I share Will Richardson‘s questions about changing our culture:

So, it comes back to what is to me at least, the big question these days. Not how do we help teachers get their brains around these tools in terms of their own personal learning practice (which is still hugely important), but how do we help schools and districts to begin to reshape their culture around learning in more collaborative, connected environments? How do we get to the point where we’re not just seeing individual teachers and classrooms make the shift, but where we are seeing schools as a whole beginning to shift as well?

As facilitator of a program intended to help students prep for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test(OSSLT), I am really feeling the tension between what I’ll call ”multiliteracy” and “conventional literacy.”   In my regular courses, my goal is to support student multiliteracy because (a) it is in line with curriculum expectations, and (b) I think that students who can only read and write text on paper are not going to be functionally literate in our society.  However, students’ literacy levels are formally determined by a standardized test that is based on conventional literacy.

(Before I go on, I’ll just say that I am not opposed to standardized testing, because I value the aggregate information that is available from it.  More on that another day.)

I am wondering, though, if there is another way to handle the testing — a way that is culture-shifting.  Some of the concerns that I have with the current testing approach are:

• Students write using pen and paper.  For some, this is not their most familiar communication medium, so they are disadvantaged.  (Clarification:  I’m not advocating a text-messaging test.)
• Students write in the same format every time:  a news article and a five-paragraph essay are the essential written components.  These are limiting forms.
• The same format every year means that our regular courses are being tailored more and more to meet the expectations of the literacy test.  Hours of class time being spent learning the specifics of writing a news article.  I wonder how often students will have to write a news article in their futures?

I don’t have any solutions, just questions right now.  How can our education system shift its culture to embrace multiliteracy?  Can standardized testing be adapted to support a new culture of collaboration, or is it fundamentally incompatible?  As I prepare for another literacy support session, how do I make this most helpful for students:  do I teach them to write the test, or do I teach them to read and write texts?