Knowing and Doing - Part One
Why do educators expect that students should be willing to learn and change, when many - all too many - educators are not prepared to do the same? There are a variety of ways to illustrate some of the realities underlying the foregoing question, but, for purposes of discussion, let us consider some of the following themes.
For example, educators who insist that education is a matter of issuing directives such as: "all students will be required to know, or do: x, y and z, generally, are presupposing, at least, seven things. All of these presuppositions are highly arbitrary and, quite frequently, run contrary to what is known about learning and human beings.
The first assumption revolves around the idea that knowing something is the same thing as understanding that same something. Another, closely related assumption is that the knowledge of recall is equivalent to the knowledge of recognition. A third presupposition associated with educational directives similar to the one noted above, is that students should be learning such uniform content at the same rate. A fourth assumption underlying the aforementioned sort of directive is that students not only need to be told what is appropriate to learn, but that they must be forced to do so by putting in place penalties (e.g., the possibility of poor grades being attached to one's record permanently, or the withholding of a diploma). A fifth presupposition is that uniform standards are the most effective manner through which to determine the content for learning. A sixth asumption is that whatever content is taught should be highly specific, and, finally, whatever is taught and learned should be capable of being quantifiable.
To begin with, the capacity to recognize a particular answer as something which is being sought by a teacher or test item is not the same thing as the ability to recall a correct answer, and neither the process of recall nor recognition necessarily entails any degree of understanding concerning what has been recalled or recognized. Let me illustrate the foregoing by an experience from my own life.
When I was a freshman in high school I participated in several state sponsored courses on science and mathematics that were being given via television. In addition, the state had various teachers in science and math visit individual schools or a group of schools in an area and supplement the television material with 'live' tutorials.
This period of time was within a year or two after the Russians had stung the ego of the West, especially that of the United States, by launching Sputnik, and, as a result, steps were being taken to catch up to Soviets in science, math, and technology by providing opportunities for accelerated learning in relation to students who showed aptitude for, and/or interest in, any of these subjects.
I was the only kid in my high school who took the courses. Moreover, even though my school was very small (just 44 students), nonetheless, for whatever reason, I was also lucky enough to be selected to receive a number of individual tutorials in conjunction with some of the aforementioned visiting teachers.
The courses lasted a year - or, more precisely, they lasted for the length of a school year, running, approximately, from late September or early October to late April or early May. Toward the end of the school year, a final was given in the state-sponsored television course on science.
Although I had watched the weekly classes on television, as well as read relevant material, and spent time with the tutors who had been sent, and although I did have an interest in the material, in all honesty, at that time, I was not a very knowledgeable science student. As the time for the final drew near - and the final mark would have a substantial impact on the course grade or standing, I began to get extremely anxious because I really didn't feel like I knew much, and there was just too little time left for me to cram and try to learn everything in the few short days before the test was to be administered by my school principal.
I did the only thing that I could think of - and I am not quite certain whether this was my own 'brilliant' idea born from the loins of desperation or I had picked up on some hint that had been given by the tutor or during one of the televised classes. I reviewed the previous tests which had been given, and this was the only studying which I did for the final.
The exam was multiple choice. When I was handed the test booklet and began to read over the questions, my fears and anxieties turned to incredible elation because there before me was question after question that had been taken, almost verbatim, from previous exams.
I couldn't believe my luck. I raced down through the questions, and selected what I 'knew' were the correct answers. In all, there may have been just a few questions which I did not recognize and just guessed as best I could.
Several weeks later, the results were released. Although I was only one of several freshmen in the state to take the course, and despite the fact that I was competing against mostly juniors and seniors at much bigger and better schools, I placed 12th in the state from among several hundred participants - largely due to the fact that I had aced the final.
The only problem with this result is that it was completely misleading. I really didn't understand much of the material in the course.
I had pursued a plan of action in relation to preparing for the final, and, apparently, this was a plan which had not occured to a lot of the other people taking the course, for if it had been, I likely would not have placed 12th in the course. Altough I had made the right decision as far as getting good results were concerned, in terms of learning and understanding, the contents of the course were largely lost on me.
The test I took was almost entirely centered on my capacity to recognize questions from previous exams and mark the appropriate answer. If I had been asked to give the definition of a term in my own words, or to apply a certain concept, or explain a particular process, or solve a problem, then, in all likelihood, I would have flunked the test.
In short, my success was built on my capacity to recognize the correct answers for test questions which I had studied. I could not have recalled the material if I had been asked to do so, and, more importantly, I understood precious little of the course's content.
Most standardized tests are built around the capacity for recognition. This is so because obtaining test construct validity and reliability is much, much harder to accomplish (across both exam-takers as well as those who score the tests) when questions require the recall of information that must be manually entered in by a student rather than merely being pre-selected from provided information from which a student must choose a correct answer, such as 'true' or 'false', or (a), (b), (c), (d) or (e).
While the ability to recognize a correct response does constitute a kind of knowledge, it does not necessarily give expression to the same kind of knowledge as does the ability to recall such material in the absence of cues, hints, and a ready-made list of candidates. Furthermore, the ability to recall information does not necessarily mean that the individual who demonstrates recall has any degree of insight or understanding with respect to the material being recalled.
There are people who have eidetic memories - that is, they have the capacity to visually recreate a past set of circumstances (e.g., reading a certain book) with unusual accuracy and clarity. They are able to recall, perfectly, almost any set of facts with which they have had contact during their lives. But, the ability to remember in this way does not always entail a capacity for critically reflecting on, or being able to solve problems using, such material.
There are 'human calculators' who are able to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and take power roots of virtually any set of numbers one likes. They will even ask you if the answer should be given from left to right or right to left, and they will do all of this as quickly, and sometimes faster, as someone who is using a hand-held calculator.
Just don't ask them how they do it, because they don't know. They can give correct answers, but they have absolutely no understanding of, or insight into, how this amazing talent works - nor do the experts, and, to add injury to insult, the existence of such abilities tends to undermine a great many theories of cognitive functioning and neurobiology.
Students can take prep-courses for standardized tests, or schools can teach to these tests, and both of these processes help people improve their scores on such exams, despite the insistence of the people who construct these sorts of exam that their tests are not vulnerable to such techniques. Indeed, among other things, some of the preparatory methods which are taught show you how to use what you do know to correctly answer questions that you don't know by eliminating various possibilities and increasing your odds of guessing the right answer.
I know from my own personal experience, this approach has helped me, from time to time. However, being able to do this just lends emphasis to what has been said above - namely, what does it say about understanding when one can get a correct answer, not because one knows the subject matter but because one knows how to increase the odds of getting the right answer by eliminating certain possibilities.
Politicians, government leaders, schools boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and media representatives can either coo about, or decry, the results on standardized tests, but the sad fact of the matter is, that irrespective of whether these scores are going up or down, one is learning almost nothing about what students actually understand in relation to any given subject topic. Recognizing correct definitions, technical vocabulary, or isolated facts from among pre-selected possibilities is not necessarily synonymous with any sort of sophisticated or high-level understanding concerning the material for which a student is showing a facility of recognition.
Educators have known for years - both on the basis of personal experience (with themselves or their students), as well as in relation to the course material (both within psychology and education) taken during university and/or teacher college - that there is a huge potential difference among: (a) knowledge of recognition, (b) knowledge of recall, and (c) knowledge of understanding. Yet, much of the modern trend toward educational 'accountability' is rooted in the capacity for recognition - which is the weakest and most misleading form of knowledge on which to base an assessment of learning and education but is used because the limits of standardized testing demand this and, as such, is surely a case of the tail of measurement wagging the dog of learning.
Why do educators continue to ignore what they have learned and fail to apply what they know about cognitive psychology? Perhaps, this is because although they recognize the truth of such things, they have difficulty recalling the material, or worse, they don't understand the significance of what they can recognize.
Whatever the truth of this matter may be, educators who use the results of standardized tests as a measure of educational achievement are just deluding themselves to suppose that one can attach any importance to such scores in relation to the issue of gauging what students know in the sense of the latter's ability to not only be able to recall information but to understand what is being recalled and be able to use that understanding to solve problems or engage issues in a critically astute manner. More importantly, educators who use standardized tests as a basis of accountability are cheating students - both those who do well on such exams as well as those who do not do so well - since reliance on these tests serves to obfuscate the issue of what constitutes real knowledge and whether, or not, schools are at all successful in helping students to acquire this kind of understanding.
In fact, even if a student cannot recall certain information, but knows where to obtain what is necessary, as well as be able to use that information to solve problems or explore issues in a reflective, rigorous, creative, and critical manner, that person may be better off than a person who can do well in any standardized test you care to choose. This is so, because those who can do well in the latter situation (i.e., taking standardized tests) will not necessarily be able to do well with the former - and the former skills tend to more valuable in life - over a longer period of time, and across a greater variety of circumstances - than are the skills associated with performing well on standardized tests.
Let's take a look at another one of the assumptions of those who approach education by issuing directives that are of the form: 'students will know: a, b. c. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with requiring students to know certain things by the time they graduate from high school (although what these things should be is quite another issue), there is a problem with expecting that students should be able to learn material at, roughly, the same rate so that there are uniform performance goals which must be reached, simultaneously, by all students within each week of school, and by the end of any given school year. There is a great deal of evidence from developmental and cognitive psychology indicating that individual differences play a huge roll in not only establishing the readiness of a particular student to learn certain kinds of material, but, as well, when such material will be learned, under what circumstances, and through what pedagogical means.
To saddle students with permanent grades without taking into consideration the foregoing sorts of individual differences borders on, and, maybe, crosses over into, the realm of sadism, if not cruel and unusual punishment. The aforementioned studies and empirical data within cognitive and developmental psychology that have been collecting for well over 50 years have been available to educators - and, indeed, many of them have taken courses in either psychology and/or education which included such material within the curriculum, and, yet, educators, for the most part, continue to ignore what has been staring them in the face for many decades.
Oddly enough, educators continue to expect students to learn and change in accordance with what is being taught even though many of these same educators have refused, apparently, to learn and change in accordance with that to which the latter group have been exposed through cognitive and developmental psychology, or courses in applied education, or realizations from their own personal experience. To operate from a perspective which demands that students do as educators say, not as the latter do is a study in hypocrisy.
Consider another of the previously noted presuppositions. More specifically, educationally speaking, why should I know what you know, or vice versa? Why should there be uniformity in what is known? How does this help either of us or society?
I remember a movie from the 1960s called The Time Machine which starred Rod Taylor and was based on H.G. Wells book of the same name. For present purposes, the relevant part of that movie arose in one of the last scenes of the film.
Rod Taylor had traveled to the future and helped the Eloi defeat their cannibalistic tormentors, the Morloc, and, then, returned to turn of the century England (1900) to relate his tale to a group of disbelieving friends who had gathered for dinner according to a prearranged agreement from a week earlier. After the friends had left, the hero decides to return to the future and takes three books from his library with him because the Eloi civilization - if it can be called that - had become bereft of any knowledge, having lost it, along with any interest in retaining or acquiring it, over the centuries.
His closest friend - I think his name was Alan, but, maybe not - who had left with the others becomes a little worried about the hero and goes back to the latter's house to check in on him, only to find that his friend is nowhere to be found. He quizzes the housekeeper about his friend's actions after the guests had left, and she reports that he had gone into the study for a few moments, and, then, subsequently, just disappeared.
The hero's friend goes to the study and, on the basis of a theory he has formulated about what the hero may have been up to, begins checking over the books in order to try to determine which ones might have been selected. After determining that there seem to be three spaces in the rather full shelves of the library, the hero's friend pauses and wonders aloud about which three books a person might take who wanted to build or rebuild a civilization.
In a sense, every educator may, at some point in her or his career, asks a similar question. What books or what facts or what information or what ideas or what knowledge or what methods need to be passed on in order to provide the current generation of students with what is needed to preserve and develop civilization?
In truth, a hundred different teachers are likely to give a hundred different answers. Although there may be some overlap of agreement among such responses, there also are likely to be substantial differences.
Thousands of books have been written on individual subject areas. Each of these works brings its own perspective, biases, interests, motivations, purposes, methods, strengths, weaknesses, interpretations, evaluations, and contents.
Pick any subject you like and there are an indefinite number of ways of putting together material for a course. Such packages would often differ in findings of fact, interpretation of those facts, the sort of significance assigned to such 'facts', as well as the kind of methods used to establish, interpret, and evaluate the 'facts' which are to be taught.
For instance, take arithmetic and mathematics. While every student needs to have some basic understanding concerning the concept of numbers and the idea of a number system, along with such operations as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, how one should go about helping students to acquire this information, and, hopefully, a concomitant understanding, is an issue that is still far from being resolved and with respect to which there are a number of competing frameworks.
More importantly, even if one leaves aside the issue of how to teach the rudiments of arithmetic, there are many possibilities concerning where one takes students, once the rudiments have been learned. This question is an important one for any number of reasons, but, perhaps, none of the reasons is as haunting as the fact that educators really have no idea what a student will need in order to get on with life in the future.
Life sweeps us all into unchartered waters. Science, technology, economics, and society are in constant motion - shifting in unforeseen directions, and, therefore, what is important to know today may be relatively useless tomorrow.
Any educator who tries to tell her or his students that the reason for learning, say, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, finite math, and so on, is because they will need this knowledge later in life, is lying. The fact of the matter is, there will be very few students who will need familiarity with such material in their later lives, and of those who do require this knowledge, they won't need all of it but, usually, at most, some small subset of it, and they will lose contact with the rest of the material, forgetting much of what they learned in those areas that are not needed.
I think back to all of the algebra word problems I did - and I was pretty good at solving them. However, the truth of the matter is, not even once in my later years have I been confronted with a real life problem that required me to find out how much of each blend of various kinds of coffee were necessary to create a desired mix, or how many faucets of different gauges would be needed to fill a pool in 'x' amount of hours, or how long it would take 'x' people painting at such-and-such varying rates to finish a house, or anything remotely similar.
All of the courses on algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and so on, are, for all practical purposes, a complete waste of the time, efforts, and resources of a great many students. For many students there is little, or nothing there, which helps them live a better life. For many students, these subjects did not train their minds to think critically or logically or rigorously because almost nothing of what is learned in mathematics is transferable to subject areas outside of math and science.
Mathematics and science don't teach one how to think about, or evaluate, or engage life unless one wishes to think about, evaluate, and engage life only through the lenses of a mathematician and/or scientist. And, as hard as it may be for mathematicians and scientists to accept, in point of fact, few people have any interest in being mathematicians or scientists, or looking at life in the way the latter do.
One might wish to argue about whether the foregoing is a good or bad state of affairs. Yet, the truth of the matter is, mathematics and science have almost nothing of importance to say about issues that are of far more interest to the vast majority of people - issues such as: purpose, meaning, identity, morality, happiness, love, spirituality, surviving in a chaotic world, or what is the best way to use the time one has.
Should the foregoing be construed as an argument in favor of banishing mathematics and sciences from the curriculum? Not at all, but it does constitute part of an argument which says that what many educators are trying to sell as being necessary to know is largely a fiction of convenience - convenience being defined as a function of how educators wish to control the lives of students in order to serve the needs, interests, and careers of educators, and not necessarily the needs, interests or futures of students.
Similar sorts of things could be said in relation to the teaching of literature, history, geography, and any number of other subjects that might be taught in high school. There is simply too much information, too much disagreement, and too many unknowns for any educator to be able to say that what all students need to know is: a, b, c, ... .
One could have a thousand English teachers put together completely different sets of books to be explored by their respective classes, and none of these differences would prevent the students from considering issues of: symbolism, style, form, mood, character, plot, interpretation, creativity, evaluation, influence, or writing. So, why should the creators of standardized tests - and their enablers who insist that all students must know the same list of things - believe that such tests are capable of probing what is, and isn't, important to know merely by limiting the framework of discourse to a small subset of arbitrarily chosen facts, definitions, terms, names, and the like?
Or, whose perspective of, say, American history is one going to teach? The 'facts', methods, interpretations, and understandings, will be very different if one approaches American history from the point of view of: indigenous peoples, African-Americans, women, religious communities, the military, the well to do, unions, organized crime, various ethnic and racial minorities, the poor, and so on. How, and on what basis, does one conclude that one set of facts is more important than some other set of facts?
Insisting that all students engage history from a particular point of view - that can be acquired only through a standard list of dates, events, and players - is both authoritarian and totally arbitrary. However, one can take almost any set of historical records and reflect upon them in order to critically explore the problems inherent in trying to arrive at 'the' facts, meaning, value, relevance, and uses of historical material in general.
Students do not need to know the same list of names, chronologies, and so on in order to engage history. Rather, the problems and questions raised by the 'fact' of history in which all students are necessarily immersed by virtue of being at all, is the starting point for exploring the events, issues, and people that are shaping the lives of students in various ways, and there are an indefinitely large number of directions in which an educational process might legitimately proceed within such a context.
Let's assume that I am part of a baseball or football team. I am a shortstop or defensive back.
I know how to play my position and, maybe, I might even be pretty good at what I do. I don't necessarily know - except in a very general way - how to play any of the other positions, although, in certain situations, I might be able to play out of position and get by.
Of course, most of the people on these teams will be, more or less, familiar with the basic rules of these games, as well as have varying degrees of 'feeling' for the game. However, aside from a common sharing of the framework within which the game takes place, it really isn't necessary for everyone to know what everyone else knows in order to play the game, or to do well as a team.
The same principles hold in relation to: being in an orchestra, working on a job, doing a play, living in a community, being part of a family, participating in politics, or becoming educated. We don't need to know what everyone else knows, we just need to know what is required in order to benefit and contribute in our own individual way within each setting.
Yes, in all of the foregoing scenarios, there will be some sort of framework which needs to be learned and which enables one to interact with others in a way that permits the activity in question to take place in a relatively harmonious, and, hopefully, at least, minimally competent fashion. Nonetheless, such frameworks often tend to consist of more than rule-governed behaviors that can be put on a list - either to be memorized or to be consulted whenever this is deemed to be appropriate.
There also tend to be principle-governed behaviors that require an understanding of how 'facts' and 'rules' fit together to give expression to the purposes inherent in the activity. It is possible to be able to know all the rules surrounding a given activity and, yet, know few, if any, of the principles underlying those rules and why they exist, or what purposes they were intended to serve, or how they are to be used, and under what circumstances.
For instance, one might be able to come up with a list of rules covering a number of do's and don't's that govern marriage. Nonetheless, the principle of love which should underlie the implementation of those rules is much more elusive to grasp hold of - which is why a lot of people end up living within a marriage according to the rules but, unfortunately, quite independently of the presence of love.
What is the underlying framework of principles for education that needs to be understood by students and teachers? In other words, what are the principles to which the process of education should be giving expression? Or, said in, yet, another way, what do students and teachers need to know in order to get on with the activity of learning?
In responding to the foregoing questions, educators have often confused and conflated rule-governed behavior with principle-governed behavior. Education is not a matter of: students need a pass to be in the hallways during class time; school will begin at 7:30 a.m. and end at 2:30 p.m., with regularly scheduled breaks at such and such times; classes will begin and end with the ringing of a bell (Pavlov would have loved that); students must sit in rows, be quiet, and not speak unless spoken to by the teacher; students will know the following list of facts, dates, names, methods, definitions, and so on.
I don't have to know the same list of facts, dates, names, methods, or definitions as you do in order to interact with you (whether you are a student, teacher, volunteer, parent, principal, or whatever) within a context of learning. Moreover, although 'schooling' may depend on everyone being on the same page with respect to the rule-governed behaviors that are expected of everyone, whether or not learning and education require the same set of rules which schooling demands is an entirely different issue - although all too many educators suppose - quite incorrectly and without evidential warrant - that schooling and education are one in the same process.
The shared framework of education revolves around the idea that we are beings who are born, live, and die amidst relationships with other people (family, work, friends, community, nation, and the world) and that we need to find constructive ways in which to spend this time - both individually and collectively. Among other things, there needs to be respect, reciprocity, empathy, caring, sincerity, and integrity that shape the educational framework within which individual and group learning are, hopefully, to take place, but these are principle-governed behaviors that cannot easily, if at all, be reduced to a list of rules about such things as: lines of authority, length of the school year, compulsory homework, the use of bells or buzzers to demarcate classes, and whether, or not, students can use the washroom without permission.
Establishing the meaning of the term "constructive ways" is not a function of a knowing a list of dates, names, terms, and definitions, or other kinds of rule-governed behavior. This problem of discovering the significance of being "constructive" is about principles and the purposes which those principles serve.
Understanding something is a matter of grasping relevant principles. Knowing dates, chronology, terms, definitions, and even methods will not necessarily generate such understanding - indeed, often times, it is only through a critical exploration that tries to determine: what the 'facts' of a situation are; how one might interpret those facts, as well as the different ways in which one might evaluate their significance, that one begins to approach some of the principles inherent in the educational process.
The process of critical inquiry and exploration is what needs to be shared, not an arbitrary list of isolated facts concerning that which is to be conceptually and experientially engaged. Far better that a student truly understand just one issue than have the capacity to recognize and/or recall a whole litany of facts with little, or no, understanding concerning their significance or how to use that information in real life situations - for in the former case, a student is getting a taste of something which may have value and relevance to his or her life, whereas in the latter case, a student is just acquiring information of unknown significance and reliability.
Group discussion is not about everyone reciting the same ideas, facts, definitions, dates, and methods. It is about searching for insight concerning the significance of whatever topic is being pursued in relation to the acquisition of 'constructive ways' to contribute to the development of self, family, community, nation, and world.
I don't have to know what the others do in order to participate in such a discussion. In fact, the discussion might be better served if we didn't know the same things but brought our individual differences in knowledge, understanding, experience, temperament, motivations, and personality to bear in taking a journey of reciprocity whose destination may not be known.
We still can play our individual and collective positions without having to know precisely what everyone else knows. We just need to have a degree of clarity about some of the principles which frame the learning process - a clarity that is absent from all too many schools and educators.
While the rules of education tend to encompass things that can be specified and quantified in some manner, the principles of education tend to involve qualitative issues. Critical thinking, creativity, insight, purpose, heuristic value, understanding, interpretation, character, and judgment tend to be highly non-linear in nature and, as a result, very resistant to being exhaustively specified or lending themselves to quantification.
Many educators know the foregoing. Unfortunately, and for many different reasons, educators often do not do things in accordance with what they know - and, as a result, students, education, society, and even the teachers, themselves, fall victim to this disparity between knowing and doing and, in the process, become lost in rules and arbitrary sets of facts that have been removed from the original principle-governed framework of educational inquiry.
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