[squeakland] Testing and education

[Steve Thomas]

I think culture plays a very important role in learning.  One of the first
things I do when teaching (school or sports) a new group of kids is to
encourage them to make mistakes and how to handle them.  A couple of
phrases I use are:

   - If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough.
   - Congratulations you made a mistake, now what can we learn from it?
   - Learn from the mistakes of others, you don't have enough time to make
   them all yourself.

I also tend to model mistake making (sometimes intentionally :)

In dealing mistakes I use the bathroom analogy (stolen from
PCA<http://www.positivecoach.org/>,
nytimes article
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/the-power-of-positive-coaching/>here
on flushing mistakes and filling their emotional tanks, which is equally
important).

Another point in slate article Karl shared is this, when talking about the
test quesiton:

"if the question was such that everyone got the right answer, then it
wouldn’t be a good question."


I recall Ken Blanchard talking about giving the kids the answers to the
final exam and all the other teachers and his chairman getting upset.  His
comment was he wanted ALL the kids to succeed (and learn).  There
is definitely something wrong with a culture that focuses more on
identifying the select few than helping all to succeed.

All that said, my mind being full of contradictions and having heard
objections to the above approaches...
I have a hard time imaging my boss coming to me and saying "Congratulations
Steve you made another mistake!!!".  Yet I can imagine and have heard her
say "You did your best, under similar circumstances and pressures I would
have done the same thing, move on and lets get it right."  The above
approaches do focus on learning and doing your best.  But I believe they do
so in a way that encourages more kids to succeed and be happy.  More on how
to do that in a future blog post.

Stephen

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 10:37 AM, karl ramberg <karlramberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Article in Slate:
>
> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/06/maker_faire_and_science_education_american_kids_should_be_building_rockets_and_robots_not_taking_standardized_tests_.html
>
> One thing I experience with making stuff : I learn more from thing
> that I do wrong or fail at than things I do that happen to work or be
> right.
> It is sad when school punish mistakes. Mistakes are a opportunity to
> investigate and see what went wrong. And by doing that you learn.
>
>
> Karl
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