I am at the NLII focus session for Best Practices in Emerging Technologies. The conference was great, and I’ll be sending on some great information soon.
Right now, I’d like to talk about the great conversation I had afterwards. A long-time friend Andrea and I went down to the bar to get something to eat and relax. There were others from the conference in the room, and after her co-workers left, Cara came over to our table and asked if she could join us.
As women, there was no shortage of what to talk about, but some how the conversation drifted towards different ways of understanding things. I told them about a thought I had about how the world was made of knowers, thinkers and doers. Knowers are those folks who just know stuff. They got As in spelling and could tell you when the Crimea war was fought. There are also Thinkers. Thinkers cannot be bothered about details, but they have a grasp of the bigger picture and can tie what seems like disparate information to the topic at hand. Doers are those that can take something and make it work or worth more. They do this by sheer force of will.
I know this is a bit simplistic, but it helps me organize the way people are. Of course, we are all bits and pieces of all types, and those that are the most happy in life are those that use their type to their best advantage. But it is difficult to understand your strengths when they are not valued by others.
Unfortunately, traditional education is rife with assessments that measure only the progress of the knowers. A personal example for me was in Junior High. The ability to take advanced courses in science was based on how well you did in math. I am not good at math unless it has a process. I only got credit for knowing the process, never for getting the answer “right”. Then, as now, access to advanced science classes was out of reach for me. But, I am really good at the sciences that lean towards the biological, because they are about connections.
This need for society to measure only the “measurable” is disastrous for the thinker and the doer. One solution is to let the students write essays. That is a start, but here is the catch: many thinkers and doers cannot spell. Thinkers will write beyond what is requested and doers will write less, because they need to “do” the problem before they can explain the problem.
If we are going to rely on multiple choice and essays define what our learners learn, then we are not affording them the credit and respect they deserve.
I believe it is our responsibility to help faculty, and the general pubic, to devise ways of measuring the skills and knowledge of the thinkers and doers. (I believe that by doing this, we will also improve our measurement of the thinkers both positively as well as negatively.) This can be as easily as offering multiple ways of presenting homework. But there is more we can do, I’m just not sure what to suggest or how it will work.
This blog is not called inner-action just because I am a crappy speller. It is because inside of all of us there is so much knowledge, understanding and ability, that needs to be recognized, valued and appreciated. As educators, we need to bring the learners’ best talents to the fore.
