Learning Loss and What it Doesn’t Mean
Two choices existed during the pandemic for teaching and learning:
What should be obvious to all of us is that as educators we have students in our presence for a limited time and we should take advantage of every minute. Guidelines are of course useful and necessary in helping us do that, while a script to be followed under any circumstances would not be. Scripts don't understand context and used uncritically will create inefficiencies and certainly fail to take advantage of the limited time we have.
What about when times aren't normal? What are the consequences of sticking to the script during a pandemic when everything we thought we knew about the script and how to deliver it gets blown up? We could still try and stay on script which isn't likely to produce the same result as normal times (which wasn’t great to begin with), or we could throw the script away. We could seek pedagogical opportunities in our immediate surroundings that could not help but be at that core of our students’ thoughts and surroundings and use that to create learning opportunities that would otherwise be impossible. If we consider the limited amount of time we have with students and need to use each moment wisely, the wisest use seems to me one that creates the greatest amount of learning benefit for students in each of those moments. Staying on script during a pandemic seems a sure fire way not to do that.
Let me present a hypothesis, one I cannot prove but that I believe is more than just a little probable. When we review standardized test data in reading and mathematics that covers the last two years of schooling, we will see a decline in the amount of reading and mathematical content in the possession of students who endured it compared to what we might expect in more normal times. We can interpret that as a loss in reading and mathematics or as part of a body of evidence that shows our attention was for a moment focused elsewhere in order to maximize learning under difficult circumstances. But then we could only interpret it that way if we knew the focus was elsewhere.
What I suspect is that the political obsession with test scores probably prevented the shift of focus to more relevant subjects more easily learned during a crisis. If that is the case, and it most likely is, then what we are observing in the reading and math scores is evidence of a wasted opportunity. Students were never going to learn as much reading and math during a pandemic as they otherwise would. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have taught it, only that such an outcome was inevitable no matter how much time we dedicated to it. So rather then follow a script whose outcome was going to be less than ideal, why not use that time more wisely? Why not turn a difficult situation to our students’ advantage? Why spend any moment of our students’ precious educational career inefficiently when another choice is available?
The great learning loss that we should be talking about is not in the students or in their test scores but in the continued willful ignorance of those who continue to insist on educational approaches that cannot possibly result in the effect they want, who insist on standardizing and scripting the educational process for all children, due to either willful ignorance or a lack of imagination. If we stretch the educational career of a student a cross their thirteen years of schooling, we should hope to see as many of the moments in that career as well spent as possible. The odds are we aren't going to see that during the pandemic because the pedagogical choice of doing what was best for students wasn’t there as an option. That needs to be seen as a problem with a remarkably simple solution.
- Bore the kids with the scripted content in unfamiliar learning environments.
- Take advantage of the unfamiliar learning environments to engage students in ways those students would find meaningful.
What should be obvious to all of us is that as educators we have students in our presence for a limited time and we should take advantage of every minute. Guidelines are of course useful and necessary in helping us do that, while a script to be followed under any circumstances would not be. Scripts don't understand context and used uncritically will create inefficiencies and certainly fail to take advantage of the limited time we have.
What about when times aren't normal? What are the consequences of sticking to the script during a pandemic when everything we thought we knew about the script and how to deliver it gets blown up? We could still try and stay on script which isn't likely to produce the same result as normal times (which wasn’t great to begin with), or we could throw the script away. We could seek pedagogical opportunities in our immediate surroundings that could not help but be at that core of our students’ thoughts and surroundings and use that to create learning opportunities that would otherwise be impossible. If we consider the limited amount of time we have with students and need to use each moment wisely, the wisest use seems to me one that creates the greatest amount of learning benefit for students in each of those moments. Staying on script during a pandemic seems a sure fire way not to do that.
Let me present a hypothesis, one I cannot prove but that I believe is more than just a little probable. When we review standardized test data in reading and mathematics that covers the last two years of schooling, we will see a decline in the amount of reading and mathematical content in the possession of students who endured it compared to what we might expect in more normal times. We can interpret that as a loss in reading and mathematics or as part of a body of evidence that shows our attention was for a moment focused elsewhere in order to maximize learning under difficult circumstances. But then we could only interpret it that way if we knew the focus was elsewhere.
What I suspect is that the political obsession with test scores probably prevented the shift of focus to more relevant subjects more easily learned during a crisis. If that is the case, and it most likely is, then what we are observing in the reading and math scores is evidence of a wasted opportunity. Students were never going to learn as much reading and math during a pandemic as they otherwise would. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have taught it, only that such an outcome was inevitable no matter how much time we dedicated to it. So rather then follow a script whose outcome was going to be less than ideal, why not use that time more wisely? Why not turn a difficult situation to our students’ advantage? Why spend any moment of our students’ precious educational career inefficiently when another choice is available?
The great learning loss that we should be talking about is not in the students or in their test scores but in the continued willful ignorance of those who continue to insist on educational approaches that cannot possibly result in the effect they want, who insist on standardizing and scripting the educational process for all children, due to either willful ignorance or a lack of imagination. If we stretch the educational career of a student a cross their thirteen years of schooling, we should hope to see as many of the moments in that career as well spent as possible. The odds are we aren't going to see that during the pandemic because the pedagogical choice of doing what was best for students wasn’t there as an option. That needs to be seen as a problem with a remarkably simple solution.
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