We all know confidently incorrect people. People displaying dunning-kruger. The majority of those people have low education and without someone giving them objectively true feedback on their opinions through their developmental years, they start to believe everything they think is true even without evidence.
Memorizing facts, dates, and formulas aren’t what necessarily makes someone intelligent. It’s the ability to second guess yourself and have an appropriate amount of confidence relative to your knowledge that is a sign of intelligence.
I could be wrong though.
So here’s how I liken education. I’ve been an instructor at the Naval Engineering School so have a bit of experience in the subject.
First thing to learn is “facts” by rote memorization and then parrot it back. If you can do that you have learned something which is not unimportant and is an important base for the next step.
Then you learn how to apply those facts to help you in a specific set of situations. This is a very small hop above the previous step, but an important one, as now you know how to solve a narrow set of problems in a specific set of circumstances.
Unfortunately, this is where a lot of education ends because this is the easiest level to test. To go beyond this, you as an instructor must inspire the students.
The third level is when you take the facts you know and the situations to apply them and start modifying them to fit new novel situations. This now requires active thinking on the part of the student and will likely result in a lot of mistakes and suffering but this is where the instructor can gently guide them along and nurture their curiosity and keep their spirits up when they fail.
Next level is an important one, when the student starts to ask, “why does this work this way in this situation and this way in this situation”? That is the start of true wisdom.
And the final level of education is when you go back and try to teach the subject. That is when you truly open yourself up to learning.
Depth of Knowledge levels aren’t meant to be progressed through linearly, but a way to assess tasks. One student’s mind might turn on at level three, but not at level one. Another might crumble at level 3 even if they’ve performed level 1 and 2 exceptionally.
That first student will, having been inspired by the nature of the question, go back and learn the basics. They need to be given material that supports that activity. The second student needs to know how to chunk and connect their previous tasks to the new one.
Great educators can personalize this work for each student and meet them where they are at. They can leverage technologies to do so and express sincere belief in students in a way no technology can.