We have this dichotomy in the land of education whereby we have all of this beautiful research;
we have decades, if not centuries, of research on how people learn -- which is ultimately
cognitive science.
And then we have the applied practice of what is happening in schools.
And there is a tremendous disconnect.
We talk about ideas like information processing and you think about a computer or your mind
is a machine.
We understand how children learn best.
We understand how children learn and all of us learn through experience.
That's cognitive science.
The sociocultural tools that we have in the world around us is something that Lev Vygotsky
talked about many, many years ago and whether those sociocultural tools are an iPhone or
an abacus it doesn't really matter.
So when you talk about how can cognitive science inform education I find that the answer is
simply: We have to really look at it and apply it.
And so what that oftentimes means is how do we get this understanding to folks that don't
understand it, which are oftentimes policymakers, those that are determining the policy for
schools.
Demonstrating the power of perseverance or maybe what Angela Duckworth would call grit,
that's predicated on cognitive science -- allowing a student or a human to learn from something
that wasn't successful the first time and try again.
That looks different than school currently looks.
I know that there are folks like the folks at the Mastery Transcript Consortium that
are looking at how grades could be different, how we could even evaluate learning in a different
way.
There are education organizations across the country and across the globe that are looking
at what classrooms could do differently.
Why are we beholden to bells and specific times?
Why don't we have more flexible iterations of what classes and what learning could look
like?
Why do we still have silos of knowledge?
Why don't we create inner disciplinary experiences where students are learning about the history
of science while they're creating or constructing some sort of permanent structure that is also
requiring math and is requiring communication which ultimately is going to require writing.
So I think cognitive science is a really strong foundation for saying, look, we understand
how people learn; they learn by experience.
They learn by applying multiple concepts and constructs at a single time as opposed to
the bell rings and now it's time for math.
There's a disconnect, a tremendous disconnect, that I see and that I struggle with in the
standardization of individuals, of students, of humans.
Certainly, I understand and I value the use of assessments but perhaps something that
I would suggest or would like to see thought more deeply about is our use of standardized
assessments as mechanisms to determine the efficacy of education.
So if there was a piece that I would say, look, we understand that learners need the
opportunity to see where they are struggling and obviously celebrating where they're succeeding
and the opportunity to then revise and iterate, standardized testing doesn't do that.
When you evaluate a person and you determine who they are or what schools they can or cannot
go to or what opportunities are or are not afforded to them based on an experience that
they have on one day that is largely a snapshot of who they are as a person, I find that that's
very much against equitable education.
And if we want to really focus on how can we equitably educate all learners, how can
we be inclusive in our education, how can we educate diverse populations and meet folks
where they are to help them be as successful as possible I think we have to look really
hard at our use of standardized tests and how much emphasis we're putting on them.
And instead of getting bigger sticks or maybe bigger carrots, thinking about looking at
learning differently, focusing more on formative ways of assessing and check-ins while kids
are learning.
In the book, I talk about three cognitive aspects of learning that, again, they're interdisciplinary.
I talk about metacognition and self-regulation and epistemology.
Metacognition is knowing when you know, and that's a really important quality for all
of us to have.
Even as a grownup when you go on the internet and want to research something, I mean good
luck, but how do you know when you've acquired the knowledge that you need to be successful?
So that's a skill called metacognition.
And the way that you do that through self-regulated learning when you're planning and monitoring
and assessing your learning as you're moving through the process, you don't measure that
in a standardized test.
And as you acquire knowledge because using metacognition you know what you know, you're
also changing and evolving your beliefs about the nature of knowledge, which is epistemology.
And so the learner or any of our beliefs about knowledge, which is epistemology, as they
change from maybe more naïve beliefs, which is that there is always a correct or an incorrect
answer, to a little more advanced beliefs which is to say certainly there's a better
answer right now but there's always opportunities to learn more.
And so I think that infusing that into the way that we assess instead of having that
single summative benchmark that often prohibits folks from access would be my suggestion for
how we could improve education.