Student agency is a phrase that is nearly impossible to use in everyday language and is certainly not a phrase that parents use to describe their children. “Look at the agency my darling Marla has climbing that tree.” “My Martin is doing so well, he is demonstrating such agency these days.”….. Read More
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Has Covid19 lifted the window of opportunity for a massive transformation of the education system? During several presentations on rethinking schools and the future of education, many of the speakers and chatting participants have claimed that the closure of schools in response to the pandemic has created the conditions for radical transformation…… Read More
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The closure of schools and colleges across the nation in response to the CORAVID-19 pandemic has shed a spotlight on one of America’s dirty secrets: many institutions of education and those that teach at them are not using the research on learning to guide instruction. The result is that instructional practices that were disengaging and/or unresponsive when used in a classroom are now downright dreadful when placed online…… Read More
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Do you see graduate aims as roughly the same thing as competencies? Is it a nomenclature issue or a conceptual difference?
What a good question! The answer is it depends.
Graduate aims are the set of knowledge and skills that describe what we want students to know and be able to do upon graduation…… Read More
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I receive questions along the way from different colleagues, clients and people trying to find their way through personalized, competency-based education. Last week I had a chance to speak with students from Michael Golden’s class at UPenn. Here are some short responses to each of the follow-up questions I received:
1…… Read More
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Do students pass from one grade to another based on their mastery level? Does that mean every child would have a different learning journey that would not be based on a fixed time interval? In such a case, do you think that CBE could lead to even more inequity than the current traditional system?….. Read More
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What if a child is unable to reach the mastery level? What do you think can be CBE’s negative impact on a child’s self-efficacy?
These are one of these types of questions where we hold the new shiny bright innovation up to a number of important questions but can easily forget to ask the same of the traditional system…… Read More
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What is the role of summative assessment?
Such a good question. I didn’t have an answer to this until I visited Champlain Valley Unified High School (CVU) on behalf of Mastery Transcript Consortium last fall.
CVU has intentionally and thoughtfully aligned grading policy with the goal of maximizing learning…… Read More
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What countries are implementing competency-based education? Is there any insight into the cultures that are more aligned with it?
This question isn’t easy to answer in that the term “competency education” has slightly different meanings around the world. If the question is, how many countries are advancing towards personalized,….. Read More
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How do teachers manage a community of learners when students are all at different levels?
This is a question that comes up a lot because it is so hard to imagine a different way of doing things.
To start answering this question: remember that teachers already have classrooms where students are at different levels…… Read More
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All the photos of students actively engaged in learning are courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action.
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