5: Assessed Curriculum Leadership

What does it mean to “learn?” How do we know that students have learned?

We cannot make assumptions about how people view and understand the process of student learning. Educational organizations, therefore, need to develop an operational definition for learning in order for us to know if learning is taking place. However, simply having come to consensus on our definition is not enough. We need to ensure this definition is clearly communicated to staff, engage in processes to measure how successful we are at helping students to learn, and make instructional changes as needed in real-time.

Why does having an operationalized definition of “learning” matter? It matters because the way that we define learning influences how we measure learning. To adapt an old aphorism: “What gets measured gets taught,” and if we accept the truth in that statement, then we know that if the only measures used to determine whether students are learning are standardized or criterion-referenced assessments that contain mostly multiple-choice items, then teachers are going to teach in a way that they think will have students perform successfully on a multiple-choice test.