Moving Beyond Grades: A New Metric for Success in 21st-Century Learning
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In today’s rapidly changing world, the traditional metrics of academic success—chiefly, grades and test scores—no longer fully capture the depth of a student’s capabilities or potential. While academic performance remains important, the shift toward 21st-century learning calls for a broader and more holistic definition of success. In an age where skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and creativity are paramount, it is crucial that educational systems evolve to foster these competencies, rather than relying solely on standardized testing and traditional grading.
The way we assess student progress has also contributed to the under-emphasis on higher levels of thinking. American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom claims that 95 percent of standardized test questions in the U.S. are devoted to recall and memorization, and neglects the higher-level thinking processes. He decries that there is overemphasis on the lower-level thinking skills of recall and rote memory. He explains that this is so because it is easier to develop assessments to test a child’s recall and memory. Consequently, classroom transactions are oriented towards preparing students for this kind of test.
Most of the test items in school test for memory and recall. In our school, the scenario is different. Teachers are trained to incorporate critical thinking skills even in multiple choice questions. Facilitators are trained to develop short and long essay type questions on testing the level of critical thinking in each child. Consequently, questions are framed to test not only the lower-order- thinking processes of memory or understanding. But also, higher-order-thinking processes like students’ ability to analyze, evaluate, apply and create.
This change in assessment leads to change in classroom transactions. Emphasis shifts from acquisition of facts to students’ ability to analyze, evaluate, apply and create. Lectures are replaced by doing activities, discussions and projects. Teachers are trained and they know what questions to ask, in what direction to lead the discussion, what tasks to assign in order to foster critical thinking. This Socratic method of questioning focuses on discovering answers by asking questions to students and discussing it in detail.
Vikalp Online school has created a framework which tries to identify and define critical thinking skills at various levels of K12. It may not be the perfect framework. Moreover, critical thinking cannot be reduced to a universally applicable formula of skills or steps to follow. But it’s a pioneering step in the direction of implementation critical thinking at school level. Concepts are not introduced as a given fact. Students are made to discover the concept while doing activities with learning tools. Once they discover the concept, they are supposed to reflect on the concepts they have started to understand. Teacher is supposed to ask a series of questions based on the topic so that students start to think and discover answers.
All the above changes are to move away from the method of teaching where information is taught as given facts. And the assessment tests how much a student can recall and understand. These are “lower-order-thinking”. In order to test “higher-level-thinking” such as the ability to analyze, evaluate, apply and reconstruct, the pattern of the test needs to be changed. Additional parameters of assessment are used. These parameters test a student’s “higher-order-thinking” or critical thinking. These skills were decided upon and clustered into three broad categories.
• Clarifying Issues and terms
• Judging and utilizing information
• Drawing conclusions
The generic skills remain the same throughout the grade levels but the level of sophistication is expected to progressively develop.
This is easier said than done. Critical thinking cannot be developed just by including it in the curriculum. The entire teaching process needs to be changed. This cannot be done in a traditional school which still works on a “factory model”. Here concepts are introduced as given facts and students are supposed to reproduce them in examination. There is no role of critical thinking in this setup. In our school concepts are not introduced, learning tools are introduced. Students are guided to do activities and discover the concept on their own. There is no lecture. No one tells them. They discover it by doing. After discovering, the facilitator asks a series of questions and assigns projects works. These questions and project works help students in finding answers. Gradually students are able to recall and understand, but also apply, analyze, evaluate and create. Students are supposed to do this with each concept in their curriculum. By the end of their school years, students become proficient in these skills required for success in the second half of the 21st century.
The author is Founder & CEO of Vikalp India
