Standardized Tests in Education

Among students who actually have to take standardized tests, the misconception that these tests evaluate intelligence is all too common. They categorize and rank their peers according to their scores- a good score means you are "smart", a low score means you are "stupid". The authority and validity of the test itself is rarely brought into question. Students spend months in needless anxiety over these tests which they perceive as determining their future; to a certain extent, they are right. The college application and acceptance system take standardized test scores, especially the ACT and SAT, into serious consideration when looking at applicants. I think that the way that many universities weigh test scores so heavily reinforces the concepts of school and testing that most students develop by high school- that school is a series of hoops to jump through and the end goal of school is to get high test scores.

Standardized tests can be, however, a useful tool for assessing where students stand on different subject compared to their peers on national, state, and local scales- if the tests are valid and reliable, that is. Assuming the standardized tests are both valid and reliable, I think standardized tests have a place in education, but I don't think they should count for anything. What they measure should not be such an important criterion for college admittance.

Classroom Management Part 2

Even the best run classroom will inevitably give rise to the occasional behavior problem. If it is one student causing the problem and it's relatively minor, I would pose a short discussion question about the material from that day to the class and have them talk about it in small groups, and then, as discretely as possible, talk to the problem student one-on-one and tell them that I need them to stop whatever the problem behavior was. At this stage, I won't make threats or talk about consequences. By keeping it individual, I won't interrupt the flow of the class and give opportunity for further distractions.

Motivation Part 2

In my last post on motivation, I touched on the idea of dogmatism, stating that I would encourage my students to not think dogmatically. I will have to present myself to students as an authority figure, but not someone whose word is to be taken without question or thought. Some students may already be disposed to non-dogmatic thinking, and will take it upon themselves to question me when I say something they disagree with. I will give these questions full and fair consideration, even re-directing the flow of the class to acknowledge the validity of their contention. By setting this example, other students will pick up on the idea and begin to raise questions when they are skeptical of something in the classroom, and when they do I will continue to encourage their independent thought by fairly considering what they have to say, and even conceding that I am mistaken if that's the case.

The classroom environment is critical to motivation, and peers play a large role in composing the classroom. With few exceptions, I will know little to nothing about my students before the year begins, and most often it will be nothing. I will begin the year with them sitting in traditional rows with random assigned seats for a few weeks, until I begin to get a feel for their personalities. After that, I will seemingly randomly re-assign seats, but I will carefully consider how the students personalities and levels of development will work together or not work together. By placing students in the best possible peer surroundings, they will be more motivated and also learn more because of the role of the more knowledgeable peer.

Motivational Factors

When I think about motivational factors in the classroom, my thoughts inevitably lead me to one fact: in a relatively short amount of time, I will spend in excess of 40 hours a week trying to motivate adolescents to engage themselves mentally in learning material that they frequently find difficult, often find boring, and that they may believe to be useless, irrelevant, or otherwise not worth their time. There are two aspects of the classroom that I have at my disposal to manipulate in order to make the curriculum appealing to students and appear worth learning: the material being presented, and the person presenting it (me).

As far as the material is concerned, most students recognize the inevitability that, however dull or difficult they may find a subject, they must get an acceptable grade in the class, even if for no other reason than to avoid taking it again. Thus, I will have to make the material mentally accessible to them. The best way I can think of to do this is to consider the learning theories, specifically developmental theories. If I consider DLT as much as possible, the curriculum will be presented in a manner that begins very concrete and gradually gets more abstract, yet still returns to concrete examples. At a basic level, the varying modes of representation will motivate most students to give the subject their attention.

Students' relationship with and perception of their teacher is another important factor of motivation. As a teacher, I will be a representation of authority to my students, and my interactions with them will affect their notions of dogmatism both in my class and in the future. I will avoid making the students' goal in the class gaining my approval, encouraging them instead to aim for comprehension. I don't want to be perceived as an arbitrator of knowledge but as a more knowledgeable peer who they also want to respect.

Classroom Management and the Learning Theories

Unless you're teaching preschool or kindergarten- and I'm not- students are going to have expectations; expectations about the material, the tests, and about how the class is run. For example, most teachers don't tolerate raised voices and yelling in the class, and so students will assume that you too will not tolerate it. This is not to say, however, that students will approach a new teacher the same way they behaved around previous teachers. At the beginning of the year, students will observe you and determine how the class is going to be run.


Through observing their behavior, using BLT, as a teacher I will determine what my student's expectations- their schemas- are for my behavior and classroom management. This is important because if my style of running a class doesn't fit into what they are used to, I will have to assimilate my management into what they're used to. If they are accustomed to a teacher who will ask a question, and then immediately answer it for students, I will have to slowly get them used to my method of waiting at least 10 seconds and giving students time to answer a question.

Reflections on my Lesson

Overall, I thought the lesson I taught, along with Lindsey and Emily, went well, and I enjoyed it. We considered Developmental Learning Theory first, and thought of different representations for our topic, social norms. We decided that the most concrete representation would be being in the presence of someone breaking a social norm. We considered assigning a few members of the class to break social norms throughout our lesson, without telling the rest of the class that it was part of our presentation. We decided that might be distracting, and would also push our time constraints. We settled on showing videos of people breaking norms first, and allowing the class to point out what they noticed. We would then move to an abstract representation by introducing the concept of a social norm, and defining it. We implemented Social Learning Theory next by having the class come up with examples of other social norms.

After that, we returned to concrete by using another video to display another example of a social norm being broken. After the video, we had a class discussion analyzing what norm was broken in the video. I appreciated the value of Social Learning Theory then, because by allowing the class to share their ideas first, they came up with answers that we hadn't thought of while making the video, but that were absolutely right.

We used one last video, demonstrating a social norm that is less obvious, and thus is violated fairly frequently. We showed a group of people waiting in line, and two people in the line were standing inappropriately close to the people in front of them. This is certainly a social norm- respecting personal space- but isn't a obvious one, and no one in the class could identify it after watching the video. By showing this example, we changed their concept, their schema of a social norm, implementing CLT.

Ed 107 Reflections

Thus far, this class has been an experience the likes of which I've only had twice before. That experience is being in a class where I'm not just learning new information, new facts, but where I'm rapidly learning new ways of thinking and new perspectives on learning.



In high school, there were two teachers with whom I had similar experiences. First, in AP European History, my teacher got a class of 25 sophomores genuinely excited about the Rennaisance, the French Revolution, the Unification of Germany, and just about every other topic we covered that year. From him, I learned to view history as one big net of interconnected stories. Those stories- whether it be the death of Louis XVI or the Italian conquests of Garibaldi- are all related and connected in ways too numerous and complex to ever fully understand. Two years later, Mr. Chierico showed me unique and novel, yet surprisingly simple, ways of looking at success and life. In Public Service Practicum, dubbed PSP, we organized our own fundraisers in small groups, managed every little detail, and saw the projects out through the end. Chierico gave me a concrete example of how the cliches I had been rolling my eyes at my whole life could be applied in a meaningful way. That anyone who worked hard enough could achieve greatness. In both classes, I left for summer with a significantly different outlook on academia, myself, and the web of life.

This class, more than any I've had so far, has revolutionized my thoughts on education. Previously, my assumptions were that I would be a good teacher because younger kids respond well to me and I'm  a fairly understanding, patient person. Now, I realize that the skills I had before were only the tip of an iceberg of educational techniques I would need to master.

Am I Using Learning Theories?

Regarding Developmental Learning Theory, I came up with a few questions that I hope I always ask myself when planning a lesson to make sure I'm using DLT appropriately. First, I'll examine each representation of the material individually and ask myself where that representation falls on the concrete vs. abstract spectrum. If the representations don't begin at an appropriately concrete level, if they don't move gradually from concrete to abstract and back again, and if they don't fall in the student's Zone of Proximal Development, then my lesson isn't using DLT in an efficient way.


 For Social Learning Theory, I need to consider interaction and language. Regarding the first component, I need to ask myself who the more knowledgeable peers are in any given classroom setting, and if those more knowledgeable peers are being effectively utilized. Also, in every situation that I'm communicating with my students, which occurs almost constantly, I need to pause and consider the language I'm using and if that language is the best way to present the material.

 When applying Constructivist Learning Theory to my teaching, there are three main questions I need to ask myself: how are the student's current schema's constructed, are those schema's correct and to what degree, and how can I reconstruct their schema's in a way that they will be receptive to.

History, DLT, and SLT

To me, history is a subject that can either be made very engaging for students, or it can be boring and confusing if Developmental Learning Theory and Social Learning Theory aren't considered. I've sat through history classes that were lecture from beginning to end, and every day I walked to that class knowing that I was going to sit in my seat and rapidly scribble down dates and names for fifty minutes. I've also been in a history class, AP European History, where I looked forward to that class all morning long and remembered almost all of the people, places, and events we talked about. In terms of a high school history class, the student's age limits allow them to potentially develop a complex and abstract understanding of the subject matter. That understanding however, needs to first be supported by concrete examples.

For example, in teaching the French Revolution, instead of lecturing for days on end and then showing an educational movie as some type of reward, as most of my history teachers have done, I would show the film first. By doing this, students will have visual imagery to reflect on when I'm teaching about the Revolution. Educational videos however, can lose the interest of many students, so showing a film that is related, such as the relatively recent Hollywood hit "Marie Antoinette",  and not just a video lecture will engage students much better. The idea here is that they will be able to recall what Paris looked like during the Revolution, and how people dressed and talked while they are being presented with more abstract representations. Before the showing the film, you could do an in-class role playing activity that resembles the social dynamics of the French Revolution but doesn't explicitly talk about the event. The students will experience first-hand something like the Revolution, then see a video representation of it, and then learn the details.

Thoughts on Developmental Learning Theory

I haven't had the chance to implement Developmental Learning Theory in a classroom setting myself, but I have had the opportunity to use it in other ways. During summers, I work as a camp counselor at a summer camp near my home in Grayslake, IL. I've had the same group of boys from the summer they were seven to this most recent summer when they were all nine. I had to learn to present instructions to them in a way they could understand, in a developmentally appropriate way, if I wanted a good response from them. When we were going to play a game that most of them had never played before, I learned by trial and error that I could explain and talk until I was blue in the face, and most of them would remain confused by the rules of the game. At ages 7-9, my boys just can't visualize an unfamiliar game that has several steps and rules. As I grew familiar with my group and the best ways to help them understand new concepts, I realized it was easier for everyone if I just showed them, step by step, how to play the game.


I didn't realize it at the time, but I was using Developmental Learning Theory to take my instructions from abstract (verbal instructions) to concrete (real life demonstration). The first time I tried this, it was like I could see lightbulbs popping up over their little heads, and many of them said "ohhhhhh, now I get it". After that, I never wasted much time explaining rules to them using only verbal instructions. I knew that if a task or a game involved more than one or two steps, I would need to demonstrate each step at least once, and then further help those who forgot the instructions to later steps. This took a bit of patience on my part because coming back from a year at Drake, I wasn't used to repeating myself five or six times (literally), but that's to be expected, and it was all worth it when I could see a kid make a mental breakthrough and understand a concept that previously confused them, even if it was just a simple camp game.


My group, young as they are, aren't unique in the sense that they need developmentally appropriate instructions. Often, I watched other counselors, whose kids were around 10-12 years old, get incredibly and inappropriately frustrated when their kids weren't responding to their instructions. The counselors figured that since their kids were approaching middle school age, they should understand all verbal instructions. While the 5th and 6th graders were certainly more developed than my youngsters, there were still certain concepts or complicated instructions that they couldn't visualize and really understand just through being told. Their counselors needed to realize that the kids were trying, but the information wasn't being presented in a way they were developmentally ready to comprehend. The counselors should have calmed down, switched gears, and looked for a more concrete way to communicate with their campers.

Although I didn't realize I was using Developmental Learning Theory with my group, the steps I took definitely helped both myself and all my boys during past summers. I'm excited to go back to work with them now that I have a better (and more concrete) understanding of DLT. I think that my new knowledge about presenting information in a developmentally appropriate manner, along with my campers being a year older and more developed, will result in much better communication and understanding between us.