Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/6517
Title: Alignment and Convergence for What? And How? Tensions of Writing Instruction Within a Test-Based Accountability System
Authors: Howe, Emily
Keywords: Teaching and Teacher Learning
Issue Date: Jun-2020
Publisher: International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
Citation: Howe, E. (2020). Alignment and Convergence for What? And How? Tensions of Writing Instruction Within a Test-Based Accountability System. In Gresalfi, M. and Horn, I. S. (Eds.), The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 4 (pp. 2225-2228). Nashville, Tennessee: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Abstract: Alignment between standards, instruction, and assessments is typically portrayed as an ideal system of education that is often thwarted by political and logistical obstacles. I present a case where a State system was well-aligned around text-based writing instruction. Teachers also had common understandings of the policies and aligned their goals for instruction. However, whether this was a successful system depends on the learning theory used to evaluate it. The coherent and tightly aligned system is a “success” within a behaviorist or cognitivist frame, but in tension with sociocultural theories: both in what was emphasized and lost and how alignment and convergence occurred. High-stakes tests were the lynchpin of alignment, which created institutional pressures for teachers to acculturate their writing instruction to test-based goals. As a result, educational discourse narrowed and converged, but at the expense of engaging with the sociopolitical, epistemic, ethical, and cultural aspects of literacy.
URI: https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/icls2020.2225
https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/6517
Appears in Collections:ICLS 2020

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