Three Dimensions of Learning: Imagine the data we would get is we designed school assessment system to focus on three areas: Habits of Effective Learners: Measured using traditional Course Grades, capturing content knowledge, task completion, compliance, and participation. Comparison to Other Populations: Measured using Standardized Tests like SBAC, SAT, and PSAT, providing a benchmark against Read More
Like all Vygotskian ideas, the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a complex theory, but it can be reduced to a few simple principles that are quite easy to understand. First, within any domain of human knowledge, there are problems that an individual can solve easily and there are others that are too complex to Read More
21: AI as a Tutor | RSS.com For generations, students returning home from school were met with the question “what did you learn in school today?” The answer, of course, has been “nothing” for just as long. What was lost on all those generations is just how useful that question could be to our learning. Read More
176: When Learning is Inert We have all experienced the change in our brains we call learning. We become capable of remembering information, performing actions, recognizing patterns, appreciating observations, asking questions, and otherwise interacting with ideas, tools, and people in a way we could not previously. Becoming aware of and evaluating our capabilities is learning Read More
The story is compelling; it is one of the most important and challenging questions we can face: What makes us unique? It is well told and includes sufficient detail to be informative, while written in language that general audiences will find approachable. Bennett seems to have adopted Stephen Jay Gould’s approach to never “dumb down” Read More
Education is fundamentally an endeavor grounded in guesses. Well, that may be hyperbole, but our curriculum is a guess at what our students may need to know for their future. We really can’t know what they are going to do, how things are going to change, or what we missed that we should have taught. Read More
Information that a learner remembers and can restate comprises their declarative knowledge. Having learned a large body of declarative knowledge adds to individuals’ efficiency with answering questions and applying that information. For this reason, many teachers facilitate students’ learning facts in classes. The default approach to learning facts has been memorization and teachers introduce mnemonics Read More
Educators seem to view their practice as one of two evolutionary processes (here I am using evolution in the sense of change in a recognized direction). It is either: Those who have been in the field for more than a few years, will point out that these two often happen in cycles. The same change Read More
Philosopher and scientist Michael Polanyi used the term tacit knowledge to describe understanding that is implicit and difficult to state with precision. For this reason, tacit knowledge cannot be stated as an algorithm, so it cannot be downloaded to digital devices. According to Polanyi, tacit knowledge is necessary to frame a problem, to develop a Read More
I posted on social media recently: Can educators devise assessments that can predict how students will develop rather than what they did? I was pushed to explain myself and that got me thinking what exactly I meant. So, here goes! We all know the culture of assessment in education. We are charged with documenting what Read More