This past
Thursday, David Theune came to my Teaching With Technology class to talk about
student motivation for excellent work. In particular, he spoke about the rubric
model and the audience model. Theoretically, rubrics offer students some sort
of scaffolding for excellent work, but Theune argued that this is often not the
case in real life. He argued that rubrics were often harmful because students
at different points of mastery would look at the rubric and think one of two
things: This is impossible, where do I
even begin? or This is easy, I can
crank it out in an hour. In either situation, the student doesn’t put in a
lot of effort, and as a result, doesn’t not learn a great deal. Additionally,
he argued that rubrics encouraged convergent thinking – everyone gets the same
rubric, so everyone churns out the same essay.
Theune argued that
we should stop thinking about rubrics and start thinking about audience. He
argued that people do better work when they know that someone (other than the
teacher, who, let’s face it, basically isn’t a real person) will see it. Theune
mentioned different audiences students might have, such as parents, peers in a
different district, younger students in the same district, and the world at
large, and he discussed the benefits of each audience. For example, in inviting
parents into the classroom, we would strengthen family-school connections. In
having our students present to younger students, we would give them the
opportunity to teach, which both helps them learn their material and gives them
the chance to feel like rock stars. My particular subject matter lends itself
more to some audiences than others. Many of my students will have parents who
don’t speak any Spanish, and who would be less likely to attend a performance
in my class than an English-language class. However, a pen-pal or skype-pal
with a native Spanish speaker could really motivate my students to improve
their speaking and/or writing skills. After all, nothing pushes you to get
better at communication than having something to say and someone to say it to.
I agree with
Theune that students are unlikely to turn in shoddy or perfunctory work if they
know that someone who matters to them will see it. This takes care of the I can crank it out in an hour students.
However, it doesn’t address the students who thing This is impossible, where do I even begin? Students are unlikely to
turn in shoddy work, yes, but a perfectionist or a student who feels lost may
simply turn nothing in at all. For evidence, see this very blog, which I have
posted nothing on all summer and all of September. For many students, taking
away the rubric and giving them an audience may be the equivalent of throwing
them into the deep end and then posting the results on youtube. They might be
so terrified of being laughed at by their pen-pal that they don’t write to them
at all.
Another issue
raised in class was the viability of inviting parents into the classroom during
the workday to watch their kids perform poetry or read essays. Many parents
work one or more jobs and would be unable to attend anything during the day.
This could make students whose parents couldn’t come feel less motivated than
their peers whose parents could make it to the performance. A possible solution
to this problem could be to videotape the event and make it available to all of
the parents, either online (those without home computers could watch it at a
library) or on dvd’s. Another solution could be to alternate, and have one
workday event each semester and one after-school or weekend event each
semester, to give more parents a fighting chance of attending something.
I would make a special
effort to try to get parents who speak Spanish into the classroom. Particularly
in the upper-level Spanish courses, I would invite Spanish speaking parents to
talk about a subject of their choice, which would not only strengthen
family-school connections, but would also give my students a chance to get
authentic Spanish input and to learn about an interesting topic to boot. Parent
presentations in Spanish would potentially touch on 4 of the 5 C’s of language
teaching: Communication (listening comprehension and question asking in the
target language), Connections with other disciplines (using the target language
to talk about the topic of the parent’s choice), and Communities (using the
target language in the community, and not just for schoolwork), as well as
potentially Culture, depending on whether the parent chooses to speak about a
cultural topic.
In the end, I
think Theune had some great ideas, but I don’t think that one has to see
rubrics and audiences as either/or. Many students could be helped by rubrics,
which serve as scaffolding for students who don’t know where to begin, while
their audience would push most students to perform beyond a perfunctory
checking off of each requirement. And yet, I wonder what to do for the student
who is afraid to perform. Any suggestions?
