Written by Arjen Wals, WUR

The Myth

Only learning outcomes that can be measured, count.

The Reality

As scholars in education and sustainability have argued, the dominance of measurable learning outcomes reflects a narrow epistemological stance that marginalises socio-emotional, relational, and ethical dimensions of learning, particularly in complex sustainability contexts^1,2,3.

When engaging people in complex and often contested topics in relation to human-nature connections and nature inclusive solutions to wicked sustainability challenges, learning is and cannot be limited to cognitive learning that can be measured and assessed but must also include assessment of socio-emotional learning, social cohesion, empathy for humans and other life and nature connectedness. These learning outcomes cannot be easily measured or quantified, if at all.

This does not mean that such learning outcomes they cannot or should not be assessed but doing so requires alternative forms of assessment. 

Rather than trying to quantify these outcomes effort needs to be placed in qualifying them in descriptive and expressive ways, through instance by the use of reflection reports that also pay attention to socio- emotional learning, arts-based expression, anecdotal evidence (e.g., the stories people share and the conversations they have with each other). The point of the assessment here is not so much to proof something or to create evidence but to make plausible that such learning took place.

References

1. Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. Yale University Press.
2. Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. London: Routledge.
3. Wals, A. E. J. (2011). Learning our way to sustainability. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 5(2), 177–186.
4. Illeris, K. (2007). How we learn: Learning and non-learning in school and beyond. London: Routledge.