Questions on FM's writings-Rob Bushong
Jeremy Chance
This is an email from Rob Bushong on how to set up an "exam" for ATI
teachers regarding Alexander's writings. "Catherine" is Catherine
Kettrick" and her study questions, referred to in Rob's email, can be
seen on her website herer:
http://www.performanceschool.org/studyguide.html
Jeremy
***
Dear Antoinette and all,
I'll be blunt. Catherine's questions are a wonderful study aid for
students wishing to study FM's works, and the Thought Questions are
particularly helpful. I applaud Catherine's thoroughness, and always
have. However, all of this is far too specific for an exam. We need
questions that a student can actually answer in an examination
format, and that are pitched at the MINIMUM ACCEPTABLE LEVLEL OF
KNOWLEDGE FOR A BEGINNING TEACHER. They certainly also have to be
gradable; that is, they have to have a clear answer, and certainly
questions about Alexander's ideas per se have to be based on
Alexander's writings and not someone else's. (The exception would be
the ethics questions, of which there could be several, probably.)
One of the reasons we originally hoped to ultimately develop a
written examination was to approach eventual requirements for the
acceptance of ATI's certification process by NCOAA (Am I remembering
that acronym correctly?). We may not necessarily ever do this, but
NCOAA's standards for fair practice among certifying organizations,
and the thought was that we should at least try to meet the same
standards. One requirement was a written examination that is fair,
appropriate to the entry level applicant, and transparent. [There
must also be a mechanism by which dyslexic or otherwise verbally
challenged persons can take the exam(e.g. orally).] The exam must be
designed to allow the candidate to demonstrate knowledge at the
BASIC, or entry level for the profession and are ready to practice
can pass... otherwise it becomes an unfair bar to entry, and possibly
illegal. We can see that the purpose here is not to keep people out
of a profession that only a few can pass. So I think we need to keep
that in mind.
My suggestion is that we try to keep this exam very basic and
general, devising questions along the level of: What is primary
control and why is it important? What is psycho-physical unity? Give
an example of endgaining. What is/are the purpose(s) of the use of
the teacher's hands in an Alexander Technique lesson? The student
gets the questions right, partially right, or wrong depending on a
previously agreed-upon answer key. We have to have a standardized
system for grading the answers, and it should be made known to
everyone (i.e. printed out) what that system is. I also suggest we
use the bar graph data to choose categories for questions, limiting
ourselves to those on which there was universal or nearly universal
agreement that they were "very important."
-Rob Bushong