So what we're teaching kids to do is school compliance. As long as the learning experience is not authentic to the student, we've got some really major motivation problems. Ed cited encouraging examples of teachers moving away from traditional tests, shifting student evaluation to portfolios and rubric-based criteria. In these classrooms, the emphasis shifts from absolute right or absolute wrong to an overall view of the student's understanding across a continuum. At the top of the continuum is a very sophisticated understanding and the bottom is very superficial and erroneous.
Every student falls somewhere along the continuum.
The result is a more authentic learning experience and a more authentic assessment. He was so impressed by one student's contributions that he followed the student to his next class. There, Ed found the student silent and withdrawn for the entire period. The difference, Ed said, is that the social studies teacher provided a safe environment for risk taking that was lacking in the other class. The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.