To provide or not to provide the answers – Is that the question?

A learning moment recently presented itself.

Background

English language learners (ELLs) take free (general) English courses at the university level in order to prepare themselves for an exit (high-stakes) exam.  The courses are pass/no pass and the ELLs have the option to retake the same level course regardless if they pass or not.  Finally, homework is not graded which includes work done in the course workbook.

Superficial Question

Should the course workbook that accompanies the student course book contain the answers to the questions or not?

Argument for having the workbook with answers

1. What incentive does the student have for simply copying the answers?  Doing or not doing the workbook exercises has no direct effect on the students’ grades.  Obviously there is an indirect effect in most cases since understanding the answers to the questions (not just knowing the answers) can help ELLs with the learning process.
2. The “only” thing that ELLs lose if they fail to understand the answers (not simply by copying them from the answer key) is time.  Granted, time is of the essence for many students who put off meeting their foreign language requirement, but there is no financial loss and students are free to choose to retake the same level at no cost if they feel they are not ready to proceed to the next level.
3. Spending class time simply checking answers from the workbook is a waste of time – it does not provide the evidence needed in order for EFL/ESL educators to infer whether students understand why the answer is correct.  Providing the answers to the questions alone should not be confused with providing sound feedback from activities completed in the workbook through formative or dynamic assessment.  This is also referred to as “solving the problem backward” through “planning in reverse: means-ways-ends“.
4. Having answers to the workbook can promote autonomous learning.  I say can promote because many times autonomous learning requires teachers to facilitate the process, providing ELLs the strategies to become more autonomous.

The main argument (that I’ve heard from teachers) against having the workbook answer key

ELLs will simply copy the answers and will not learn anything.

Essential question

Instead of asking whether the course workbook should include the answers or not, I propose a more essential question:

How do EFL/ESL educators use a workbook with an answer key in ways that are formative in nature and seek to provide the evidence needed in order for EFL/ESL educators to infer whether ELLs understand why their answer in correct or incorrect?

As I am sure there are EFL/ESL educators (and teachers in general) on both sides of the argument, I would enjoy hearing from others on the subject.  Any references to support your claim are also appreciated (besides the fact that it strengthens your argument).

Dealing with the Three Cs in English Language Learning and Teaching

Recent response to an interesting exchange…

With regard to FL teacher education, how do you attempt and/or manage to balance the three important perspectives or goals you are referring to, i.e. “creativity”, “criticality” and “caring”?

Teachers have to use discretion based on the maturity, academic, and linguistic levels of the students, but choices can come in a variety of ways:

1. choosing which content from the Internet to use in class and why the content is appropriate

2. choosing which groups will form and how they are to work together (e.g., team charter)

3. deciding which products to produce (e.g., video, brochure, presentation, etc.)

4. determining how to express empathy and perspective

By pursuing understandings (Wiggins and Mctighe, 2005), teachers can use a variety of assessment methods (e.g., Socratic method, instructional conversations, tests, quizzes, academic prompts, performance tasks, etc.) for making more informed inferences on a student’s achievement.  This also implies the need to set expressive outcomes instead of behavioral outcomes in ways that make learning and the assessment of learning more of a ill-defined, non-linear, and emergent (i.e., authentic) phenomenon.  Thus, we are requiring students to know more than discrete facts and figures that they likely will find on standardized tests; it also makes stakeholders more conscious of a learner’s capacity (as a matter of degree) instead of a competence (either you have it or you don’t).

As for language teaching and learning go, I label communicative and linguistic knowledge and skill as being (to use Popham’s words, 2008) enabling knowledge and subskills respectively in terms of how they relate to understandings.  In other words, language becomes both a means and an end much like ESL and content teachers working together in the US when teaching English language learners (i.e., Sheltered Content Instruction or CLIL).

Assessment in language learning

I enjoyed reading Ending the semester, Lessons Learned (Part 4: Assessment) as it gives some helpful insight into the assessment process from the perspective of the language learner. Having learners set out their own goals, articulate how they are to achieve those goals, then self-assess at the end is a good way for learners to be more autonomous and more active in the learning process. I would add that implementing this type of exercise also depends on the sociocultural background of the learner since some may not be used to taking on this new role.

Assessment Validity

In gathering evidence to measure student achievement, classroom teachers, course designers, and administrators have a variety of ways to incorporate validity. Popham (2008) describes three types of validity evidence related to “content, criterion, and construct”.

Content related validity is especially important for classroom teachers in assuring that formative and summative assessments are aligned to curricular aims. Once assessment evidence is determined, instruction should align with assessment through a “backward design” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) so that all classroom activities remain on target. Besides classroom teachers, instructional leaders can use “walkthroughs” (Downey, Steffy, English, Frase, and Poston, 2004) as a means of bringing alignment of curriculum, assessment, and instruction to the forefront as well. That is, content related validity involves all stakeholders working together through a community of practice in assuring that the taught curriculum aligns to the written curriculum.

Criterion related validity deals with using assessment to predict future behaviors. Aptitude exams are a good example. When students take the ACT or SAT exam, they are measured on how likely they are to succeed academically in the future. Although assessment experts carefully consider criterion related validity in these exams, “only about 25% of academic success in college is associated with a high school student’s performance on [these exams]” (Popham, 2008, p. 301). Perhaps a reason why it is difficult to use assessment measures to predict future behavior is due to the uncertainty of how people will apply themselves under new circumstances (e.g., attending college, a new school, etc.). Criterion related validity typically involves assessment outside the classroom setting.

Like content related validity, construct related validity entails all stakeholders, classroom teachers particularly taking on an important role. Interventions, differential-population, and related-measures studies (Popham, 2008, pp. 63-65) are three types of content related validity that assessment designers use to hypothesize, test, and infer information and behaviors. For example, assessments should measure a progression of improved student understandings, knowledge, skills, and dispositions (i.e., intervention study). Assessments should be free of bias based on the student’s social-economic status, background, etc. (i.e., differential-population study). And assessments should be consistent between teachers teaching the same level of content (i.e., related-measures study). Like content related validity, the efforts of all stakeholders are needed in order to address construct related validity within a school in order to create assessments that are as accurate and fair.

Assessment

Lately it’s been all things assessment: graduate course on assessment (Popham, Kubiszyn and Borich), College Board conference, and pushing for performance tasks through professional development (1, 2).

Focusing on the College Board conference, some reoccurring questions that came up include the following:

1. What is culture?
2. How is culture applied in the classroom?
3. How to assess cultural competency?

In defining culture, it’s not surprising that definitions abound. High/low culture, culture with a big and little c, and culture pertaining to food, fairs, beliefs, etc. were all covered. I also saw conferences pertaining to how culture was applied to English literature, graphics design, general English classes, and speaking competencies as part of professional development among teachers. Although many spoke of portfolios (i.e., videos), rubrics, checklists, essays, tests, quizzes, etc. as means of assessing cultural competency, the assessment and instructional process still seemed to be a bit allusive from a practice sense.

As one speaker mentioned, incorporating culture within a classroom takes time, knowledge, and being selective as to the particular aspects of the different cultures available. In Guatemala this is certainly relevant given the mix of cultures that exist:

Mestizo (mixed Amerindian-Spanish – in local Spanish called Ladino) and European 59.4%, K’iche 9.1%, Kaqchikel 8.4%, Mam 7.9%, Q’eqchi 6.3%, other Mayan 8.6%, indigenous non-Mayan 0.2%, other 0.1% (2001 census)

In the central part of Mexico, classes tend to be more homogeneous but teaching culture is equally important. Critical pedagogy certainly plays a role in how teachers approach culture whether taken from a book, from a personal experience from the teacher, and/or from the experiences of the learners.

My short answer to how to implement culture within the classroom is to collaborate with others to see examples of classroom practices. Know the learners well enough to be able to negotiate with them on what aspects of culture they seem more interested in and what aspects they seem to need the most. And finally, use a variety of assessments (i.e., formative and summative) that make it clear on how they are to be evaluated, giving them a level of choice in the process.

MEXTESOL: Performance Tasks

For those who are interested in the PowerPoint presentation (that I presented at MEXTESOL yesterday), it is available by clicking the link below (Scribd).  It was good to meet teachers with similar interests regarding performance tasks as an alternative form of assessment.  I am interested in hearing your successes and challenges in adapting performance tasks within your own particular teaching/learning contexts.

Performance Tasks – Upload a Document to Scribd