Talk about Testing

These are slides from my IELTS presentation which I did over the professional development week, a few days ago. It was hard to crystallize all the info I have gained from my experiences into a one hour seminar, but attendees seemed to have enjoyed themselves. I give a brief intro to the IELTS, then in more detail describe the individual writing tasks. Then, attendees in groups tried to write their answers to the tasks. At the end, teachers evaluated each others' compositions by referring to the scoring rubric, which was explained and applied at the same time.

First Day Fritters

I just finished my first day of classes. I have a really good class of students oriented toward the sciences and engineering.

After introducing myself, we talked about expectations, and so I polled the class on what they thought my expectations were, which they knew: come on time, bring books and pens to class, bring your own brain, and show respect. By BYOB, I explained that getting enough sleep, eating breakfast, and being mentally prepared were important. I explained why sleep deprivation damaged their ability to think and remember, by decreasing the availability of neurotransmittance and re-generation of neurotransmitter stock in the synapse bulbs (in much easier language, of course).

Fig. 1: Sleep deprivation & Neurotransmitter sites:

Decreased activity & re-generation cycle

We then talked about their experiences in the past semester. They were under no illusions about how education ran here, and were aware of the student protest, which they said were focused on the assessment regime in place at the time. They were not happy with their essay writing teacher, whose class taught them nothing. I asked them if they could recall what aspects of writing were difficult. They told me the teacher talked about the general structure of essays, but how sentence construction could change within the essay, and why, was not covered. Specifically, they did not practice distinguishing between opinions and facts; reports are associated with factual writing, but essays require both in tandem in order to persuade.

Fig. 2: Distinguishing facts from opinions

We then went through an essay they chose and collaborated on. We seized upon the controversial issue (they knew about "controversy"): "The most important contribution to the world from Saudi Arabia is the export of dates", knowing of course that oil probably is. We talked about background, how the topic (dates) might need an introductory statement, as date eating is not common in North America. At the same time, the statement needs to be made in an attention-grabbing way: "Middle-eastern peoples have been eating dates for over 5000 years." The body of the essay entailed the concepts of rarity, health, and deliciousness. Cosntucting the sentences and the facts each point needed followed, and writing a conclusion that tied with the background: "Dates will continue to be important in the future, and likely will become the main export from Mars once humans establish habitations there." That took up the first class (from 8 until 940AM). One student said he learned more about essays in this class than everything his teacher taught last semester.

From 10 til 1140, we played a game. I gave them topics, for which they constructed 2 opinion and 2 factual sentences. Each team in turn would then read one sentence, and based on it the other teams had to guess what it was. If they could guess after the first clue, they got 4 points, three after the second, and so on. If teams could not guess, the reading team would get the four points. We tried that twice, and then one student suggested they write the questions, instead of the clues, in order to get more specific information. That variation worked as well. Between topic choice, sentence and question formation, and then team interaction, the game took about one hour.

In the last fifteen minutes or so, we reviewed the expectations for the class, and then I practiced the names of the students for 5 minutes, and I am pretty sure I have their 11 faces and names now (attending out of 14 students registered): Sulaiman, Faisal, Abdul-rahman, Kamal, Khaled X2, Monamur, Achmed, Abdullah X2, and Mohammed (maybe...).

That was the end of class. I hope to get my textbook and teaching materials in a moment, so that tomorrow I can actually teach according to the set curriculum.

A talk in time that walks the line

At the end of our conference, our university sponsored a final dinner for us. Before we dug into a delicious buffet dinner, the dean had a chat with us.

He agreed that a significant issue was the miscommunication that occured between faculty, the university and admin. Often, much of this had to do with overly complex procedures, that created too many steps in a process to make it efficient. As well, the dean stated that the procedural rules often took priority over academic interests, and that this was not the way it should be. This actually was at odds with some of the content the HR staff had commnicated to us with regard to class management and motivational methods. Finally, the dean said that, while students evaluations were important, they were likely to be biased in favor of teachers who employed less rigorous practices; or, that teachers who might try to uphold attendance standards and performance criteria would be less popular. This assessment process needed to change, and he said that a meeting tomorrow with HR staff would address this issue.

It then was open mike time. Teachers raised some controversial items, and the dean gave the good answer each time. Unfortunately, when these same issues were raised during the conference proper, admin gave answers that were more self-serving, and seemed to implicate a failing of responsibility on the part of teachers. The dean, on the other hand, said he would "support the teachers for doing the right thing." He promised that IT failures would be addressed this semester. A new proposal made by the dean's assistant was for the creation of various task forces, to look into particular issues like evaluation, curriculum, office/security allocations, CA and self-assessment, teacher feedback, textbook, etc etc would be created. They would investigate, make concrete proposals, and present findings directly to the dean, who would spearhead their implementation. Questions were raised about dealing with discipline in the class, because incidents the previous semester had had the effect of reducing teacher authority/credibility when decisions were over-turned or challenged publically by HR staff. The dean supported the idea of more teacher autonomy in the classroom.

One of the greatest failings that I have seen so far is the complete disconnect between classroom work and the final exam content. The dean believes in "clarity and fairness". He believed that item contribution by classroom teachers would mitigate this problem. I think a simpler solution would be to apply the tests that the textbooks themselves actually contain as in-class tests and final exit tests. Finally, he said that under no circumstances should "students be given a mark they do not deserve." In other words, enough with instructions to "be generous" with marks for interviews that I heard during exam invigilation. we can actually uphold the rubric, and mark according to standard.

Will these statements be realized? Will they stand the test of time? Or will the dean succumb to vested admin interests and power blocs, and the same old same old be reinforced? This was a watershed speech by the dean. His capability, competence and committment were clear for all to see. I can only hope, as do we all, that his character will not shift under pressure; that his leadership, so evident tonite, walks the line.

Conference conundrums

Today was the first day of our PD, which I talked about several days ago. As expected, the sessions, although pedagogically sound, were almost entirely irrelevant to the teaching context here.

The speaker discussed a textbook we would be using, specifically in terms of the Learning Outcomes-based syllabus it is designed with. As I listened, I had some observations, three of which I will share here.

The book was supposed to be a Level 1 textbook, yet the instructional rubric contained within again and again use terms, concepts, and syntactic structures well beyond the level of the students it is purported to support. The grammar concepts were about using is, can, and have, and yet the unit assignment was structured using complex sentences, relative pronouns, noun adverbials, and other complex phrasing that was beyond the productive level of students. My guess is that the rubric used in Level 1 was largely the same as the language used in all the levels – a cut and paste job that needs to be graded to the students’ level.

The book relies heavily on assessment of achievement outcomes, both as a motivating factor, as well as a feedback process. Unfortunately, the presenter had no idea that in our context, we have zero leverage over the grading system: it is largely made up of a final test which is divorced from the content of the textbook. In the presenter’s own words: “divorcing the learning outcomes from the assessment renders the textbook use meaningless.” Precisely, except that he did not seem to realize that that was exactly the case. One participant mentioned that we have no choice over the grading system, and that admin holds all decision-making over the process. I said that one clear piece of evidence for this was that students do not bring their textbooks to class, or even pencils/paper. That is how much value they put into investing in classroom participation. The presenter’s response was to not let students into the class unless they are equipped properly. And the rejoinder was that we have specifically been instructed not to prevent students from attending class under any circumstances (better for them to attend, even if they are book-less). So, what leverage do we have? We want to be teachers, we really do. But the context prevents us from creating any meaningful accountability in the classroom. The presenter seemed unaware of this issue.

In his second presentation on Critical Thinking, the presenter discussed HOTS – higher order thinking. For critical thinking to occur, strategies prior to text presentation need to take place. Predictive strategies are essential, because they mitigate against the possibility of indoctrination of the listener/reader. That is, the text is approached with expectations: who is the text-maker? Why did they make this text? What is this text’s purpose, and further, what decisions did the maker choose to create the text this way? These are elements of a top-down process of contextual awareness that precede the taking in of textual content:

Top- down interpretation requires learners to go to the text with their prior knowledge of topic, context, and type of text as well as knowledge of language to reconstruct the meaning using the sounds as clues. This back ground knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the text-user to interpret the text and anticipate what will come next. [http://www.articlesbase.com/languages-articles/teaching-listening-as-an-english-language-skill-367095.html]

Bloom’s taxonomy, created in the 1950s, generally does not take this dimension adequately into consideration, IMO. Instead, step one was described as “take in the information”, as if this is an uncomplicated, unbiased process, captured by the knowledge domain. The aspect of applying prior knowledge in an evaluation of a context before text engagement represents a collapsing of the distinctions of evaluation, application, and analysis that Bloom's sequential ordering would imply. To wait until the information has been taken in to evaluate/analyse etc largely pre-empts objectivity, because the message has already, insidiously, affected the text-user. In journalistic parlance, this is called spin. To engage in critical thinking, text-users need to come prepared with predictive strategies, to have pre-analysed and pre-evaluated a context, in order to critically engage it. The literature on critical approaches to literacy show striking consensus on this issue; thus, the appeal to Bloom and his sequential, linear approach to textual engagement seems anachronistic, IMO.

The presenter also asserted that the level 4 textbook was correlated with performance at a band 4.5 to 5 on the IELTS scale. This assertion was made with reference to a unit-ending speaking assignment, in which students were to play the roles of various community interests in a mock town hall meeting.

Band 5 looks like this (public domain):

Fluency and coherence	Lexical resource	Grammatical range and accuracy	Pronunciation
usually maintains flow of speech but uses repetition, self-correction and/or slow speech to keep going may over-use certain connectives and discourse markers produces simple speech fluently, but more complex communication causes fluency problems	manages to talk about familiar and unfamiliar topics but uses vocabulary with limited flexibility attempts to use paraphrase but with mixed success	produces basic sentence forms with reasonable accuracy uses a limited range of more complex structures, but these usually contain errors and may cause some comprehension problems	Produces some of level 6, but not all

Just to focus on a few aspects of the language requirements of this task:

-          Students need to modulate their language to be persuasive (band 6+)

-          Students need to use relative pronouns, and therefore complex sentences, with regularity and accuracy (band 6+)

-          Students need to use lexical terms and employ concepts which refer to highly unfamiliar cultural contexts (ie democratic process of town hall with elected officials and vested interests) (band 7)

To me, as a certified IELTS examiner, the task clearly is graded at a level much higher than the 4.5 ~ 5.0 band, and thus represents a level of performance expectation not required in our program. Students merely need to possess a 5.0 band level rating on the IELTS to pass the program.

Escarpment Escape

Tuwayq pale stone escarpment close to Ar Riyad, Riyadh Region, Saudi Arabia, 07.12.21#033. This west facing escarpment was formed during Jurassic times and vertical cliffs of limestone are tall around 250 m. http://www.flyart.biz/meteo/climate/desert/

I went on my third HASH run with the Riyadh Third Herd yesterday (January 20). The weather was perfect, if not a bit cold, on the edge of the Tuwayq escarpment, just to the north west of Riyadh.

The panorama is spectacular, looks like a small version of the Grand Canyon. There are three hike options available: a short walk, a long walk, and a run. I tried the run for the second time, and this time finished it. Last week's was crazy long, up and down, for about 7 km. I could only make half of that one, and then joined the long walk on the back end. This week I finished the run, but it was abbreviated, as we could only get about halfway down, and found the second level of cliffs too steep to negotiate. So we climbed back up again. The rest of the walk was over relatively flat ground, so much easier than last week, shorter and cooler. The wind was brisk, and the temp about 22. By sundown, it must have dropped to 15 or so. Beautiful sunny weather though. Next time I will need to bring a coat/some layers of clothing.

The sedimentation is breathtaking, makes you wonder just how old that geological formation is. On the plateau, the landscape is littered with what looks like burnt corpses of coral. In fact, almost all of the dark brown outcroppings showing on the surface were associated with a coral shoal. There were also regular pieces of rock containing almost whole bone structures. I took a whole rock specimen, which seemed to contain a largely intact bone fragments. I am soaking it in water now to see how much of the sediment can be shaken loose to reveal the layer. I also found an old shell casing; not sure if it is a war-time relic, or merely target practice leftovers.

Thanatos theory

I mentioned in an earlier blog posting about expat cultural adaptations (Arabian Anomie), and one category was rebellion, which is a kind of self-destruction. I want to return to this theme in this posting.

Freud was one who observed in his clients, as well as in society at large, a drive to destroy oneself, which he termed the death drive, or thanatos. He saw this as a naturally occuring phenomenon in every living organism, a kind of yin yang relationship. One builds up (eros), one tears down (thanatos). He used the bodily function of anabolism and catabolism as an illustration. I think this metaphor falls down, however, in that the catabolic state (ie digestion), is not in itself seeking the death of the organism, but actually the breakdown of inorganic matter. When the catabolic state is dysfunctional, however, it begins a self-destructive process:

Aside from helping fuel the human body with energy that's necessary to grow and function, catabolism sometimes acts as a negative process that leads to adverse health effects. This does not occur often, but when the body has an extremely high rate of catabolism, as opposed to anabolism, muscle tissue and essential fat deposits found within the body become depleted. For example, during rest, the body tends to recover and remain in an anabolic state. When the body does not properly rest for long periods of time, as in prolonged vigorous exercise, muscle tissue will continue to break down. Without proper nutritional intake, the natural process of tissue growth and repair will not take place. Even though this does not sound particularly problematic, simply imagine remaining in a constant state of depletion. Quite literally, when the actual muscle tissue in the body endures lengthened stretches of the catabolic state, it eats away at itself in an attempt to find a source of stored energy. Most people who live healthy lifestyles which include proper diet and exercise do not encounter catabolic problems. However, high levels of stress and hormone imbalances do trigger adverse effects that harm the natural balance between anabolism and catabolism.

That is, the Freudian idea that a death wish was a normal state of life was actually based on a misunderstanding of the metabolic state: the organism does not begin the process of eating itself, of destroying itself, until the environment ceases to provide the proper inputs to maintain a healthy balance. Far from being an instinct, research might suggest thanatos is a reaction to severe trauma.

People who may be prone to self-defeatism, who may also suffer from poverty of life resources, can be prime targets for the joining of cults and adopting a fatalistic and absolutist mind-set. In this article, a cult survivor describes how targeting of displaced, disatisfied people into the highly structured community of the cult. Fascism (Germany and Italy) and totalitarianism (Russia), the societal triggers for the deathwish construct of Freud, had many cult-like characteristics. Both of these societal revolutions came from the milieu of the great depression, and the tortured clashing of cultures culminating the great wars was probably inevitable as transportation and communication technologies continued to improve and create greater and more frequent opportunities for people of varied socio-cultural heritage to interact.

PD Ponderings: Efficiency and Accountability

We just finished a meeting where the program for professional development at my place of work was being discussed. The presenter, Dr. Lieberson from CAL, at one point asked us to reflect upon three issues, and share our ideas with our partners. I thought about two of them:

Should strategies be taught in the classroom?
Does a multi-skill (read, write, speak, listen) lesson more effectively teach, or do skills in isolation represent more effective practice?

My experience here so far suggests that these linked in terms of accountability; that is, more generally, why are we doing what we do here?

Strategies essentially are ways to solve problems. Communication is a negotiation of meaning, with the gap of understanding between interlocutors (the problem). Thus building the bridge is a means to facilitate that negotiation (the strategy). Theoretically, then, yes of course, as practitioners we should seek any means necessary to equip our students with tools for bridging that negotiation gap. Practically though, the end goal (accomplish the communicative task) is compromised by the system of evaluation where I work. Students don't need to communicate, because they can pass the course just by attending. Even those students who fail to attend are permitted to take the exam. Even those students who fail the exam may repeat it. Even those who cannot reach the "standard" are passed along if they show up, and at least put a mark on the paper.

In this scenario, strategies don't matter, because there is no problem to solve. The problem of learning and facing consequences of failing to learn have essentially been removed in different policies and practices.

Second, "effective" pedagogy is an almost irrelevant concern. A teacher could have the most brilliant mix of skills and content ever, but the students fail to engage because they are interested in "present/absent" alone. If present, they recieve monetary support from the government. Whether they actually learn is irrelevant in that context. No surprise, then, that an intrinsic motivation for learning has been squeezed out:

Researchers have documented that when individuals enjoy an activity, paying them can make the activity less enjoyable. Therefore, it would be foolish to pay students who already enjoy school because doing so might actually decrease their motivation to engage in school work — and the problem with paying students who don’t enjoy school is that these students will not continue to work hard in school unless they continue to get paid. Basic psychological research indicates that when the payment stops, so does students’ motivation. An exception to these findings would be a student (who initially did not like school and was not working hard) who started working hard when she got paid because she enjoyed the success she was achieving and/or she became interested in the content material. This way of motivating students would have to be monitored very closely to ensure that money was only given to these types of students in these circumstances. Implementing this type of system correctly would be a logistical impossibility for most teachers and administrators. Therefore, I do not advocate paying students to attend or engage in school activities.

To me, this means that, discussions of effective lesson plan designs aside, the most important issue is one of engagement: how do we get the students interested/motivated in learning?

Another aspect of "effectiveness" is the that Western culture tends to approach this construct in terms of time and distance:

We live in an age dominated by the cult of efficiency. Efficiency in the raging debate about public goods is often used as a code word to advance political agendas. When it is used correctly, efficiency is important-it must always be part of the conversation when resources are scarce and citizens and governments have important choices to make among competing priorities. Even when the language of efficiency is used carefully, that language alone is not enough. Unilingualism will not do. We need to go beyond the cult of efficiency to talk about accountability. Much of the democratic debate of the next decade will turn on how accountability becomes part of our public conversation.

Other, more poly-chronic and high context cultures may consider peripheral factors as important as well, and even central: social ties, familial obligations, hierarchical respect, etc etc. These do damage to western notions, but are key to understanding why clashes may occur. In the end, though, I believe there is a point of compromise, which I would like to explain with an illustration.

Multiple routes up the mountain

To get up this mountain, the shortest route is not necessarily the best one (steepest climb). The circuitous route route might be more scenic, or over less treachorous terrain. With any hiking option, however, the point agreed upon is that we want to get to the peak. Which route we take (ie our interpretation of effectiveness), is not as important as our destination. If we fail to agree on the destination, if we fail to be accountable, the journey has been in vain.

Therefore, the link between these two issues discussed above, in my opinion, is one of accountability. Are students required to achieve standards? Are standards respected? Are teachers held accountable for classroom practice? Does the administration create policies which inform professionalism?

I have found a great deal of cynicism toward teaching, toward professional development. I think it is commendable that my place of work is doing something about improving the quality of education. To make it stick, this aspect of accountability needs to be front and center in the discussion.

Hash dash

Yesterday I went on the HASH again. This time, it was about 8~10 degrees warmer (34C compared to 25C last year), and much longer. I went on the running trail, which only had about 8 participants out of 120. After about halfway, I dropped out, and joined the "extra-long walking" group. The runners were going to loop around for more mileage and then join the back end of the walkers, at which point I would rejoin them. They ended up taking a shorter route, so I did not regain line of sight with them until near the end. I tried to get back to them, but they were high up on the plateau of an escarpment and I could not reach them. So, I spied a person I knew and decided to keep going with the walkers, with a good conversation until reaching the end.

On the way, people were finding a lot of shells (smaller than last week, more "mussel" like in shape than the conch style we found last week). As well, I found a piece of petrified wood, which I took with me to give to Adam, as we both enjoy items of geological interest.

Petrified tree, similar to what I found

 The piece I found was found in similar, sandy like conditions. However, the striations are much more pronounced in the piece I found than the one in this picture, and its matrices are crystalline, rather than the oxidized material of the rock in this picture.

Our leader/driver went all out to buy BBQ food before going; we only ate about half of what he brought. We could really have used a grill rack too, because our chicken pieces were numerous, sparked up a flame that made turning difficult, and used up too much space. Having about 3 or 4 of these would have been perfect. As well, a couple more folding chairs, and a serving tray to hold the hot meat would have been good too.

The grill rack we needed

Re-location lowdown

We just moved from our hotel digs to a 5-bedroom villa. The setup in KSA is that long-term villa rentals require long-term (6 month) deposits, are unfurnished, and require tenants to provide the kitchen cabinetry and air conditioners (especially if the villa is new). The 6 month deposit is the toughest issue, because in KSA you never really know the status of your contract, if you're moving, or something else happens that makes honoring the lease impossible; in which case, the deposit is lost.

The upside of moving is that whatever the difference is between the rental and the housing allowance provided by our company can be kept by us in addition to our salary. And the savings in this case were substantial enough to justify the move.

Of course, there were some growing pains: we still don't hot water in 2 out 3 bathrooms; we had a difficult time deciding on appliances: buy used, which is cheaper, but also subject to warranty issues (caveat emptor), and also locating the seller (which in Riyadh with its myriads of unnamed streets is a HUGE headache). We ended up buying new, which was far more convenient, easy to locate, and have no warranty issues. The price was ok. As well, we still need to work out our sharing of space: fridge space, kitchen sharing, showering/cooking schedules, allocation of housekeeping responsibilities. And then there are the issues with the building itself: an overflowing drain, electrical malfunctions (lights not working, etc), cleaning (floor was filthy when we moved in). At times it feels like we are camping: nowhere to sit while eating, blogging/skyping difficult at home without a desk and chair.

In any case, the key here is to solve problems. Complaining about it takes more time than simply fixing it yourself. And, KSA really is a third world country in many respects, so developing a sense of patience with the problems that inevitably arise (along with a sense of humor), is essential for holding onto your sanity.

Extras from Exercise

I came to Saudi Arabia not having had regualr exercise for about 3 years. For the past 10 years, actually, I have not taken enough concern with regard to weight and exercise schedule.

Coming here, I have found that the schedule has a lot of down-time, and with limited options for entertainment, exercise becomes even more attractive. Here are some of the good things about exercise where I am.

1. Free - the gym here has no free weights, but does have a treadmills, rowing machines, situp benches, walking machine, and stationary bikes. That is enough for me. I usually go about 2 km on the rower, about 25 min on the treadmill (hoping to get up to about 5km in 30+ min), and then double reps on the situp/leglift benches, then stretching upper and lower.

2. Better sleep - finding that exercise is probably helping to create a physical fatigue that enhances sleeping.

3. Reduces stress - connected to the above, the stress of sitting around, as well as taking my mind of off the hassles associated with everyday life, helps to improve my morale; this will have an effect on my sleeping patterns too.

4. Increases energy levels - finding that I do not sleep or feel sleepy by mid-afternoon (3pmish) as I used to; this may have to do with jet lag (which was bad), but I have more concentration ability too, I find. As well, in the previous blog entry, I am hoping to regularly participate in the weekly HASH events (running/hiking).

5. Create social connections - exercising with others helps to form common ground interests; hiking gives chances to chat and "do things" together, kind of bonding event

6. Lose weight / gain muscle tone - both of these contribute to body image esteem; would like to lose 40 to 50 pounds this year, but at the least, I would like to get rid of the spare tire, and fit my clothes more comfortably

Heavenly Hash

Hash is an event that takes place every Friday in which expats meet at a designated location in Saudi Arabia to meet in the desert and enjoy the natural environment.

This is a video taken by the fellow who drives the van out there every week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgRJzFJnHQ

The area looks like the surface of Mars! We walk for a 5 km hike; there was a group of about 200 of us.

looking out over the escarpment from the top of a hill, highest elevation in the area

There are quite a few fossils in the area; I found a conch shell, from the time that this area was under the Arabian Sea (probably when the last ice age was receding?). It took about 90 minutes to complete. There was a barbecue after for people who brought their own meat. Temp was perfect: 22 C, light wind, no humidity.