Sounds sort of like a person spinning. Or falling down a hill. About to hit the rocks.
I'm going to keep this short, but maybe not that it should be. One of the consistent derogatory statements that one hears in a secondary school in relationship to NCLB and UBSCT has to do with teaching to the test. "Is that all they want us to do?" But then there is the issue of really knowing what is on "the test" and whether it's possible to teach to criteria that are not fully understood. The suggestion of these readings makes sense: you should know what it is that you will test, the nature of the specific learning that should be done, the difference between desired status and actual status. But it seems in a very real way to come up against the old notions that used to sound reasonable of "well, if we tell them what we are going to test, that is all that they will pay attention to." Which also seems reasonable to me in this regard: one teaches for, say, 90% of the time, different types of activites, different approaches, compared to the 10% spent in actual testing/assessing. Is it really valid to say that every last thing that is important will be tested? It seems to me that the idea that we are going to test every last important thing that happens in Hamlet is trying to equate it's depth with the job of making a person feel well liked, happy, and part of the family when they come in to see their bank teller. You may be able to reduce the one to a one-page set of criteria that can be posted behind the counter, but the volume of material written about that one play suggests that it isn't always going to be possible or even desirable to reduce that kind of valid content to anything but a spot-check quiz and a hard-to-assess essay. Or is this a case of trying to define a fuzzy goal?
I guess this one falls into the Struggles with IDET. Okay, do teach the kid how to write various types of sentences. Try not to fall prey to the two sins of Trad. Design. But I'm not yet convinced that everything can be reduced to such a clean set of finite goals. I get the point. I want to believe, in a way, but I would like see one of the texts dealing with Art Appreciation, or The Impressionists, or Hamlet. And then have it be just one small part of what you are supposed to be teaching, a part that you find important, that the State says is important, but that the Legislature won't even try to test.
Rambling. Just one more addition. Let me add one more sin to Wiggins and McTighe: throwing out a flippant example (To Kill a Mockingbird), and not offering any positive insights. When the future reader sits down to address one of the hundreds of millions of books sold each year and the author hasn't focused their reading for them so that they can pass the non-extant assessment after they close the back cover, is the reader's experience with the book going to be invalid, insufficiently directed? Get out your pre-assessments, folks. We're about to go take a walk in the woods! And it is no longer enough to enjoy yourself! That is far, far too fuzzy. (While I'm on that, has anyone else ever been over-directed at a National Park?)
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I can appreciate your connections with Instructional Design and teaching to the test. I can also see that if we don't have a map, how will we get there? Because learning builds year after year upon itself, goals need to be met for the student to be successfull in the following years. I would agree that there are some times when you want to explore a topic as you would explore a national park. The goals would be appreciation, exploration, and enjoyment. But then is there time for that in the curriculum?
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