![]() Another company is marketing NAPLAN teddy bears. Vitamin company Nature's Way sparked outrage when its ad for fish oil tablets finished with the line "NAPLAN testing starts May 14" (the ads were quickly withdrawn). NAPLAN has also spawned a flood of products marketed to parents focused on improving their children's results. It also put unprecedented pressure and stress onto students. A colleague responded by saying, "That is not what we are here for, though, is it?" And so it went that many a lesson was spent with dull-eyed students memorising quotes to plug into essays.Įvidence of "teaching to the test" emerged when the federal government held an inquiry into NAPLAN and heard claims from teachers that "well planned, engaged and worthwhile teaching plans" were "put on hold" to accommodate a fast-tracked curriculum for NAPLAN preparation. This type of "school league tabling" follows a corporate business model of education, an approach criticised not only for shaming poorly performing schools, but also for encouraging "teaching to the test".Īs a new teacher, I lamented wanting to focus more on getting the students to engage with the text, instead of just preparing them for a test. ![]() In Australia this is best seen in the introduction of NAPLAN testing and the publishing of results on the Myschool website. Neoliberalism in education transposes the ethos of running a cost-effective business onto teaching and learning. ![]() But as academics O'Flynn & Peterson point out, research now shows that opening schools up to economic rationalist practices is having a profound, detrimental effect. The obsession with results forms part of a wider neoliberal culture of "me first". The argument here is not that testing or data collection are inherently bad, but that the increasing reliance on measurement comes at the expense of other modes of learning and is also, more worryingly, linked to a broader trend toward competitive individualism that is not serving the needs of successful schooling. Academic success in schooling is, of course, to be desired, but it is not the sole purpose of teaching, and increasingly, schools are emphasising success purely in numerical terms – with the HSC as pinnacle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |