04 March 2008

Jargon--why don't we say what we mean?

4 March 2008

I was working today with some science teachers and they were working with some terms that had come from the state of NH. They were talking about GSEs, GLEs, and frameworks. Unless you are a NH educator I will assume that you do not know what these terms/abbreviations are.

Here are the terms decoded:
GSE means: standards for a range of grades (k-2 for example) (It stands for Grade Span Expectations)
GLE means: standards for a grade (It stands for Grade Level Expectations)
Frameworks means: standards.

There were very smart science teachers that did not know the meaning of any of the terms. When the terms were decoded for them they were able to continue the work.

My point is that there is no need to obfuscate what we are doing. We are talking about the big goals and the assessments for those goals. Especially at the early stages we need to keep the process accessible so all involved can participate. When it becomes necessary to introduce specific terms we will have them. But at the beginning we just want to bring everyone into the process so they can begin thinking about goals and assessments.

I do not understand why the trend in education has always been to create new terms new pieces of jargon every few years. I fear that it is all because people are trying to sell new books. The bottom line is that we should focus on plain language that allows everyone to participate in the discussion.

Consider a converation that I had with my friend who goes to Dartmouth Business School. He is a smart man who, before going to business school, taught 6th grade. When I talked with him I had a very good conversation about the goals related to entire schools and to courses. But we never used any of the coded terms that are so often seen in teacher only discussions. We were able to talk about what students need to know and what they should be able to do. We were able to talk about this in a very in depth way. And we never used any jargon in our conversations.

Of course when it actually does get to the level of teachers talking about designing curriculum there will be a need to use some terms and scaffolds. But there is no need to mask what the real conversation is about.