week 3

Week 3

After reading chapter 6 and the articles this week I feel there is a lot to digest.  There are some strong corresponding threads among them though, which are quite interesting.  I will start with the textbook.  I think the most important thing I got out of the chapter was the part about international skills being as critical skill and not the luxury it has been in the past.  Each of the global trends mentioned touch on different aspects of this, which make this such an important part of where education needs to go.  I think we can agree that most schools here in the U.S. lack many of the essential parts needed to become international in nature.  The basic outline to creating these types of schools seems pretty well laid out here.  Each of them, are important aspects. The part that really stood out to me though was the integration of content into all of the curriculum areas.  Using the core subjects as a means for teaching multiple things seems to be the way to go.  There are many other changes discussed as well which will help the approach schools are taking to reform their educational systems.  There is the problem though that this change should have happened yesterday. 

This progression towards becoming international schools demands we review the basic approaches towards education.  The new mission statements to be developed don’t seem to need so much change from what we have in place as much as they need to be implemented in a better way.  While looking at Maine’s Guiding Principles, and other skills and results from other countries many of them seem quite similar.  In particular I liked the article on “Developing Students Creative Skills for 21^st Century success”.  While being a little bias in this department, this is such an important part that seems to get overlooked in the actual classroom setting. 

The lecture by Linda Darling was also interesting.  I like the idea of the open ended questions.  While answers may not be what is being looked for there is room to explain the rationing behind them.  This allows for a more analytical thought process and actually shows what the student knows.  This also ties in with the more creative approach as students need to think of the best way to answer the questions making them creative problem solvers.  This is certainly a better approach to assessment than single answer questions.  It does make it harder to grade though and because of that using that type of testing for standards would be very difficult.

The article on global education certainly laid out some good directions for education as well.  The incorporation of global concepts into the already in place curriculum seems to be a much better approach than trying to change everything.  Also, creating a learner which can adapt to a changing society is much more important than one who just knows the answers to what is being taught currently.  I think tied into the Zhao interview because of the incorporation of multiple aspects into what is being taught.  The way Chinese school focus only on what is being tested gives the higher scores but not the more well rounded knowledge base.  I think this enforces my view that while standards are necessary to show what needs to be covered, they need to be taken with a grain of salt.  We are trying to create lifelong learners so giving them the tools to succeed is not necessarily giving them the answers.  I think Zhao’s comment that “we make the connection between the test scores and future successes” illustrates where change needs to start.  I think most of us can agree we place too much value on a single test score to make it valid.