I share your concerns about the concept of "mastery." In my view, mastery
(like learning) is a social construction/negotiation of putting values on
some (recognized) types of participation. Using Etiene Wenger's terminology
from his recent book on Community of Practice, mastery is reification of
valuing (and, of course, devaluing). Your examples of kids' reports on
their learning and formal tests reveal social construction/negotiation
character of mastery. Neither mastery nor learning exist "out there"
waiting to be measured by smart scientists.
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Graham Nuthall [mailto:G.Nuthall@educ.canterbury.ac.nz]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 1999 6:25 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: reporting evidence of learning in informal settings
>
>
> Dear Joe, Sara, Sally, and others
>
> I am interested in this discussion about learning in informal
> settings, but
> bothered by the concept of "mastery" that seems to be structuring some of
> the discussion. It seems to be a concept that is primarily related to some
> kind of formal test that determines whether a person has "got it" or "not
> got it".
>
> After many years of talking with (interviewing) children about what they
> have learned, recollect about, understand, think about, their classroom
> experiences and the curriculum embedded in those experiences, I have no
> idea what "mastery" might mean. In my experience, children's beliefs and
> understandings are changed by their classroom experiences in
> multiple ways.
>
> As Joe has said, all this has a lot to do with the levels of interest and
> the understandings that are involved. The changes that take place in the
> children's knowledge and beliefs are continuous, occurring
> before, through,
> and after the specific educational experience we are interested in. Having
> taught in a museum context as well as a school context, I don't
> think there
> are any fundamental differences. What changes are the kinds of assessment
> activities that we require children to engage in. And we forget that
> results on tests have more to do with the test-taking activity
> than they do
> with anything else.
>
> Having used formal tests, I keep coming back to the informal interview as
> the best way to "assess" learning. It is an activity in which you can
> encourage a child to talk with you about their experiences and
> recollections and understandings. Depending on the level of trust, and
> sensitivity and willingness to be surprised, and wonder at what you are
> told, you can get a sense of (or sample from) the "learning
> stream" that is
> flowing through the child's mind.
>
> I am not sure that I understand more than a part of Jay's discussion of
> "externalism", but I resonate to the notion of the interview as a way of
> building an external model of the system that is the child's way of
> thinking about the objects, ideas, activities, encountered in an
> educational experience.
>
> Hope this is helpful. It assumes that we are "permitted" these days to
> build sophisticated and logically coherent models of learning experiences,
> learning processes, and learning outcomes that do not contain test results
> or numbers or passing or failing.
>
> Graham
>
>
> Graham Nuthall
> Professor of Education
> University of Canterbury
> Private Bag 4800
> Christchurch, New Zealand
> Phone 64 03 3642255 Fax 64 03 3642418
> http://www.educ.canterbury.ac.nz/learning.html
>