This post is a reply to David Didau (@LearningSpy) – Squaring the Circle: Can Learning Be Easy and Hard? I urge you to read it because it poses a very good question and he brings, as always, a lot of research to discuss this issue.
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Bjork’s work, that I introduced you to a year or two ago, tends to take over the educational debate, as Willingham’s work does. Excessive cognitivism (or any other theory of learning) obstructs the bigger picture of learning because it focuses on a limited set of variables or just one in some cases – either internal (e.g. memory), relational (e.g. social learning), emotional, you name them.
Some points.
If performance (what the student does – writes an essay, draws a rectangular prism etc.) is a poor proxy for “learning” (Bjork), then it is quite difficult to *infer* the “learning“ that takes place (learning being an internal mechanism/process). Note that we cannot pinpoint with precision what the student “learned”: we can only deduce based on – surprise – performance. It follows then that we can only use this vehicle (performance) to assess student “learning”. Which gets me to the next question: what is learning then and how do you know?
Moments, Snippets, Spirals 