Who carries the burden of providing rigor in the classroom? Ultimately it is the teacher’s job to provide challenging assignments, but there are three principles that can be modeled and practiced to take rigor from exercises that maintain an academic level and rigor that expands and generates higher levels of mental skills.
Allow me to use the age-old physical workout analogy to explain. As one lifts weights, with a goal in mind, he or she sets the number of reps to do one or two things: maintain their current level of fitness or grow and strengthen the muscle. In order to do the latter, the exerciser must push through what the body is accustomed to and fight out three more reps. It is during these extra reps that change occurs.
It is our job as teachers to implement a fundamental “academic workout” in our classes. We determine at what level our students are and get them to a level at which they can successfully compete. We should do this by simulating the situations in which they will perform. Once we get our students to that level and they can maintain our designed rigor, it is time to allow them to push for those extra three reps to induce growth and strength. I call this Appropriate Applicable Representations.
Appropriate Applicable Representations (AARs) allow students to increase the rigor of their own learning after they are “in shape” from the practice the teacher has provided. This is a good time to make the point that rigor is useless without its counterpart: relevance. AARs help students identify when and how their new knowledge will need to be used. They create additional situations. As the instructor you are assessing their learning in three ways:
1) Is the new situation appropriate for the knowledge known?
2) Is the new situation able to be applied with a result?
3) Does the new situation represent the general concept learned, rather than a limited specific skill?
Students should be taught how to create or observe situations that:
Three AAR Principles
1) Show relationships between sets of knowledge (skills) to solve problems.
2) Identify or create patterns from situations to situations.
3) Transform static information (facts) to viable situations (applicability.)
AARs are an excellent alternative assessment tool.
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At some point, I think some specific examples of how the AAR's can be used as an assessment tool would be fantastic. Also, the students set the AAR's, correct? This would then help solve the issue of teaching to the lowest student skill level by allowing students to push past these acceptable minimum standards.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add that teachers should not only monitor the student AAR's (a necessity) but also to refuse to accept when students set AAR's below their potential. Using your example of weightlifting, once you've attained a certain performance level, no further progress is attainable if you do not consistently push beyond the level of comfort.
Yes, the students set the AARs. Great point about raising the level of the lowest students. This is a great tool to set goals and apply viable feedback to students. I'll work on specific examples to post.
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