Reflective assessment in educational practice

Work-based learning is generally conceptualized as a way of enabling students to merge what they learn in the classroom with tasks in the workplace. Typical examples of work-based learning include student internships and jobs. However, over the course of my Capstone Project, I intend to deploy a work-based learning approach to how teachers interact with students in the classroom, encouraging teachers to use the learning experience of self-reflective inquiry over the course of the project to enhance student learning and their own capacities as educators.

My project specifically focuses on the phenomenon of 'teaching to the test.' Many teachers are being forced to fundamentally relearn how they approach education, thanks to the new emphasis on standardized testing. Teachers are being 'reeducated' as part of the new curriculums instituted specifically designed to improve student test scores. This type of reeducation is epidemic in particular at so-called failing schools, in which a significant percentage of students are performing below grade level. In fact, it could be argued that as teachers are retrained to integrate extensive test preparation into their old methods of teaching, they are continually honoring the principles of WBL. "It involves planned learning through work, a significant proportion of which is negotiated between the student and the employer; informal and unintended learning are also likely and anticipated consequences of the experience" (Brodie & Irving 2007: 12). Teachers are learning new methods, and they are also, for better or for worse, being encouraged to reevaluate their teaching strategies of how to present and engage students with the material.

Over the course of my research I will follow two third grade classes in schools within the same county, one of which is failing and one of which is not. The failing school will be urban and low-income and face significant challenges that can impede high test scores, such as a high rate of poverty, many special needs students, and a significant number of ESL students. The non-failing school, which does not face such pressures and challenges, will be used as a comparative study to how standardized testing shapes curriculum development and the extent to which teachers are allowed to 'own' the teaching processes that they use in their classrooms.

As well as talking to the teachers about classroom performance, I will also talk to them about such issues as curriculum development, staff meetings, and how attitudes towards teachers have changed over their years of teaching. While the teachers learn to work differently and to adjust their ways of teaching (or are not required to adjust their ways of teaching, depending on the school), I will use the research process to help them be more critically reflective upon teaching in general, while learning myself. I hope the research will be useful to the teachers as well as to expand my own base of knowledge.

"The approach to WBL discussed here requires students and teachers to develop, and perhaps change, their conceptual frameworks of knowledge, knowing and learning" (Brodie & Irving 2007). It is my hope that the research I conduct will be useful to the teachers as they understand the extent to which they are empowered or disempowered by standardized testing to affect the curriculum. I also hope that the contrast between the two schools will be useful in understanding the extent to which the label of a failing or high-performing school district affects the attitudes of teachers and students.