How are we Evaluating Ourselves? : BIG Questions Institute

It’s been energizing to see all of the conversations of late regarding a truly different approach to student evaluation, one that doesn’t include grades. The problems with grades are many, and they have been articulated countless of times, most notably by Alfie Kohn. Now, finally, we have groups like Teachers Going Gradeless and books like Ungrading to point the way for those who want to mitigate the harmful effects.

All good.

What still feels absent in the discussions of how we evaluate learning, however, is how we evaluate the learning environments that we create for our students (and for ourselves.) Before we try to determine what, exactly, a child has learned in their time with us, wouldn’t it make sense to interrogate the conditions that we provide for that learning to take place?

It would.

And yet, we rarely audit those conditions against what we know about how children learn best.

Might be because if we did that on a regular basis, we’d have to give ourselves a failing grade.

I know this is a variation on an old theme, but it bears repeating. Children don’t learn powerfully and deeply when their motivations are extrinsic. When their learning is tied to a clock. When they have little say in what, when, or with whom they learn.

No one does.

So now, as we find ourselves already in August, and as many teachers are already gearing up for a new school year to begin, we’re asking how might we evaluate the environments we create for our students to learn in?

With the acknowledgment that there are systems and practices in place that are difficult if not impossible to change overnight, here are four questions you might consider in that inquiry:

1. To what extent will children have a say in the look and feel of their environment? How might we allow them to personalize it and feel more connected to it?

2. How might we invite students to co-create norms for behavior and practice within the environment?

3. To what extent can we get students outside of the traditional classroom into other environments that may spur creativity and imagination, spaces that they themselves identify?

4. Can we create opportunities for students to do real work in the real world around questions or topics that they are invested in? Can we support their own interests to a greater degree?

Much of this is about the ways in which we create environments that give students more agency over their school experience, which is something all learners crave. And yet, unfortunately, making the changes suggested in those questions is challenging, to say the least.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t try.