understanding dressed up in pretty words, but the deep understanding simply isn't there because the student hasn't learned the history.

The students response reflects an understanding of the belief system of the abolitionist movement, and beyond that, a passionate voice for core American values and human dignity.

That is what, it its heart, what I would hope to see in my child's writing and any other ninth grader. I'll take that every time.


You can have all this plus a deep understanding of the historical facts. That you've settled for only the former and sacrificed the latter is telling. As I noted in the post, as long as the purity of the pedagogical ideologiy is maintained, everything else can be rationalized away.

Roger Sweeny said...

The students response reflects an understanding of the belief system of the abolitionist movement, and beyond that, a passionate voice for core American values and human dignity.

That is what, it its heart, what I would hope to see in my child's writing and any other ninth grader. I'll take that every time.

Does that mean that history projects should never ask students to imagine themselves into the minds of the "bad guys?"

Tom Hoffman said...

Ken,

Well, we're at the point of "dead reckoning," about what "deep understanding" looks like in a 14 year old, aren't we?

In English we have anchor papers for this kind of thing. I can't find anything similar for Pennsylvania's history standards, so your opinion about what is sufficient is based on your opinion and observation of a small amount of student work from a limited range of circumstances.

If "deep" means "a deep understanding of the abstract functional relationship between the facts" that holds up to the analysis of a hostile adult lawyer, well, that fits in with your theme that "We don't know what a good K-12 education system is because we've never seen one operating," because you aren't going to find that. If you do, I'll be excited to learn more about their techniques.

Do you think you could take 80 incoming ninth graders from Philadelphia public schools and through direct instruction in history raise them to the level you imagine in, say, 150 contact hours in not just this topic but many others?

I doubt you could, but I'd love to see you try. "Deep understanding" is obviously relative and can be defined and demonstrated a number of ways. Your standards are not grounded in anything outside your preconceptions and imagination.


Roger,

No.

KDeRosa said...

Are you saying that 14 year olds aren't capable of understanding the concepts of balance of power and compromise?

I think they are.

Tom Hoffman said...

No, but there are certainly other historical contexts I'd use to teach the value of compromise than slavery.

KDeRosa said...

Yes, but these concepts still remain important "big ideas" which allow the students to understand the underlying historical facts and how they are functionally interconnected. Understanding the functional relationships permits the facts to be learned in a meaningful way, and not merely as a parade of meaningless facts that can be quickly forgotten.

I believe that iltimately this is the kind of historical understanding we are looking for in our students.

Regurgitation of rote facts isn't a desirable end, nor is discovery of superficial relationships. Both approaches are about equally distant from the place we want students to be.

Tracy W said...

No, but there are certainly other historical contexts I'd use to teach the value of compromise than slavery.

But isn't one of the important things to understand about slavery is how did such an abhorrent system last so long?

This may be overly optimistic, but if we learn from history not merely that evil things happened, but how they happened (eg slavery, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition), then perhaps we can avoid such evils in the future.