Last week, when Dr. Ackerman brought out the Black Box and asked us to connect to a learning theory, besides the Skinner connection, I thought of the Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black article Inside the Black Box.
The two use the black box as a metaphor for our classrooms and argue that what we teachers do to manage all the situations that occur in a class period to "help students learn immediately and in the future" is really what matters first. The standards and achievement scores and all the rest of the goals in our race to the top come after we start paying attention to "the processes of teaching and learning" in those black boxes.
Several years ago, I had the chance, along with some of our other teachers, to attend a week-long work session with Dr. Wiliam. We worked to learn just how difficult it is to come up with effective assessments that truly teach us what students know and where they are in the learning continuum. That's been part of the professional development I've been privileged to have.
No comments:
Post a Comment