What Is Learning and How Do You Catch It?

I had a wonderful discussion with an intelligent group of people last night that started on the subject of grading practices but drifted into a discussion on deeper issues.  We were trying to determine how you assess student learning in a manner that indicates growth, improvement and mastery.  When the discussion was concluded, I was left with pondering several questions.  The first is what is the mark of true intelligence?  The second is how do you set up a system of assessing student learning and progress that allows them to intellectually grow during the learning process, and then give them credit for growth?

On the first question there was some concern about establishing a grading system that could penalize the current students who are at the top of their class,  This could be an unintended consequence of giving students more opportunities to learn material by changing all learning variables except level of rigor and demand. If these formerly low performing students could attain high levels of performance, through making them redo, retest and resubmit work until it reflected excellence (and perhaps their true potential), wouldn't that cheat the others?  This discussion began to explore the nature of how we define learning and intelligence. 

For years there has been debate over what intelligence is.  Many of our IQ tests have focused on verbal intelligence so that students who come to school from vocabulary rich environments have greatly benefited from this emphasis on knowing the meaning of words.  Conversely, students who come from poor or second language backgrounds have rarely been identified as intelligent under this definition.  Howard Gardner expanded the discussion of intelligence with his approach of Multiple Intelligences.  He said that there are multiple indicators of intelligence and not all of them can be assessed by a student putting pencil to paper.  Some are performance based. The educational community has been slow to expand its thinking on this issue.  Instead our grading systems reward those who quickly grasp the knowledge that the teacher presents to them.  To borrow from Aesop, if you are the hare you always win the race, if you are the tortoise you get a C or worse.  Apparently, it isn't really about demonstrating high levels of learning and excellence.  It really is about the ability to meet fixed (and some times arbitrary) deadlines. 

If the goal was to master predetermined, essential learning outcomes what would it matter if it takes one student a little more time to attain to the same level of excellence.  Two geniuses from America's past would certainly be failures under this limited definition of learning and intelligence: Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.  Einstein was considered 'slow' in school.  Thomas Edison is well known for his multiple attempts at trying to figure out the problem of the best filament for the electric light bulb.  The fact that he had to try time and time again to attain to mastery is admired. They were tortoises, not hares.  Why doesn't that kind of persistence in the pursuit of learning get valued and rewarded in our classrooms?  If a student takes a test and fails it they are not given the opportunity to study harder and retake it.  Even worse is the example of a student who is assigned a paper that is due on Friday, or else.  If it is an 'A' paper, but is handed in on Monday, depending upon the teacher, it is now a 'B' paper or worse.  Same paper.  Somehow the quality was devalued on the weekend.  What if instead we focused on the quality of learning and performance and set deadlines that are not completely arbitrary and set by fiat. 

The second question is much the same as the first.  What if students are made to redo work that does not reach the level of rigor and excellence that we say that we demand?  What if we won't default by giving them a low grade?  What if the response to poor work is the demand for them to give more effort and to do better?  What if true learning is what happens when they have to rethink an idea or edit their first attempt?  What if the mark of an intelligent person is that they learn while learning?  What if the process of learning and interacting with knowledge is what produces what we call 'intelligence'?  In the so called 'real world' that we are preparing students for, problem-solving is said to be treasured.  If though, we only reward the student who knows the right answer but didn't have to process knowledge through trial and error to find it, are we preparing them for the real, real world?  The discussion from last night boils down to this: Is learning and intelligence the gift of a few talented students or is it gained through percolating and interacting with knowledge.