Читать книгу Student Learning Communities - Нэнси Фрей - Страница 30

If you have taught for more than a few years, chances are good that there are some tasks you return to again and again. We hope that this chapter is inspiring you to give those tasks a facelift.

The Department for Education and Child Development in South Australia is in the midst of a 10-year initiative to create a world-class education for all of its students. Part of the initiative is to help teachers "transform" tasks they have been using in order to better build knowledge, meet high expectations, and help students develop the social skills they need to be successful. Teachers across the state are being trained to examine their tasks systematically to find ways to elevate the complexity, challenge, and quality of peer interactions by considering four conditions:

 From closed to open. How might the existing task be strengthened through creating multiple entry points and pathways, as well as multiple perspectives and solutions?

 From information to understanding. How might the existing task be improved by asking students to explore different ways of knowing by applying critical thinking skills (e.g., compare and contrast, generalize, make connections, and identify relationships)?

 From telling to asking. How might the task be more motivating by asking students to explore before explaining, leveraging student voice, using Socratic questioning, and fostering dialogue in the classroom community?

 From procedure to problem solving. How might the task foster interdependence and social cohesion by allowing students to identify the problem to solve, providing them insufficient information at first, giving them only some of the steps, or including some irrelevant information?

The chart in Figure 2.3 provides an overview of the task analysis and design process. The goal set for teachers in South Australia is to design tasks so that students are doing more thinking while deepening knowledge about themselves. It's a good goal for us all. Stretching students intellectually and metacognitively also grows their capacity to take wise and positive action.