The Right kind of questions

I keep hearing people continuously complain about the culture of rote learning pervading our country. Everyone has a point of view on education in India but one thing most agree upon is that we create generations of rote learners through our schooling system.

As economists have laid out amply, human beings respond to incentives. There is also this other tendency among human beings that we can't manage what we can't measure. Put the 2 together and you have the root cause of the 'rote learning' problem.

Parents, Community leaders, educators and administrators all want to know whether learning is being achieved in schools or not. They also want to check this in an objective manner. (Whether the latter is a noble aim is questionable, but we'll come to that). So we need to create questions which have 'unambiguous' standardized answers. Most of such questions start with 'Who', 'What', 'Where' and 'When'.

Creativity is by definition indeterminate. You cannot predict what will happen if you ask a student to create. However, creativity is the highest form of understanding for only when you've comprehended, analyzed and evaluated can you create.

This raises the peculiar problem that you can't measure what you know is right, so you manage with what you can measure.

The other issue is that of incentives. Teachers are not really measured for performance in our country, and when they are, its for the wrong thing. If you have not finished the syllabus before the exams and a question comes from the 'uncovered' portion, you'll have parents come in the PTM and shout at you. And you are lauded if your class is in distinction (in an exam designed for memory). So what do teachers do in such a scenario. Without even reading Freakonomics, you could predict that they would complete the syllabus, teach for rote and test for rote and be hailed as a good teacher!

Students too are rewarded for scoring high in exams designed for memory. So they mug up the answers to the questions they expect for the exam, regurgitate during the exam and promptly forget afterwards.

What is the incentive for teaching for understanding? What is the incentive for learning for understanding? How do we measure whether understanding has been achieved when different learners manifest their understanding differently - making it hard for 'objective' scoring?

I don't have the solution for this . But I have some ideas :
1. Assessing a student's understanding through a portfolio that she makes and maintains through a year might spur application and creativity. A portfolio also allows students with intelligences different from the traditional 'linguistic - logical' to express their understanding in the way they prefer. It also ensure all emphasis is not on a year end examination.

2. This portfolio can be judged not just by a teacher but the community. Portfolios can be exhibited or published and readers or visitors can rate the portfolios. If an auction system can be worked out, students can actually see the market value of their portfolios - something far more concrete than marks!

3. Teachers can be rated on the total market value or rating that their class generates. This will incentivize teaching for understanding and not for rote

4. Teachers need to be trained to be constructivists and not instructionists.

5. At the higher secondary level, there could be standardized tests for each vocation or stream and students could take those to ascertain their proficiency for those fields. Such tests exist (JEE, CBSE Medical etc) but we can create a common test with special subject tests if required. This will facilitate entry into professional or graduate streams.

6. Any other idea that promotes 'real understanding'.