Adult Literacy Philosophy
RIGOR ON TRIAL by Tony Wagner
"How do we create a reform strategy that relies less on mindless, mandated
compliance and computer-scored, test-based accountability and more on the development of collaborative problem-solving and reasoning skills?"
From an article in Education Week,
January 11, 2006, Wagner shares his commentary from an experience
working with Hawaiian principals assessing rigor at all grade levels in
the classroom. He recognizes in the article, the challenge in
identifying what qualifies as rigor, but in an earlier article, Wagner
explores the questions of rigor and introduces the "three R's" of
rigor, relevance, and respectful relationships.
He states, "We began to realize that rigor has less to do with how demanding the material the teacher covers is than with what competencies
students have mastered as a result of a lesson. We were able to agree
on this because, in our journey, we had gone from creating a series of teacher-centered observations to reaching consensus on a set of questions we would ask students.
Students chosen at random were questioned to determine not only the
level of rigor in the class, but also the extent to which there was
evidence of the other two R's of relevance and respectful
relationships, essential elements in motivating students to want to
achieve rigor.
The seven questions that emerged from this work are the
following:
1. What is the purpose of this lesson?
2. Why is this important to learn?
3. In what ways am I challenged to think in this lesson?
4. How will I apply, assess, or communicate what I've learned?
5. How will I know how good my work is and how I can improve it?
6. Do I feel respected by other students in this class?
7. Do I feel respected by the teacher in this class?
And so we extend these questions to ourselves...
