After a fantastic conference in Washington, DC with the National Center for Education Information and a nice holiday, I’m back. To ease back into things, I thought I’d have a little fun with educational jargon.
Yesterday, John Merrow blogged about “The Joys of Jargon.” He listed the most annoying buzzwords cited by educational reporters. At the top of the list: ‘at risk,’ ‘scaffolding,’ ‘value-added,’ ‘best practices,’ ‘state of the art,’ ‘laser-like focus,’ and ‘raising the bar.’ Merrow reports that the “absolute nails-on-the-blackboard term is ‘stakeholders.’”
Merrow speculates on the reasons for all the educational jargon. Is it a lack of professional self-esteem, the need to sound like we know what we’re talking about when we really don’t, or is it something else?
I have no answers, but I know a productive professional development activity: taking a bit of jargon and engaging educators about what it means and what it looks like in practice. Pull together school principals, teachers, supervisors, staff developers and university faculty, and discuss something like “21st century learning.” What does it look like? What does it sound like? Really operationalizing these terms is necessary before groups can dig into school improvement efforts…because if we decide we’re going to move toward a “student-centered approach,” it’s ultimately best if we know what that really means.
Need some jargon to get started? Visit the Educational Jargon Generator at http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html and click “Generate Jargon.” It’s great for a laugh.
To read John Merrow’s blog about educational jargon, see http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=5003.
