The Seven Myths about Rigor

 Everyone these days is talking about teaching with rigor, learning with rigor, and even bowling with rigor.  But what does rigor really mean?  Are we using the wrong term?  Rigor…..Definition: strictness, exactness.     Synonyms: accuracy, affliction, asperity, austerity, conscientiousness, conventionalism, difficulty, exactitude, firmness, hardness, hardship, harshness, inclemency, inflexibility, intolerance, meticulousness, obduracy, ordeal, preciseness, precision, privation, punctiliousness, rigidity, roughness, severity, sternness, stiffness, stringency, suffering, tenacity, thoroughness, traditionalism, trial, tribulation, vicissitude, visitation. 

Wow, sounds like a double-edged sword to me.  How about an operational definition of rigor in terms of laser-sharp focus, absolute clarity, timely feedback, passion, commitment, intensity, responsibility, and ownership.  Robyn Jackson in How to Plan for Rigorous Instruction says that “unfortunately, over the years the term rigorous has accumulated a lot of baggage.”  She identifies the following seven myths about rigor:

Myth #1: If you have rigorous standards, you have a rigorous course.  Rigor isn’t as much about the standards as it is about how you ask students to reach the standards. 

Myth #2: Rigor means harder.  Rigorous classrooms do present more challenge to students but there is a difference between challenging and difficult.  Challenging work asks students to stretch and reach for new understanding.  Work can be difficult for a variety of reasons including unclear instruction, a lack of necessary resources, a lack of adequate support, demands too great for the time allotted, etc.  Thus, it is a mistake to think that just because students had difficulty completing their work, they have engaged in a rigorous assignment.

Myth #3: Rigor means more work.  Rigor is about the quality of the work students are asked to do, no the amount.  In fact, rigorous classrooms often have less assignments and homework.

Myth #4: Rigor is a matter of content.  Just because you select highly rigorous content does not guarantee a highly rigorous learning experience for students.  How you ask students to engage in the content also determines the level of rigor of your course.

Myth #5: Younger students cannot engage in rigorous instruction.  The key is to make sure that your rigorous instruction is developmentally appropriate. 

Myth #6: In order to engage in rigor, students must first master the basics.  Rigorous thinking is involved in learning even the most basic material.  Students can learn the basics in highly rigorous ways.  They can learn adequate representations, organize those facts in some way, analyze and construct relationships among these facts, and make inferences beyond what is explicitly presented while they are mastering the basics.

Myth #7: Rigor is for the elite.  All students should have access to rigorous instruction and learning.  To reserve such learning opportunities for an elite group of students while relegating others to lives of memorizing disconnected facts and blindly participating in meaningless activities is to leave them unprepared to meet the demands of a 21^st century and beyond.

So, when using the term “rigor,” let’s be sure we use the right side of the sword which leads to positive results for teaching and learning.