Thursday, April 07, 2005

One Crew / One quarter / Zero Credits

As reported by crew leader #3
Student1 10th grader O credits earned from 1/05 - 4/1/05
Student2 10th grader 0 credits....
Student3 10th...0 credits...
Student4 11th grader...0 credits from...5 credits projected for June
Student5 10th grader 0 credits...
Student6 11th grader...0 credits...4 credits projects for June
Student7 11th....0....5 for June
Student8 11th...0...2 for June
Student9 9th...0
Student10 ...11th...0...4 for June
Student11 10th...0...
Student12 9th...0
Student13...11th...0...5 for June
Student14 10th...0...

What do you make of this?
Interpretations? Hypotheses?

Does it mean conferencing does not lead to credit accumulation?
Is there some confusion by what we mean by “credits?”
Does it mean these students have accomplished nothing? Learned nothing?

This is what assignment 7 and 8 are all about: making and testing hypotheses.

Look back on the data previously reported by two other crews. Does it alter any thinking?

Michael

3 comments:

Michael said...

Comment from Joan:

Hmmm... Nobody has credits right now. Something like 57% of the crew have no credits and have no projections for credits. Roughly 21% have none now, but are projected to have 5 by June. Another 14% have 0 but will have 4 by June and 8% have 0 but will have 2 by June. So something like 65% of the crew will leave this year undercredited.

What does it mean?

1. Students aren't learning anything. (I don't think this is the case. I don't think that teachers could ALLOW 65% of their students to learn nothing by the end of the semester.)

2. Students are learning, but this learning isn't being demonstrated sufficiently to meet the standards of the class. (This is a possibility - I think that this may explain why a student who has 0 credits now will be able to have 5 in a few months - 1 quarter. Maybe the teacher sees the student's progress but can't award credit yet due to his/her expectations of credit. Or the student has earned "pieces" of credit which can not add up yet to whole credits?) This may point to what you said about confusion about what a credit means.

I have to think about this some more...

Joan

Michael said...

Comment from Jeff:

are there projections for the 10th and 9th graders ? or is that data not available
jeff

Michael said...

I'm thinking that Joan's choices are good ones. Number two is particularly appealing (though I think that there are students for whom #1 is a possibility)

This feels like a product of binary thinking -- either you've earned a full credit, or you've earned nothing (it's either all or nothing). This crew leader might get (believe in, understand, desire to) giving partial credits.

I love the Todd system of making each credit worth 1000 learning units (he calls them points or credits with a lower-case "c") This way the partial credits are easily explained.

I can't believe I'm advocating this, but should we design something like that?

Peace,
Al