EDDL 5111 Blog Post #2: Congruence

I remember becoming sensitive to problems with congruence between what was taught, and what was on the test as far back as junior high school.  In some ways, it may have even motivated me to become a teacher myself.  In certain classes, the teachers would teach various content from certain chapters and lectures, and then mix a few questions into the chapter test from a completely different chapter.  The unfairness of this certainly caught my attention.  Nevertheless, I believe that congruence can be lacking not only in a misalignment of learning outcomes versus assessment, but can also be an issue in other ways. For me, a lack of congruence in instruction was the most frustrating part about attending university to become a teacher.  I can remember a science teaching methods course very clearly.  The course was supposed to be a practical methods course, where we were to learn various ways of structuring our science lessons in teaching science to elementary-aged students.  All the classes were in-person, in a typical university classroom.  To my dismay, the professor simply lectured us about various ways of organizing and presenting lessons to students.  I remember wondering why the professor did not see that she was missing an opportunity to teach teaching methods by modelling those teaching methods herself and involving us as “students”.  This has stuck with me, and I believe that congruence can also be important with how a teacher personally models the attributes they are claiming to be important.