米国エッセンシャル・スクール連盟における「逆向き計画」による学校改革 : セイヤー中・高等学校の実践を例に

Abstract

本稿では, 米国において｢逆向き計画｣という言葉が知られるようになる(1993年)までに, CES加盟校でどのような取り組みがなされていたのかを検討することで, 学校での実践の中で｢逆向き計画｣という方策がどのように確立していったのかを明らかにすることを目的とする｡

The reform of educational assessment in the Coalition of Essential Schools has contributed to advocating "authentic assessment" in the United States. This paper focuses especially on the strategy called "planning backwards" and aims at describing how this strategy was established in member schools of the coalition by examining the case of Thayer Junior-Senior High School, which was the first to become affiliated with the coalition. In planning backwards, a school defines a vision of desired graduates, determines its efforts to actualize this vision, and reconstructs its system as necessary. At Thayer, a mastery of the skills and knowledge required for graduation was verified in "Exhibitions, " and its school system was analyzed by examining student performances demonstrated in the exhibitions. The idea of planning backwards had been established as a strategy to steadily conduct this. The assessment methods aspiring to "authenticity, " such as performance-based assessment and portfolio assessment, were advocated not only to assess "genuine" achievement, which can't be measured by standardized tests, but also to analyze a school system from the viewpoint of real student performance.