Desire

I am a professional teaching artist; a reflective practitioner. This post continues a stream of consciousness that started somewhere around here. Your thoughtful suggestions and comments are appreciated.

XI.  Desired Learning Outcomes

A Teaching Artist is a reflective being, dedicated to the realization of clearly defined and articulated learning outcomes for students.

To be fully realized, desired learning outcomes must exist before the shared experience of teaching and learning begins.

In the physical world, learning outcomes usually take the form of brief statements written at the top of a lesson plan.

These statements may be derived from national learning standards, from state or local learning standards, from conversations with a classroom teacher, or from a combination of these.

Often these statements share a common preamble, such as “the student will understand”, but this is a mistake, since the field of understanding is too broad to be of use as an assessment tool.

Therefore, when stating desired learning outcomes, the wise teaching artist takes care to use language that imagines the student taking the kind of action that is observable, measurable, and repeatable.

This is the realm of active verbs, and phrases such as “the student will draw connections between…” or “the student will be able to….”

The twin foundations of this kind of teaching are the concepts of accountability, and transformation.

The teaching artist is accountable to a set of learning standards, and does work that can be evaluated.

The student transforms concepts into action, and is in turn transformed.

The process of learning is transformative and circular. 

Our work, accountable and specific, leaves traces--evidence of our success or failure.

Also: Sly & the Family Stone - Higher