Understanding Vs. Knowing and the disappointing phenomenon of misunderstanding
Most of teachers feel satisfied when their students answer correctly the questions in relation to the contents seen in class. However, are we assessing knowledge or understanding? This is the dilemma presented by Wiggins in the 2nd chapter of his book. Frankly speaking, we might find ourselves in academic situations in which we are merely evaluating the acquisition of knowledge. What is worse, we may not be aware of how harmful and tragical is to expect from our students only the knowledge of things rather than real understanding of them. Although at first students may happen to recall what they have learned, this knowledge will not be memorable if they have not truly understood its main ideas. Assessment plays a fundamental role in this respect. As a matter of fact, transfer of learning is what we should aim at; otherwise, the content previously learned will fail to be memorable in the long run. Ideally, teachers should design activities to make sure their students are able to apply the novel knowledge in a different context. Interestingly enough, the curriculum based on competences, so in fashion today at universities and schools, emphasizes objectives such as summarizing and discussing, among others, which calls for real understanding. Consequently, if we take into account this approach to education, more successful and long-lasting learning could be expected. Finally, misunderstanding could be avoided provided we carefully apply assessment focused on transfer. In practical words, for instance, if in our written tests we only include true and false and multiple choice items disregarding essay questions, which aim at evaluating students’ real understanding, students' learning is likely to fall into oblivion and potential misunderstanding.
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Roberto,
ResponderEliminarAfter reading your post I feel like misunderstanding is something bad to be avoided by all means.Maybe it was just my impression , but I'm telling you this because I found very interesting the reflection the author makes about misunderstandings.
They can be a valuable tool that can also indicate learning.In my post I wrote something about "overgeneralization", a topic I learned about and considered very interesting, you can read it if you want too ;)
Thanks :)
See you around
Vicky
thx
ResponderEliminarplease set your blog in English
sp
While reading this post I just can think about what kind of students do we want, are we really doing our job correctly? every time we test our students we mainly focus on the idea that they learned what we taught, but are they really conscious about why they are learning this? I mean are we creating people able to think and discuss or just recording machines that you play to see what have been recorded?
ResponderEliminarJust think!.
it is true that, as you explain in your analysis, transfer of learning is what we should aim at. It is of course a dilemma to think about not only whether we assess knowledge or understanding, but also transferabilty of knowledge, i.e. making sure if students are learning the 'know' and the 'know how', as Johnsons suggests.
ResponderEliminarAs you said “knowledge or understanding” is an issue or maybe THE issue of teaching. We do need to consider this notion when teaching because if we assess only knowledge our students will become the unfortunate victims of this process with the consequence of “no real understanding”. It takes time and it is a long process of making the teaching as effective as possible, but if we teachers do not reflect on this, and more importantly if we do not DO anything about it, these bad and practices will continue and we will have as a consequence ineffective learning and students who have not really understood.
ResponderEliminarAngelina
Roberto,
ResponderEliminarassessment is definitely an important issue in this process and that's why we as teachers should be aware of the techniques we use to asses our students. We need to do our best in order to create the appropriate intances and use the adequate instruments to gather the necessary evidence which is going to be considered as understanding and therefore aquisition of certain contents (not an easy task).
Scarlette
Roberto
ResponderEliminarThe dilemma presented in your comment is clearly reflected in the outcome of the process of learning. Are teachers fostering knowledge or understanding? In fact, the negative outcomes of learning are due to the harmful and tragic results that students have, regarding the use of memorization. As you mentioned, teachers should design activities to make sure their students are able to apply the novel knowledge in a different context, i.e. use the ability of transferability.
The importance of the items which we are going to use to evaluate students plays a very important role in the success of learning. The inappropriate choices might fall into unconsciousness and misunderstanding. (as you called it)
Hi,
ResponderEliminarI agre with Vicky in terms of the concept of misunderstanding as something 'bad'. I think that rethinking ideas when they have been misunderstood can be even more fruitful than just keeping the first idea which was presented without giving it a second though.
Regarding evaluation, I think it depends on how questions are elaborated, and a true or false question can be as deep as an essay question, if it does not measure textual or memorised information. If it appeals to higher thinking abilities, it can pursue the same goal.
Definitely, what we are all looking for is long term learning, which is meaningful and applicable to different context.
Hi there,
ResponderEliminarI can just say that I agree with my classmates on the points they are mentioning. It's a difficult task to achieve understanding. It requires a complete restructuration of concepts and belief regarding education. It is our task to convince ourselves to change the way we are doing our classes, the way we're assessing. Again, we have work to do. We've been fostering just memory for a long time, and now it's time to foster neuron movement.
Claudio
Hi Robert!
ResponderEliminarWhat you've posted is an interesting topic for discussion; what are we really assessing, knowledge or understanding? This question seems difficult to be answered beacuse it implies an evaluation of what our practices and methods are. Most of the time I've found myself training my students to answer a certain type of test in order to get the expected results; however the more I read the more I question the way I carry out my work. Our role as teachers looks like a neverending task that needs constant analysis and evaluation for further planning.
Hi Roberto
ResponderEliminarAfter reading your comments about the chapter, I thought about tests and how harmful it is to expect from our students only the knowledge of things rather than understanding. I pictured the kind of questions I ask in those unit tests and definitely there is more than one question that should not be there.
We have to be very clear on what we expect from our students in order to set clear questions, real questions that challenge our students.
As you said, there is a great dilemma related to what is actually assessed nowadays ‘knowledge´ or ‘understanding’, because it is very common to measure students ‘ learning through simple questions that only prove how much information was stored or memorized in their brains. However this is the predominant method used in education. That’s why is our responsibility to promote the use of new instruments that measure the transfer’s capacity that our student may have in determined contexts.
ResponderEliminarHi
ResponderEliminarI agree with all of your comments. What are really assessing? Now after reading we can be sure that knowledge is not the point. Long term learning is obviously the key and the question 'how' I'm sure that we are able to answer it: effective planning, transferring, reflection, action and so on, but it seems to me that it also requires a reformulation of the education system. Certainly, our beliefs and practices will change but we also know that we are just a few part of the huge issue of education. As Marianella says this is a neverending task.
Robert:
ResponderEliminarHey, I don't want to sound pesimistic but... I have found myself completely satisfied after listening to one of my students' memorized answers previous to a test. It is difficult to be a teacher, and very often, a memorized answer is better to nothing after you have invested a lot of time and effort trying to teach rubbish contents to your students.
Somebody will reply: "Then, don't teach rubbish contents." But I have to say, tell me, how much of the content we teach in our classroom (because the syllabus says so) is really useful in a real context? Perhaps half of it. So, more than once we have had to teach rubbish contents.
Sometimes, "Knowledge" is the highest we can get in Bloom's taxonomy, although we would like to get higher. So, for me, it is better to get a memorized answer instead of nothing... IN EXTREME CASES.
But concerning the rest, I agree with you. In fact, I said something similar in my own post, we have to prepare our lesson in favour of understanding, bust as Ms Rostagno said once, we do not have to underestimate memory, since it is also part of intelligence. And the article says the same.