Today in my Epistemology and Ontology seminar, our guest speaker began class by saying we would be taking a pop quiz. He then pulled out a little black bag, whose contents we were to identify (or guess!). When he pulled the first item out, I excitedly wrote down that shiny silver item was a vegetable steaming basket. I was not certain about the second item, but I was confident that the third item was a loose tea diffuser. As he continued to pull items out of his bag, with prefaces about how certain he was that we would all be able to identify the next item, I began to worry. I could not identify what the metal device with the hook on the end or the small green-handled tool with the sharp metal tip were. Since many of my classmates had agricultural backgrounds, either personally or academically, they could identify many of the items from the professor's bag. However, I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and have majored in Human Development & Family Studies. In this case, in this pseudo-exam, I was at a disadvantage due to my context and experience. This made me think about how this is relevant in the real world--with standardized tests, for example. I remember learning that test makers were working to make passages in reading comprehension exams, for example, more diverse in topics. Although the activity may have temporarily reduced my self-efficacy, I think it was a useful demonstration of how experience, learning, and diversity are all important in teaching, learning, and assessment.
1 Comment
edenoon
2/4/2015 09:15:48 am
I student taught in an urban middle school last semester where my students took a weekly "snapshot" standardized test. On one particular test, students were asked to read a passage and then answer a question about the "veranda" in the story. Most of my students got the question wrong because they had no idea what a veranda was or looked like. I've also heard stories of students getting questions wrong because the test accepts sofa, but not couch, or other synonyms. It really makes you think about testing and assessment, and who is making the tests. I think it would be easy to identify inherent biases within the standardized tests that make or break many public school system.
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GEDI BLOGI am taking a Contemporary Pedagogy, a Graduate Education Development Institute (GEDI) course towards the Preparing Future Professoriate (PFP) certificate. In this section of my blog, I will be posting about topics related to innovation in teaching and learning. Archives
April 2015
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