Understanding and learning outcomes

Understanding and learning outcomes
May 9, 2014µ
Gardner Campbell examines "the seemingly endless fascination with 'learning outcomes'" and the ingenious idea that "teachers should think about what they believe should happen in the student as a result of the class." But this, he says, leads toward a behaviourist paradigm and away from "the cognitivist turn" that has characterized education in recent years. It leads toward 'specific knowledge'. "Two of the words we must never, ever use are 'understand' and 'appreciate.'" - we are told that these are vague words, when (as Chronicle blogger Robert Talbert says) we should specific words to describe outcomes. Mushy objectives can't be measured. But it's not so much that they're mushy (and here I'm reading into him a bit) but they're complex. The paradoxes that seem to abound in learning are actually reflective of the underlying nature of learning. More...