I have been looking through old papers I wrote as an undergraduate and graduate student years ago… actually decades ago. In 1997, I enrolled in a curriculum development course and a graduate student, and made this observation:
An inquiry-based science curriculum that includes authentic assessment is not familiar to most teachers.
What I wrote almost 30 years ago is true today.
Inquiry-based curriculum in science or any other field appears to have been abandoned. The focus on data seems to have reduced all instruction to easy to measure tasks. Inquiry adds much to one’s education. Yes, I have seen the research telling us how inefficient it can be, but curiosity, critical thinking, as problem solving are nearly impossible for students to develop when we ignore inquiry.
Authentic assessment is another rarely encountered activity in classrooms today. I characterize authentic assessment as those activities created by students to demonstrate their learning that would be of interest to those outside of the classroom. When we replace “research papers” written to the teacher’s standards with reports that meet the standards of industries, for example writing for potential publication in a journal.
It may seem silly to suggest these activities are unfamiliar to teachers after observing they are rarely encountered, but I am not even sure we have the capacity to introduce this type of education any longer. Goodhart’s law explains this. We look for data supporting the conclusion that students are learning what they are supposed to, but that data is no longer a good proxy for learning. We have plenty of data, but very little learning; and our educational leaders seem content with that.