Lifelong Learning

Lifelong Learning



Lifelong Learning

Introduction

In a given instructional context, tests are educationally valid if they are consistent with the goals of instruction, assess learners' abilities to monitor their own performances, and promote lifelong learning. These tests draw on a mix of performances to tap the multiple paths to success, rather than relying on only the ideal or typical path. Their validity rests on longitudinal studies rather than solely on internal consistency.

Lifelong learning is of particular importance because today's learners face an uncertain future in which they are likely to change jobs and even fields regularly. The demands of the workplace ensure that individuals will need to learn how to use new technological tools like personal computers, master new communication skills such as video conferencing, understand new, complex issues such as genetic engineering or space exploration, and flexibly adapt to as yet unanticipated conditions (Tight, 2008, 251).

Cognitive scientists have begun to characterize lifelong learning and to question prior assumptions that lifelong learning capabilities were rooted in the learning of subjects such as Latin or computer science. Research suggests that preparing individuals to master a new complex topic in depth requires that they experience mastering similar topics in depth, learn to conceptualize projects and identify useful resources, develop the ability to monitor and evaluate their own progress, and become adept at designing opportunities to learn from others when their progress falters.

Educational programs that promote lifelong learning engage students in sustained reasoning about a topic from their discipline while at the same time providing opportunities to learn contemporary skills such as searching for information on the Internet or negotiating with a health care provider. Individuals also need understanding of fundamental ideas that permeate our culture such as electronic communication, social justice, and environmental stewardship. Research shows that students gain this kind of understanding from courses and advanced programs that require extended projects, iterative refinement of solutions to complex problems, and negotiation about these solutions with others. Courses with projects, analysis of cases, and research investigations prepare students for handling complex problems in future programs and the workplace.

Designing tests to measure this kind of understanding means addressing a number of complex issues. Too often tests encourage superficial understanding rather than linked and connected ideas combined with the ability to guide one's own learning suggested by the goal of becoming a lifelong learner. Tests serve as a model for course activities and have the potential of reinforcing instruction. We need lifelong-learning assessments aligned with instruction that promotes lifelong learning. Recall and vocabulary tests not only fail to encourage lifelong learning, they frustrate teachers and students.

Marcia Linn and Sherry Hsi, in their book Computers, Teachers, Peers-Science Learning Partners, use case studies, classroom tests, and class projects to illustrate instruction for lifelong learning. Students in the semester-long Computer as Learning Partner course continue to build up their understanding of thermodynamics as they progress from middle school to high school. No such evidence of lifelong learning was shown by a comparison group in the traditional vocabulary-driven ...