Greetings,
For the past few years I’ve been working for a congressionally authorized non-profit organization that specializes in research within the K-12 sector. As a former K-12 educator and scientist I was drawn to one initiative in particular, the micro-credentialing initiative. Working on this project has given me the opportunity to think about something I’ve always been passionate about — learning. Through developing a competency-based ecosystem of credentials I’ve also gotten fairly proficient at summarizing a rather complex question, “What does learning look like?”
There are a few other questions subsumed in this relatively straightforward question, like “How do people learn?”, “How long does it take to learn X?”, and “How can learning opportunities be modified to accommodate the growing research around learning differences?” Admittedly I like some of these questions more than others and for me, it largely comes down to what we can actually measure versus what’s still essentially guess-work. So, for the sake of this article I’ll simply discuss an approach to recognizing learning where it exists, and not delve into the weeds of growth and/or intervention learning gains.
How can you tell if someone has learned something?
The only sure-fire way of discerning whether or not someone has learned something is if they put those skills/competencies and their constituent parts into deliberate practice.
Sure-fire
That sentence was a little dense, and each word carries a bit of weight so allow me a moment to unpack a few of those terms. When I say “Sure-fire” what I mean by this is that there are many ways to recognize learning, in fact most learning is usually evaluated through some sort of “authentic assessment” — usually an exam of some kind. The GRE, the PRAXIS, and the SAT’s are examples of these types of assessments. I actually think this is a poor indicator of competence and that is a much longer discussion (my opinion is very much supported by emerging research), but for the sake of this article I’ll stick to my guns and simply say, “If you see someone demonstrate that they can do X, then chances are… they understand how to do X”.
Skills/Competencies
The next weighted word in that first sentence is “skills/competencies”. Skills and competencies are behaviors or actions that are inspired by concepts or theories. They are observable, measurable, reproducible, and elude to some expertise. When I use this word I actually like to take that idea a step further. In science (I was a microbiologist for a few years before I was an educator), one generally strives to distill complex systems or phenomena into their constituent parts. Sometimes these parts are used as a metric with which future measurements can be compared, other times these “atomic” units are used to illustrate the moving parts of a much larger system. Like science, the measurement and recognition of learned skills is done best when it’s constituent parts are as granular as possible. In other words, if you wanted to evaluate someone's ability to drive, there are many ways to successfully drive but all drivers should have some baseline competence around turning, accelerating, braking, and a handful of other core, granular skills.
Deliberate practice
The last word I’ll expand on is this idea around “deliberate practice”. Now, there are people in this world who just naturally excel at some activities. Sometimes it’s their intuition or their physical characteristics that allow them to succeed faster or more efficiently than other people. That’s great. But, if we’re looking to approach learning at a more fundamental, measurable level then we’re likely going to deal with deliberate practice. What this means is that the learner doesn’t just happen upon their results, they plan for and execute in such a way that the results are intended. In other words, the result of their actions is probably not an accident (due to chance) or a consequence of some unrealized externality. And, the learner will likely produce some kind of evidence in the process — which can be assessed by a third party.
Now that we’ve defined our terms, let’s move on to how anyone can identify when learning has occurred.
The 3-Step Guide to Identifying Learning
Now that you’re armed with a good definition of what learning is, let’s move on to create an actionable model for how you can identify when learning has occurred.
- What skill/competency is the learner demonstrating?
What are the desired actions and/or outcomes of the learner demonstrating that skill or competency? Will they be faster as a result of acquiring that skill or competence? Will they be more prepared to facilitate a discussion on principles of financial literacy? These are the kinds of questions you’re looking to address with this first exercise. - How has the learned demonstrated that skill/competency?
There is likely more than one way to demonstrate the skill or competency that you’re looking to recognize. But, in order to bring clarity to both your assessment and the learner’s plan you need to come up with a series of methodological components to look for-the how. These should be things that any trained assessor can see, not feelings, sentiments, or growth-based anecdotes. This isn’t to say that meeting these components are the only way to demonstrate this skill, just a way that you can tell for the sake of mutual recognition. - Why is the learner demonstrating that skill/competency?
Lastly, and this is probably the most important point — why is the learner demonstrating this skill in the first place? If I were designing a tutorial on how to use google docs, I might start with how to sign in. But, if I was recognizing competencies around leveraging cloud-based webstorage technologies I would probably skip right to the parts that differentiate these skills from other adjacent skills. And better yet, if the learning is directly tied to the outcomes and objectives of the learner then it will only be more relevant and therefore, more valuable. The best substantiation for why you’re asking someone to demonstrate or learn something is if it’s grounded in their own objectives — grounded in research that’s relevant to that particular sector or discipline.
I hope this very high level overview of how you can identify and recognize learning has helped you in some way, if it has please feel free to leave a comment or a question. I’ve been migrating much of my writing from a personal blog to the wide world so any applause and/or criticism is welcome. I would have liked to add more research citations to this article but I’m not going to bother unless lot of people are getting something from it. That said, they exist so comment or clap and I’ll add more in version 2.0!
RB
