Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash
Educators often say that the only thing constant in education is change. I thought about this a lot as I read How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition by Bransford et al. (2000). The authors dig into the science of learning and pose the idea that as we better understand how people learn, we need to rethink many of the aspects of teaching. Maybe the change, while sometimes frustrating, is needed. Maybe understanding learning is the driving force behind the consistent change educators experience.
The next day while working with a teacher on authentic and engaging ways to assess students I made a connection. One area education has changed drastically in my tenure as an educator is in the way we assess students. Was this change caused by advances in our understanding of how people learn? I would argue this is where it originated but isn't the major driving force now. For years educators have known that we need to change the way we assess our students, but it wasn't until major advances in technology that we had the tools to formatively assess 30 students efficiently. Recent improvements like affordable devices, faster internet, higher capacity hard drives, and to some degree necessity due to a worldwide pandemic. I feel that the science of learning coupled with recent advancements in technology are the driving forces behind the current changes in the world of education.
My essay further explores these connections and the theories supporting them.
References:
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind,
experience, and school. National Academy Press.
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