I have noticed that there are basically two types of learning and these are either rule-driven or curiosity-driven. Most learning in our education systems seems to be rule-driven and failure in this type of learning happens when the student does not know (or ignores) the rules. My daughter asked me to take a look at a text she had written in answer to a question she had formulated herself and I was hard-pushed to comment constructively because I did not know what the rules were on which the text would be judged in the end.
Fortunately this was a process-driven exercise and my daughter finally was told what the rules were when she got the comments back on her first draft, as well as a 5 or 6 point rubric. This is a high stakes exercise so of course I think that she should have had the rubric from the start.
Curiosity driven learning is intrinsic learning, when the question being answered drives the motivation of the person finding the answers. What I wonder is, whether high-stakes, rule-based learning is compatible with curiosity-driven intrinsic learning? I’m guessing that the two are not mutually incompatible but that they rarely mesh together. I am disappointed that the most common scenario when I discuss school work with my daughter is ‘What are the rules of this game?’ ie Not ‘what are you curious about?’ but ‘how will you be judged?’