Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice
Keywords
testing, curriculum, standardized tests, high stakes tests
Abstract
The standards movement began as a nobly-intended effort to establish a core curriculum—a template of knowledge and skills that would guide teaching and learning across the K-12 curriculum. Our attempts to standardize curriculum may have unintended and deleterious side-effect: The atrophying of the mind’s natural tendencies for exploratory play and inherently imaginative dimensions. This paper engages us in a critical remembering of our pedagogical relationships with children. It reminds us of children’s ways of being and asks how we might engage them in a rigorous appreciation of curricular literacies without thwarting their wonderful wanderings. Ultimately, we worry about the place of standardized testing in this picture which circulates and perpetuates prevailing risk management discourses and colonizes pedagogical relations.
Recommended Citation
Wright, Randall and Sullivan, Alayne
(2005)
"To Wonder, Wander, and Linger in the World of Standardized Testing,"
Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice: Vol. 1:
No.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/wie/vol1/iss1/2
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons