Tag: exams

Who’s the client?

One of the benefits of being a lawyer is that, for the most part, you know who your client is. It’s pretty clear that the guy paying you to defend him in court is who you are serving at that moment. It’s similar for carpet cleaners, doctors, and taxi drivers.

But it’s a lot less clear-cut for teachers.

Who are teachers serving? Where does our obligation lie? Who are we ultimately accountable to?

In an independent school, the parents are paying for your service. And if they are unimpressed, they will go to a different service provider. Are parents the client?

But in a government school, the taxpayer is paying for the service; are they the client? And are parents now less of a client?

And what about the student; isn’t he or she the client?

Or is it the Head of Department to whom I’m accountable for my performance and ongoing tenure?

Or is my school the client? They appointed me and directly pay me for my service?

And ultimately, does it even matter?

Most of the time, no, it doesn’t. As a teacher, you do your best to educate the child and, in theory, assuming it goes well, all stakeholders are happy.

But at times when the different stakeholders have different priorities, it can get pretty murky.

What happens, for example, when you have you have been teaching a wonderful child who shines when given the chance to work collaboratively to tackle challenging problems, who has a mature capacity to embrace risk and learn from failure, and who, more than any other child you teach, draws on a deep-well of social intelligence to empathise with other individual students and to unite groups towards a common goal…

…What happens when you are instructed to evaluate this child by telling them to sit in silence, to answer the question as the examiner expects, to avoid risk, to collaborate with no one and to try to beat all the other students…?

…What happens when you believe this is not in the best interest of the child’s education?

…And when you decide to follow the instruction you are given and evaluate the child anyway, you may well do it with a completely clear conscience – “it’s the right thing to do”.

…the right thing for who? Who’s the client now?

Open book

What would happen, do you think, if we really rethought the whole testing and exam thing in schools. Let’s say we keep exams, but update them to allow us to assess, not memory recall, but the skills we really value today. What if these exams posed hard, challenging problems that, like real-world problems, don’t necessarily have a ‘right’ answer. What if these questions forced students to use critical thinking and complex analysis, to take a moral stance, or to come up with an innovative ‘solution’. (Obviously, we would delete multiple-choice style questions along the way.)

And then, what would happen if all tests, all exams were ‘open book’. Students would be allowed to access their own notes and the accumulated wisdom of others. Perhaps, in these new exams, students could take a concept from YouTube (yes, internet access!) being presented by Stephen Hawking and then evolve his thinking to create a new, applied solution to a new problem.

What if students could connect with other students, share real-time developments, prototyping of solutions and even learn from each other’s mistakes. And what if we could assess the process, the ability of students to really ‘think’ under pressure, to conceptualise a future solution, to collaborate, cooperate and enhance the work of others as they collectively strive towards solving a hard problem using ’21st century skills’ that have been honed throughout their schooling.

Much of the above is already being trialled and researched in innovative schools around the world. There are significant obstacles to overcome, including political and budgetary hurdles, but this future is possible. The University of Queensland even has a very cool Assessment Ideas Factory for educators, designed to share and promote innovative assessment.

But then again, it’s probably easier to just lock students in a room, take their phones away, sit them in silence for two hours and encourage them to try to beat each other at ‘remembering’ the answers. (And multiple-choice exams are so much easier to grade!)