Grant Wiggins (of UbD fame) recently blogged about how good teachers decenter themselves: the process of the teacher taking him/herself out of the center of the learning process. The article itself is a worthy read as he talks through the why and the how, but the list below reminded me of what we will see as we continue our shift to inquiry driven instruction (PBL).
7 Characteristics Of Group-Worthy Tasks
I should note that some of my thinking about this issue was prompted by reading an article by Rachel Lotan in Educational Leadership on “group worthy” learning tasks from 2003, via a fine book on group work in mathematics written by Ilana Horn. Here is my slightly-edited version of the Lotan-Horn criteria for group worthy work:
- Focus on central concepts or big ideas that require active meaning-making
- The challenge itself has ambiguity or limited scaffold and prompting so that student meaning-making and different inferences about the task and how to address it will emerge.
- Are best accomplished by ensuring that multiple perspectives are found tried out in addressing the task. This not only rewards creative and non-formulaic thought but undercuts the likelihood that one strong student can do all the key work.
- Provide multiple ways of being competent in the task work and the task process
- Can only be done well by a group, but are designed to foster both individual and group autonomy. (The teacher’s role as teacher and direction-giver should be minimized to near zero).
- Demand both individual and group accountability
- Have clear evaluation criteria