1. Development: What We Talk About When We Talk About Learning William S. Moore, Ph.D. Policy Associate, Assessment, Teaching & Learning WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges bmoore@sbctc.edu 360-704-4346 National Learning Communities Institute June 2007
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3. “ Do you mean ‘really learning’ or ‘just learning’?” Student quoted in Bill Perry’s “Sharing in the cost of growth,” from C.A. Parker, 1978
4. ‘ Real’ Learning as Transforming Understanding … Being able to repeat facts and plug numbers into formulae to get the right answers is handy, even essential. But it is not what education is fundamentally about… Learning should be about changing the ways in which learners understand, or experience, or conceptualize the world around them … Paul Ramsden
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6. Why Does it Matter? Diversity, social problems, environmental issues, and the changing geopolitical situation all require minds that can grapple successfully with uncertainty, complexity and conflicting perspectives and still take stands that are both based on evidence, analysis and compassion and deeply centered in values. Craig Nelson, 1994
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14. Whose Meaning Matters? Look! Do I sound crazy in saying that the students are the source of the meanings they will make of you? All right, so you feel you are making meaning for them; you know your subject matter, they do not. But it is the meaning they make of your meaning that matters! Obviously. Why am I shouting? After all, it is the meanings you make of my meanings that matter, and shouting will not help… William Perry, from The Modern American College , A. Chickering & Associates, 1981
20. Hope & Loss: Development (Learning) Takes Courage … It may be a great joy to discover a new and more complex way of thinking and seeing, but what do we do about the old simple world? What do we do about the hopes that we had invested and experienced in those simpler terms? When we leave those terms behind, are we to leave hope, too? Bill Perry, 1978 “ Sharing in the cost of growth”
Editor's Notes
1 st things first, I should explain my title--I want to continue the theme I began yesterday in the workshop I led around evidence and questions that matter, things that are significant, even essential, not marginal In today’s context, assessment matters refers to the substance I’ll be discussing, and also that assessment plays an essential role in learning community work, and that the way you approach it matters a great deal! A big part of why it matters has to do with “exploding minds”: I’m convinced there’s a real power in LCs done well, but what does that power look like, and what is its source?
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