The Slice
Description
Steps
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Steps
Copied with permission from vol.12/no.2, Horace entitled "Looking Collaboratively at Student Work: An Essential Toolkit" by Kathleen Cushman (writer/editor), Coalition of Essential Schools
This method is quite open to adaptation. The following strategy can be used by those considering a "slice" of their own design:
1. Decide on the purpose of your slice.
The Prairieville school district administration, for example, wanted to hold up the daily reality of schooling against the district’s stated philosophy. But a school might also use the slice to shed light on a particular problem it faces.
2. Come up with a guiding question.
Prairieville asked, for example, “What does this work reveal about the dominant purposes for different students, subjects, schools, or levels of schooling?” In a slice involving one heterogeneously grouped high school, the question might be, “Is class work appropriately challenging all students?"
3. Decide on a sampling strategy.
Depending on your purpose, the sample should be distributed across the range of groups you want represented, which may be different schools, socio-economic concentrations, grade levels, curriculum groupings either formal (such as vocational education, Advanced Placement, or special education), or informal (such as band students). Though this distribution cannot be scientifically prescribed it will determine how useful the slice proves in answering your guiding question.
4. Identify the methods of the slice.
Will you ask only for work on paper or can you collect other artifacts: artwork, photos, audiotapes, videotapes, student logs or reflections, information on what goes on outside of school hours? Will you see the work in context or divorced from assignment sheets, discussions, and the like?
5. Decide on the duration of the slice.
Prairieville used a day and a half; depending on your situation you might choose a time period of up to a week. This is a cross-section, not a longitudinal study; and remember, work piles up fast.
6. Arrange the logistics.
Someone will need to collect the work; gather parental permission to analyze it; remove from it all identifying names; copy it; create and organize the archive in an accessible form. Funding for this from an interested university or foundation partner could help.
7. Decide how to interrogate the slice.
A number of discussion protocols might prove useful. For instance, the Minnesota district used a Socratic seminar conducted in a “fishbowl”: