Disruptive teaching: a current silent need from a teacher student.

The modern educational system has evolved into a standardised and memorization-driven environment where students often lose their motivation, creativity, and individuality. The emphasis on grades and evaluation places undue pressure on students, resulting in a culture characterised by poor mental health, primarily due to the stress students experience related to assessment and the expected behaviour from them. Within this educational model, teachers inadvertently support the reproduction of this problematic system from the very first years of their teacher training without even realising it. Do future teachers truly want to perpetuate this issue that has been plaguing education? Across the world and in education systems, society has come up with a common view of how evaluation is driven and the focus it has. Assessment. Results. Performance. As a result, future teachers that could mean a vivid chance to reconstruct the way children are educated are still under the wings of a result focused educational system. Here, I personally find it hard to think out of the box for students when it comes to assessment,in the light of the fact that future teachers experience evaluation as the ruler system is offering it. Perhaps, a possible solution could start in the classroom where future teachers are being evaluated. Where the future teachers are learning how to make things better. This underscores the significance of educators in driving change, as the shift in mindset among teachers begins with those who educate them. "The evidence is overwhelming that grades cause anxiety and stress for students. Between January 2019 and February 2020, Stanford University's Challenge Success program surveyed approximately 54,000 high school students in schools where the majority of graduates go on to selective colleges and universities. The results were sobering: 76 percent of students reported that they always or often worry about the possibility of not performing well in school." (Feldman, J. 2020). Recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning, it becomes evident that the educational system should adapt accordingly in terms of methodology and evaluation tools. Students come from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and abilities, and a single assessing method cannot cater to this rich background of needs. Why hasn't the system changed? Why do we keep doing the same, when tons of students are cheating in exams to "do great" at them? One might wonder why, despite this knowledge, the educational system has been slow to adapt. The answer to this question lies, in part, with the role of teachers. While teachers often strive to provide the best education possible, they too have been shaped by the very system they aim to transform. They come from an assessments-centred system where the results are where to put the focus on, forgetting about the process they need to experience to achieve learning. This is a crucial concept when not only analysing the current global education issue but also empowering future teaching students to be aware of how the system has shaped them, allowing them to either challenge it or unintentionally reproduce it; the opportunity to break their previous beliefs of what assessing means, to rebuild it. However, how can they fit into a new mindset if the academic world where they are being trained as teachers is still entrenched in traditional teaching methods? Teachers play a pivotal role in reshaping the educational landscape. By acknowledging the need for diversity in teaching methods, they can become agents of change. They can move away from a monotonous, one-size-fits-all approach and begin embracing various teaching styles that cater to the unique needs of their students and the society they live in. This is, I think, where social justice and education intersect. Future teachers must challenge the conventional norms and step into the realm of innovation. They should aim to break free from the constraints of the traditional educational system and foster a more inclusive, creative, and healthy environment for their students. Could this future teacher generation change the paradigms of assessments when they already have been raised by them? That's a question that echoes into my mind every time I sit in a traditional college class. Why does having fun while learning ends at a certain age? What happens with the process and progress of each student? Why don't we instead encourage students to do things themselves, to take risks, to play and to imagine? That's the teacher I think every student teacher wants to be at the time they start their degree, but they get absorbed by the typical educational model. "Bettez (2008), in her discussion of university teaching, outlines seven skills, practices, and dispositions of activist social justice education. These include: (1) promoting a mind/body connection, (2) conducting artful facilitation that promotes critical thinking, (3) engaging in explicit discussions of power, privilege, and oppression, (4) maintaining compassion for students, (5) believing that change toward social justice is possible, (6) exercising self-care, and (7) building critical communities." An educational model governed by these seven skills may sound like a dream for citizens living in the hope of nurturing deep-thinking students who explore knowledge for themselves rather than merely listening to lecturers. A system that dictates when creativity is permissible, when students must sit in rows, attentively staring at a board for an hour and a half while the teacher disseminates information about wars and asks questions to ensure students learn what the system wants them to do. Future teachers need to experience the system we aim to construct in the future, not just the one we are supposed to change. The evidence of the mental health toll on students provided should guide us in reshaping educational approaches, emphasising curiosity, cooperation, and innovation as the cornerstones of a healthier and more effective learning experience and assessment. And that change of mindset starts with the ones that are still into the system that we aim to disrupt. 

Sources: 

1. Bettez, S. C. (2008). Social justice activist teaching in the university classroom. In J. Deim & R.J. Helfenbein (Eds), Unsettling beliefs: Teaching theory to teachers(pp. 279-296). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. 

2. Feldman, J. (2020). Taking the Stress Out of Grading. ASCD. Retrieved from https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/taking-the-stress-out-of-grading 

Manuela Atria