The Edge of the inside

Daniel Elizondo | 5.19.22

The Test

I was basking in the dim blue light of a computer screen in a drab testing center–the kind that pop up in nondescript office spaces and shopping centers with vague signage. These are not happy places, and inside, you will not find happy people. I was one of ten-or-so unfortunate souls, sentenced to spend our precious Saturday morning trudging through a variety of standardized tests. We were there of our own accord, and what’s worse, we paid for the privilege of our plight–a relatively small toll for the chance to advance our careers, make more money, or take on new responsibilities. Even though much of the content on the Technology Applications EC-12 exam was new to me, I expected the yoke to be easy. I was prepared. I had studied and performed well on a number of practice exams. Besides, all I needed to do was pass.

I guessed on the first question and flagged it for review. I must have missed this competency in the study guide. I guessed on the second question. Flagged. Hmm, that’s odd. The third, fourth and fifth weren’t any better. I told myself it would be okay. These tests change year to year, the study guide makers must have just missed this part. The stuff I studied was surely coming up soon. But It never did. At the end of the test, the vast majority of questions were left flagged, and it dawned on me that someone had made a mistake. I was taking the wrong test–the one I had intentionally chosen not to take yet–the one that was supposed to be hard–Technology Education 6-12.

These two tests may sound like they cover similar ground, but they don’t. I had studied the kind of content one would need in order to teach video production, photography, digital art, or yearbook. Instead, I was staring down questions about architecture, manufacturing, computer science, and engineering. I panicked. Then I took a few deep breaths, reminded myself that I could retest again later if I failed, and willed myself through the five stages of grief until I hit acceptance. I gave myself a poor excuse for a motivational speech, hoping my dumb brain would take the bait. You SHOULD fail this test, so you don’t need to be upset if you do. But if you pass, you’ll be done with the more difficult of the two certifications you wanted. Besides, It wouldn’t be a complete waste of time and money. No matter what, I would know for sure what was on this test, and be ready for it the next time. The clumsy ploy worked. What felt like a funeral turned into a challenge. I was probably going down, but not without a fight.

As I slogged my way through the unfamiliar maze of TExES 171, I looked desperately for any sign of something I could be certain of. My bachelor's degree was in applied behavior analysis. I had been a middle school science and coding teacher, but my early career was in social work. The pickings were slim. There wasn’t much in the way of specific content that I could connect to. So I shifted my thinking from the content of the questions to the structure of the questions. I didn’t know a thing about industrial manufacturing, but I was very familiar with the design process… and this visual looked similar. We didn’t cover network architecture in 8th grade coding, but we did cover flow charts. I didn’t know much about materials science, but I could read a periodic table. I knew the scientific method. I could use context clues. I was jotting down notes on the provided scratch paper, making my own diagrams and graphic organizers. I remember drawing different roof frame designs, reasoning why one might be better than the other, trying desperately to glean something from all of the DIY projects my wife and I had done around the house.

In the end, all I had were guesses, and a blind hope that maybe good things can come from dumb mistakes. I signed out, retrieved my phone from the little orange locker with the key, and left the testing center without an ounce of certainty. I sat in my car in the parking lot, scrolling through my email inbox to find out what happened. It was me–I had signed up for the wrong test. What an idiot. I frantically Googled everything I could remember from the maze. It turns out I had guessed correctly on everything I could recall. I was getting excited. I turned on a happy song and left with a cautious optimism that if my flags were placed correctly, I probably passed. My results wouldn’t be available for a few days, so I would have to wait for the truth. When they finally came in, I was shocked. I didn’t just pass. If they were handing out letter grades, I earned an A.

When Content Kills Process Skills

A recent paper published in the August edition of Computers & Education has me reflecting back to that day when content failed and process saved my skin. Researchers set out to observe high school teachers delivering lessons on lateral reading, a process for vetting the reliability of online sources.

“Teachers in the study agreed to devote class time to teach lessons on evaluating online information, which included opportunities for teachers to introduce and model processes for evaluating online information and for students to practice those processes. We analyzed transcripts of whole-class conversations as students discussed what they learned. Specifically, we investigated whether teachers and students focused on content specific to the examples they discussed or on the process of evaluating online information that they practiced.”

(McGrew & Byrne, 2022, p. 2)

Lateral reading is a critically important process skill, vital for evaluating digital media in this modern era where fake and biased news sources often generate the most clicks. But what struck me as most interesting, were the research questions the authors focused on for the study:

“1) To what extent did teachers and students’ conversations after lateral reading focus on content related to the sources being investigated (i.e., details about the original source) or the lateral reading process (i.e., the reliability of the original and lateral sources)?

2) To what extent did teachers guide students to focus on details about the original source or the process of lateral reading?” (McGrew & Byrne, 2022, p. 4)”

Their approach was methodical. Each lesson was recorded, transcribed and segmented into individual strings called “talk-turns”. Each “talk-turn” was then analyzed and categorized as being related to either a specific task or to the process of lateral reading. Despite the lesson objectives and design being explicitly focused on the process, the vast majority of talk-turns covered the details of original sources (as high as 72% of talk-turns in a given lesson). This could not be chalked up to off-topic student chatter, as teachers often steered and contributed to these task focused conversations. Not only that, they often circumscribed their own analysis, missing opportunities to share important thought-processes with students (McGrew & Byrne, 2022). In my opinion, these findings are a well-documented microcosm, highlighting common teaching habits that don’t translate to student achievement.

What You Focus On, Determines What You Miss

If the authors had observed my middle school coding class on a typical day, they would have found a similar scene. Even in a non-tested subject where project based learning was a daily norm, explicit process-related discussions were a rarity. I was so laser-focused on the successful completion of projects and performance tasks that I glossed over the processes they were designed to instill. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was unwittingly encouraging my students to view these processes as merely a means to an end. But in reality, the process is often much more important than the product. The process is the point.

Only a small percentage of my students will actually use the specific syntax and programming conventions they learned in my class. Even if they happen to pursue careers in computer science, each programming language has its own set of unique quirks and applications–some of which change over time. The good news is that for most jobs you should eventually be able to learn one coding language and be set for almost any situation. You may not even need to actually create any code yourself. Source-to-source compilers are rapidly improving and AI-generated code is already a thing. On the other hand, cognitive task analysis, computational thinking, and the design-process are all likely to remain vital for college and career readiness in a variety of fields.

If I could travel back in time to that classroom at the end of the hall, I would tell myself to quit worrying so much about the product. I would remind myself how much I had learned, and would learn, from my own epic failures. I would explain that in my ill-advised quest for perfection, I was allowing my students to ignore the process, and preventing them from internalizing the very skills that contribute to self-efficacy, ownership, and achievement. Then I would hand myself this list of reflection questions and disappear into the ether:

• Is there a process here that holds relevance beyond this specific task? What is it?

• When will I talk about the process?

• Has the process been adequately broken down into discrete steps that can be communicated in a way my students will understand?

• I know how to engage students in the task. Have I made the process engaging too?

• How will I respond when students attempt to skip or ignore the process?

How often does life feel like a test we didn’t study for? It’s such a common experience that we tacitly pay homage to it with tropes and phrases designed to lower expectations about formal education.

“It’s just a piece of paper.”

“They don’t teach you that in school”

“Forget everything they taught you.”

The sad thing is that more often than not, the nay-sayers are right. We spend far too much time teaching content that has little relevance to our students’ lives once the test is over. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we focus on helping our students to internalize important learning processes, we can know they’ll leave the building with more than just a piece of paper. In 2022, we’re all out of problems with easy answers. Our students will have to navigate brand new mazes, beyond our current paradigms (World Economic Forum, 2016). Those who succeed, will be creative project based learners who can cope with uncertainty and greet the minotaur–failure–as a friend.

References

McGrew, S., & Byrne, V. L. (2022). Conversations after lateral reading: Supporting teachers to focus on process, not content. Computers & Education, 104519.

Source-to-source compiler. (2022, May 19). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler

Wiggers, K. (2022, March 4). PolyCoder is an open source AI code-generator that researchers claim trumps Codex. VentureBeat. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/04/researchers-open-source-code-generating-ai-they-claim-can-beat-openais-codex/

World Economic Forum. (2016). The future of jobs: Employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial revolution. Global Challenge Insight Report.