ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the impact on learning of standardized testing and a failing ideology of education that results in inequitable outcomes for culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse students. It considers the question of why we continue to commit time, effort and resources to the continuity of an approach that has failed, consigning a second generation of young people to sub-standard education, depriving them of their potential and their fullest possible futures. This chapter discusses the connections between the three studies discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, and introduces the idea that, regardless of topic, the playmaking approach, utilizing as it does what we know about best practices in teaching and learning, offers a model for educating for social change and equity in many subject areas. The similar outcomes of Giants, Wings and Childhood suggest several critical ways in which playmaking, and the dynamics utilized in playmaking, can be used to challenge the ideology in which we seem to be stuck.
