emsenn

SKILL

3 min read

Assess pedagogical soundness of: $ARGUMENTS

What this does

Evaluates educational content against the educational ASR’s validity principle: pedagogical soundness. Content is valid when it teaches rather than deposits. This skill operationalizes that principle into checkable criteria.

If recursive is true (or the path is a directory), assess all .md files under the path and produce a summary report.

Banking model indicators

Check for each of these structural indicators. Each present indicator is a warning; three or more together constitute a Fail.

  1. Definitions without preceding examples: The content introduces formal definitions, classifications, or abstract concepts before grounding them in concrete experience. Check whether each major concept is preceded by an example, scenario, or intuitive explanation.

  2. No worked examples: The content presents information but never walks through applying it to a specific case. A page that explains what something IS without showing what it looks like in practice is a reference document depositing information.

  3. No exercises or engagement points: The reader is expected to receive without doing. No self-check questions, no prompts to apply concepts, no opportunities for the learner to construct understanding.

  4. Vague prerequisites: Prerequisites stated as “familiarity with X” or “background in Y” rather than specific, testable capabilities (“the definition of X and the ability to do Y”).

  5. No scope statement: The content presents itself as complete, universal, and neutral — no acknowledgment of what it excludes, whose knowledge it centers, or what tradition it comes from.

  6. No source attribution: Ideas appear without intellectual lineage. No [@citekey] references, no named thinkers, no tradition identified. Knowledge presented as authorless is knowledge whose politics are hidden.

  7. Passive voice dominance: The content consistently uses passive constructions that obscure agency — “it is understood that” rather than “Freire argues that.” Passive voice in educational content often indicates the banking model’s assumption that knowledge exists independently of knowers.

Pedagogical soundness criteria

Beyond the banking model check, assess:

  • Medium awareness: Does the content acknowledge what it cannot transmit? Educational content about embodied practices, oral traditions, or relational knowledge should name the gap between description and practice.
  • Tradition naming: Does the content identify its intellectual tradition? Content from critical pedagogy should say so; content drawing on Indigenous thought should name the specific nation or thinker.
  • Relational honesty: Does the content acknowledge the relationship between writer and reader? Or does it adopt a view from nowhere?

Output format

## Banking Model Assessment

| Indicator | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Definitions before examples | Pass/Fail | [specific evidence] |
| No worked examples | Pass/Fail | [specific evidence] |
| ... | ... | ... |

Banking model indicators present: X/7

## Pedagogical Soundness

| Criterion | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Medium awareness | Pass/Partial/Fail | [specific evidence] |
| ... | ... | ... |

## Overall Assessment

[Soundness rating: Sound / Partially Sound / Unsound]
[Summary of what the content does well and what needs work]
[Specific recommendations, ordered by priority]

Graph View

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