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.