\u201cAll they ever want to know is how to do the assessment task!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not interested in my feedback, only in their grade.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey never volunteer answers in class, and I\u2019m not even supposed to ask them direct questions!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt would be great if they could even turn up to my lectures.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey insist on keeping their cameras off for the whole session! It\u2019s really off-putting!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ever heard comments like these from your colleagues when they\u2019re talking about their undergraduate students? Perhaps you\u2019ve had a few similar thoughts of your own about the groups you teach at university. Sometimes we all need to have a moan about the job of teaching and lament how much easier it would be if the students would just show a bit more interest or initiative. It\u2019s worth taking a few moments, however, to reflect on the prior learning experiences of those individuals, in particular those who have passed through the English education system (note that a wider array of student backgrounds is explored in the recently published new edition of our book, An A-Z of Creative Teaching in Higher Education<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n Primary and secondary education in England is characterised by high-stakes assessment<\/strong>: \u2018assessment\u2019 meaning the systematic collection of data evidencing pupil achievement, and the \u2018high-stakes referring to the fact that the results can impact on the status of the school. This has resulted in a shift towards testing as a main means of assessment, it is cheap and easy to administer, with a number of tactics<\/a> increasingly being employed by schools in order to \u2018game\u2019 the system (sadly this is still the case even with the move to teacher-led-assessment<\/a> by schools following the pandemic).<\/p>\n Those of you who have been involved in the English system over the last 30 years or so will be aware of a narrowing of the curriculum<\/a> and a growing focus on maths and English (including, for example, extra tuition in these subjects being prioritised following lockdown). A \u2018backwash\u2019 effect is apparent, where lesson content is tailored to \u2018the test\u2019, and transmission teaching is the dominant modus operandi in order to \u2018cover\u2019 what is needed for the impending exams. Arts subjects, creative content and learning for the sheer joy of it are all side-lined in favour of rote learning, while the focus is on the technical aspects of the content.<\/p>\n It gets worse, with some schools \u2018off-rolling low achievers from its registers in order to improve results, grade inflation becoming rife and the Test becoming the rationale for all classroom activity. This process is beautifully captured by Michael Rosen in his Guide to Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n How is this relevant to the university entrants we encounter with each new intake in HE? In fact, the impact on students who have been through this system is startling<\/a>. The effects include: being \u2018turned off\u2019 learning, having only a superficial understanding of the subjects studied, focusing on \u2018performance\u2019 rather than \u2018process\u2019, being given little opportunity for developing creative and critical thinking skills, lacking a holistic approach to problem-solving or composition, and gaining little in the way of general, background or even useful<\/a> knowledge. Perhaps more important than anything else is the increase in pupil anxiety<\/a> as a result of the testing regime. Those who have experienced repeated \u2018failure\u2019 or been relegated to \u2018low\u2019 sets may be lacking in motivation and struggle with their sense of self-efficacy. Furthermore, a \u2018fixed\u2019 mindset<\/a> might prevail, where you\u2019re either \u2018good\u2019 at something, or you\u2019re not.<\/p>\n So, when your home students don\u2019t seem to be able to grasp that they have to attend all the sessions in order to learn the subject, or they are reluctant to speak out in class \u2026 when all their attention is focused on the assessment and the grades \u2026 when learning for its own sake is seen as an irrelevance, perhaps it doesn\u2019t have to mean that they\u2019re \u2018shallow\u2019, \u2018precious\u2019, \u2018scheming\u2019 or even \u2018lazy\u2019. Perhaps they\u2019ve never been taught that there is any other way of learning.<\/p>\n When I see a student with a learning contract stating that they must not be asked to speak in front of other students, for example, it makes me wonder how that student has managed to complete 13 years of previous education without this issue ever being addressed. When students tell me they\u2019re overwhelmed by being presented with content that doesn\u2019t link directly to their assessment, I try to remember that they may have been \u2018taught to the test\u2019 for much of their school lives. When I see students who appear to have no expectation of actually enjoying learning about their subject or ones who feel they\u2019re not important enough to engage in taught sessions or that it won\u2019t matter if they slip under the radar, I try to think about what experiences they might have had that have led them to this point.<\/p>\n We need to invest time in our courses in rebuilding our students\u2019 concepts of themselves as dynamic, creative and autonomous learners. This involves structured opportunities for them to reflect on their learning journeys thus far, to critique the systems of education that they have passed through and to begin to articulate the type of learner they\u2019d like to be, including what \u2018authentic learning\u2019 might look like in their chosen subject discipline. We also need to unpack our new students\u2019 expectations of university life alongside our own assumptions about these. This of course applies to all of our students, whether educated in England or not. Research<\/a> shows that some students have a stronger sense of entitlement when at university, pro-actively seeking tutor support, while others simply melt into the background and struggle on alone. Our students need to tell us their stories, hopes and fears, and we in turn must respond in ways that develop them as scholars and as active citizens. Not least, in many cases, this means \u2018undoing\u2019 years of \u2018exam factory\u2019 education.<\/p>\n This content is developed and adapted from the new, revised edition of <\/em>An A-Z of Creative Teaching in Higher Education<\/em><\/a> by Sylvia Ashton and Rachel Stone, published by Sage. Please come to our <\/em>online book launch<\/em><\/a> on 15th<\/sup> July 2021!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How to support your HE students to \u2018unlearn\u2019 \u201cAll they ever want to know is how to do the assessment task!\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re not interested in my feedback, only in their grade.\u201d \u201cThey never volunteer answers in class, and I\u2019m not even supposed to ask them direct questions!\u201d \u201cIt would be great if they could even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11753,"featured_media":1714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-16"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/files\/2021\/07\/blog-post.jpeg?fit=1370%2C1001&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7axDP-rD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1720,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions\/1720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/sioe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}