Many of us went through school not fully knowing what we were supposed to be learning or how our teachers were measuring our progress. These priorities and processes were largely hidden to us as students because they were assumed to be irrelevant or uninteresting. How much learning can happen under these conditions? What if teachers translated standards into student-friendly language and worked with students to develop personalized goals? What if teachers asked students to examine their work and articulate their growth to their parents and classmates? How might increasing ownership and changing accountability allow for greater learning? In Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming Schools Through Student-Engaged Assessment(Jossey-Bass, 2014), Ron Berger and co-authors, Leah Rugen and Libby Woodfin, outline a series of practices designed to make students more active participants in their school experience, including student-led conferences, celebrations of learning, and passage presentations.

Berger joins New Books in Education for the interview. You can find more information about his work with Expeditionary Learning on its website. To share your thoughts on the podcast, you can connect with him on Twitter at @RonBergerEL. You can reach the host on Twitter at @tsmattea.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices