Making the Shift Toward Tracking Observations
I've been speaking with many secondary school teachers recently about how we might track observations and conversations in the math classroom, for the purpose of assigning a level of understanding and formally contributing to a student's overall achievement in a course. When it comes to keeping track of marks, many teachers feel uncomfortable with evaluating what they see and hear in the classroom, much more so than evaluating what they see on paper. We feel, perhaps because observations are not as tactile as a handed-in worksheet, that an evaluation of what we see in class is more subjective, and may be called into question more than an evaluation of a product. As teachers, we are often much more comfortable using products to evaluate student understanding. We trust our professional judgment with products (without even questioning it) much more than with observations. But in reality, this process is not that different than when we create and evaluate paper produ