Alfie Kohn's Best Practices and 7 Schools That Actually Use Them

Ella Wilson, German & Russian, '19

 

Today’s educational norms involve the extensive use of homework, grades, and extrinsic motivators to encourage student learning. This post is meant to summarize some of the best practices highlighted by Alfie Kohn, a vocal critic of this educational standard, as well as list a number of schools where these best practices have to some degree been implemented.

 

One of the most prominent critics of today’s homework- and grade-centered educational systems, Alfie Kohn has a fair bit to say about educational best practices. He addresses these through several of his publications, including The Homework Myth (2006) and Punished by Rewards (1999), aiming to educate educators on how to preserve students’ intrinsic motivation and reduce the negative impacts of homework, grades and other harmful educational practices. His suggestions for educators include (but are by no means limited to) the following ten practices:

 

Source: https://www.alfiekohn.org/books/ 

1. Eliminate homework altogether. The nation currently operates on a default of homework being assigned regularly, regardless of its actual educational value (Homework 167). But if homework is not deemed truly important and worthwhile, why assign it? A standard of no homework would mean that to break that standard would require serious thought and consideration on the part of the teacher, leading to an increase in quality of class instruction (meaning that the class would not need to be supplemented by homework) and in homework (only quality work would be assigned). 

2. Homework, if given, should be naturally suited to the home. Hands-on activities or ones that foster communication with family members could involve interviewing parents about their life or family history, or conducting experiments with common household supplies or kitchen ingredients. Cooking, cleaning, reading aloud or watching good TV shows together, playing board games, etc. should be considered homework because they are healthy forms of parent-child interaction and relationship-building within a child’s microsystems, which foster healthy social-emotional development, especially in younger children (Homework 174). 

3. Encourage free reading. Having students read books of their own choosing at their own pace, without the external motivators of reading logs or questions, allows students to enjoy reading and find intrinsic joy in the activity, and maybe even forget that it’s an assignment (Homework 177).

4. If you can’t eliminate grades, minimize them. Instead of letter grades, give verbal/written, constructive and substantial feedback and comments. The number of gradations (check, check plus, check minus instead of a/b/c/d/f) should also be limited, or the possible grades reduced to A and Incomplete (emphasizes that all completed work is valuable and that mistakes are not punished). 

5. Never grade students on what they haven’t finished learning. Pop quizzes, for example, do not reflect what a student knows or is in the process of learning, because they have not had the chance to learn it yet. This form of assessment can cause anxiety and resentment towards education. 

6. Don’t grade for effort, because grading for effort is subjective and can lead students to develop low self-efficacy -- a failing grade means they’re not trying, even if they are, or a positive grade on effort with a low grade for achievement implies stupidity. 

7. Never grade on a curve, because that fosters the belief that success is scarce and that one student must fail for another to succeed. 

8. Encourage collaboration. When students engage in collaborative or cooperative learning, in which they work in pairs or small groups, they learn more effectively and learn how to better engage not just with the material but with each other. This type of learning also encourages positive attitudes and academic intrinsic motivation, creative and critical thinking, higher levels of retention and transfer as well as valuable interpersonal skills like empathy, acceptance and relationship building (Punished 214). 

9. Only have students do tasks worth doing. Tasks that involve little creativity and are decontextualized from the students’ lives or the world around them will hold very little interest for students. If desired skills and learning objectives are based in real-life concerns contexts or concerns, the instruction will not only be more meaningful, but it will better provide for transfer of information (Punished 218).

10. Give students choice. It is important that educators give students a decision-making role in regards to their own homework -- both in terms of what it is and whether it is at all -- and classroom activities. Such decision making processes can foster discussion that is valuable in itself: for example, if people disagree and students have to vote or debate or look for a compromise, they are provided with an opportunity to develop social skills and intellectual growth. When students are brought into the decision making process, and their opinions are treated with respect, assignments and class activities become worth doing, because the students have deemed them worth doing and worthy of interest (Homework 179).

It is one thing to voice these ideals, but to see them in practice is something completely different. In The Homework Myth, Kohn provides a list of schools whose policies regarding homework and educational practices he lauds. Written in 2006, however, this list is incredibly outdated, and many of these schools have closed their doors and shut down. But just because his list of schools has been pruned and shortened does not mean that fewer schools are adopting ideas and practices similar to his own. I would like to provide an updated list of schools whose practices I believe, on the basis of Kohn’s books and the findings of educational psychology, are highly conducive to learning and intrinsic motivation, and deserve to be added to Kohn’s list (this list is by no means exhaustive, and I have tried to find a balance between private and public schools):

1.The Children’s School in Oak Park, IL: this K-8 private school has the theories of John Dewey and the principles of Progressive Education and Emergent Curriculum as the basis of its educational philosophy, and uses student interests, multi-age and collaborative classroom environments, and hands-on learning to ground its curriculum. 

2.The Cedarsong Forest Kindergarten on Vashon Island, WA:  this kindergarten allows children complete immersion in nature, with an unstructured curriculum that follows the student's interests and immediate, natural surroundings. Children learn through "authentic play," personal inquiry, and the natural world rather than direct instruction and traditional classroom activities that may harm intrinsic motivation.

Source: https://www.cfsnc.org/

3.Carolina Friends School in Durham, NC: a K-12 private Quaker school that emphasizes social, emotional, physical, and intellectual growth, through hands-on, interest- and community-based learning. The school avoids the pitfalls of traditional grading systems by relying on authentic assessment, student self-evaluation, and narrative assessments.

4.Clairemont Elementary School in Decatur, GA: this public K-3 elementary school implements Expeditionary Learning to guide its curriculum, described as a curriculum “based on learning through collaborative exploration.” It centers on the principles of project-based learning and learning-by-doing, and providing students with a sense of ownership over their educational experiences. 

5.Francis C. Hammond Middle School in Alexandria, VA: this public middle school is a member of the International Academy system, an ESL educational program characterized by a “five-principal model emphasizing heterogeneity and collaboration, experiential learning, language and content integration, localized autonomy and responsibility, and one learning model for all.” While Kohn might take issue with “one learning model for all,” I include Hammond Middle School because it includes extensive student collaboration, hands-on learning activities and contextualized instruction, all of which contribute to preserving students' intrinsic motivation and transfer of knowledge. 

6.Quest to Learn in New York City: this public 6-12 NYC school puts its entire curriculum is modeled in game design principles. Classes are considered missions, and throughout the semester they are broken up into quests. The school aims to increase intrinsic motivation by appealing to creativity, collaboration and contextualization. 

Source: https://www.bellwetherschool.org/

7.The Bellwether School in Williston, VT: a private elementary and middle school that aims to connect “learning with experience with prior learning” and integrate whatever is “socially relevant, intellectually engaging, and personally meaningful” to students into its curriculum. This school has a particular emphasis on collaborative (and multi-age) learning, and has eliminated letter grades altogether. 

References:

Kohn, Alfie. (2006). The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Kohn, Alfie. (1993). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and other Bribes. New York, NY: Houghton Miller Company.