Is it Wise to Showcase "Exceptional" Student Work?

Is It Wise to Showcase Exceptionally Good Student Work?

            In this article in Education Week, Sarah Sparks reports on recent studies indicating that the time-honored practice of displaying samples of exemplary student work may be a turn-off for many students. “One of the surprising, negative consequences of the approach,” says Todd Rogers, the co-author of one of the studies, “is when students are exposed to truly exceptional work, they use it as a reference point and realize they are not capable of such exceptional quality. It can lead to decreased motivation and eventually quitting if you believe the exceptional work is actually typical.” 

            “I get the irony,” Rogers continues. “When we teach and we’re doing something new, we want to show them what good work looks like.” But it’s precisely at this early point in the learning process that showing students examples of outstanding work can be the most discouraging – students haven’t had a chance to try it themselves, and seeing very high-quality work makes them doubt whether they’re capable of achieving at that level.

            Not that students should be shielded from examples of exceptional work, says Rogers. Beverly DeVore-Wedding, a veteran high-school and college teacher, agrees: “In life, the marketplace for exceptional performance is robust. We’re disproportionately likely to be exposed to exceptional work of others, rather than mediocre work of others.” But there are ways to expose K-12 students to top-notch work without discouraging them:

-   Show students work at several different levels of proficiency – low-quality, mediocre, solid, and exceptional;

-   Have students rate these work samples and zero in on the specifics of why some are better than others;

-   Clearly label exceptional work as exceptional so students don’t get the impression that work like this is the norm.

There’s another dimension to displaying exceptional work: if the students who produced it are in the class, the result can be social isolation for those high-performing students – even bullying. DeVore-Wedding suggests two solutions:

-   Use exemplary student work from previous years;

-   Have students review each others’ work in a “learning community” atmosphere where evaluation and peer-to-peer comparisons are downplayed and students focus on what they can learn from their peers.

“Study: Showing Standout Work to Students Can Backfire” by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, February 17, 2016 (Vol. 35, #21, p. 6), www.edweek.org

from Marshall Memo 625