I'm still having a hard time thinking of "learning" as more than an action word. The most successful "learning" experiences are those that lead to the six facets of understanding, eloquently laid out by Wiggins and McTighe. These six facets - explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, self-knowledge - helped shape an understanding of understanding (no pun intended?) that I hadn't really grasped in the previous reading. The last two facets in particular really resonated with me - and seem to be where educators most often drop the ball in transferring knowledge to students, perhaps because they themselves don't fully understand the material. It makes me go back and think of my most unsuccessful teaching experiences - generally it was when I had the least comfort with the material I was trying to impart, and I suspect that if I thought about whether I could apply these six facets to the material, I would come up lacking. Is it a good test then, or would it be too proscriptive?
I also loved this quote in regards to interpretation of knowledge: "meaning, of course, is in the eye of the beholder." This ties in well with the reading I've been doing on situated learning. Many of the authors of various case studies involving situated learning speak of the importance of taking in your audience of learners when approaching teaching and considering their past experiences - very similar to the ideas of interpretation - that different individuals will take different things from their learning - which is one of the facets of understanding. For example, Pitri (2004) writes, "Planning curriculum appropriate for situated learning should start with observations of children, the identification of peer culture, and more specifically, the interests, everyday questions, likes, and dislikes of children." Understanding is not concrete - and too often mainstream K-12 education in particular seems to emphasize a need for standardization.
REFERENCES
Pitri, E. (2004). Situated learning in a classroom community. Art Education 57(6). 6-12.
