Taking Ownership

Oct 10, 2023

If you check out any life coach's website, you will find something around taking responsibility.  It is a common theme in motivational conversations.  Taking responsibility is at the core of the difference between active advocacy for yourself (your academics and your life) and the passive, un-advocated life in which someone else provides guidance, pacing, structure, assessment, and motivation for your tasks, learning and life.  These two concepts (advocacy and passivity) are extremely far apart, but there are (or will be) times in your life in which you are at each position.

When we are young and ignorant to the dangers of the world, we need guidance and structure: someone or thing to keep us safe.  This is very much the educational model of early elementary school.  Those children enjoy fun and educational activities designed to help them learn reading, writing, basic math, some arts, and effective social interaction.  All the while under the care and supervision of their teachers.  Eventually we become adults, and our lives look very different.  Often there is no supervision to keep us safe - it is our job to do this for ourselves, and perhaps others (a partner, a child).  In addition, the fun experiences of play are reduced, and our time is filled with work, cooking, cleaning, sleep, and things that do not seem "fun" but are necessary and required to keep ourselves and others safe, healthy, and on the path to success.

At some position between these two states, we have to make the transition from passivity to advocacy.  

Why do we do that?

When do we do that?  

How do we do that?  

Why?  When we engage in a passive situation, in which someone else is responsible for us, we do not learn how to be responsible for ourselves.  In addition, although it feels great for someone else to care for us and take responsibility for us, that person will never truly know our preferences, likes and dislikes, and what we truly, completely need to reach our goals and lead a fulfilled life.  This is because nobody except ourselves has access to our thought, feelings, beliefs, and knowledge.  We can try to explain it, but sometimes it is difficult to find the words to completely explain ourselves, and often, even if we do find words that seem to be close, the person we are telling may mis-interpret.  Ultimately, as a passive recipient of learning support, guidance, etc, we will never completely reach and fulfill our goals.

When?  The ability to advocate for ourselves requires confidence, intelligence, maturity, and responsibility (all of which will actually develop further as we advocate for ourselves).  Often the thing that prevents us from advocating for ourselves is laziness and/or not knowing how to advocate for ourselves in a given situation.  When we first start advocating for ourselves, these things will be present, but as we continue to advocate for ourselves, these things will diminish, and the benefits of advocacy will be stronger.  Once you advocate for yourself successfully, it is difficult to go back to being a passive recipient.  Advocacy is developed (like knowledge and skills) over time.  The more time we allow, and the more time we practice, the stronger we get.

How?  When you start thinking about taking responsibility for yourself, you will likely already be doing it.  Think about the things that you do when you want to, how you want to, and to the extent that you want to.  You are already taking responsibility.  But as I just mentioned, when we start developing advocacy, we often hit the brick walls of laziness and confusion (how to advocate).

Laziness: when faced with a decision, we can often tell which choice is the easiest, or the most gratifying.  Should you spend your money on something you like to eat (immediate satisfaction) or put it away to save up for that technology you've wanted for a while?  The first choice is the easiest, and if someone else tends to take responsibility for you, the opportunity to make this decision again will likely return.  But, by spending now you diminish your ability to spend more later (especially when "more" has to be saved up over time).  Often, taking responsibility requires some sacrifice, but leads to long-term gain.  Laziness is choosing short-term gain. But we are human, and often the short-term gain decisions bring happiness when we need it.  It is difficult.

How to advocate?  (How to take responsibility?)  Often the difference between choosing between short-term and long-term satisfaction is based on our goals.  Many young people do not have many long-term goals (successfully complete all of my school courses, graduate high school with high honours, attend the university of my choice...).  Learning, for example, is a slow process.  If you want to learn to be able to, say, graduate high school with high honours, you can't do it in a few hours (or days, or weeks, or month, or likely not even a few years).  Graduating high school with high honours and thus having the ability to attend whatever program in whatever university you want is a very long-term goal, with very little reward and short-term gratification.  However, it is often the case that grade 12 students realize this goal, but too late.  This is the dilemma.  How do you accept a distant, long-term goal that you don't even really understand yet?

Terry Fox famously told the news media that he wasn't thinking about running a marathon every day (although this is basically what he did.)  This is a very large, exhausting goal.  For anyone.  What he actually did was run to the next intersection, or to the next turn in the road, or to where that crowd is standing and cheering, or to where his van was parked, waiting for him.  He had an overall goal that was very large and very distant, and very important, and he reduced it to a series of smaller goals that followed the same path and would eventually lead him to the same end.  

When you study any course at KVA you are given a list of outcomes.  Some courses have 20 or so, and a few have 150 or so.  In either case, when you think about this goal, and mastering all of this knowledge, you will likely be overwhelmed.  Whichever course it is, there is usually a lot of things to learn.

But, if you consider a course as a series of smaller goals (outcome #1, outcome #2, run to the next corner, run to where the people are cheering...) then all of a sudden you have smaller, more manageable, more reachable goals.  Just more of them.  Given a school year of 40 weeks, and a total of 40 outcomes to learn, you may think it is A LOT of things to learn, over A LONG time. But it is actually 1 outcome to learn over a week.  Much more manageable.  You can even break it down smaller.  You may be able to do this yourself or you may need some help.  You may need someone who knows the outcome's knowledge and skills already to "break it down" into smaller bits, each of which make more sense to you (or at least the first one or two make more sense).  The hard work of school is the actual learning.  The easy part is asking for help.

You can take responsibility for yourself by creating large, long-term goals, and then breaking them down into a series of smaller goals.

You can take responsibility for yourself by asking for help.

You can take responsibility for yourself by working on those short-term goals.  It takes effort at first, but once you do it regularly, it comes naturally and the effort is almost automatic (in other words, don't be lazy when it comes to your goals.)

Learning and the evidence of YOUR mastery

Sept 22, 2023

In a mastery-based assessment program, like the one we use at KVA, the people assessing students' work (the evidence of students' mastery) depend on the trustworthiness of the evidence.  If the content expert has direct evidence of a student's mastery (i.e., from conversation, or from watching a student create that evidence him/herself) then the assessment is straightforward.  However, when a student submits work (an essay, answers to exercises, ...) then there is normally a question about whether or not the student produced the work, and if (or how much) help that student had.

When we assess the evidence of a student's mastery, we are assessing what that student knows and what that student can do.  We normally (99% of the time) use the results of this assessment to better support that student's learning and progress towards mastery.  However, if the evidence submitted was not completely produced by the student, and we do not know the extent to which the student had help, we tend to trust that the student has created that work.  The danger of this (assessing a student's work as showing a higher level of learning and mastery than actually exists) is that we are more inclined to suggest that the student proceeds with the next topic; assuming that the student's foundational knowledge is strong enough to support the new learning.  If the student does not have that foundational knowledge and has somehow duped the KVA content expert into believing that he/she knows more than he/she actually does, the student suffers.  In addition, the main value of the educational program at KVA is the depth to which we can support students' learning.  By submitting work that makes us think the student knows more than he/she does, that student is actually preventing us from effectively supporting his/her learning.

Getting help is one thing.  Help is good, but when you submit work that you had help with, we get a better idea of what you are working on (and the expertise level of your help).  If you submit this with comments on what you know, what you don't know, and what you attempt in the learning process, we are in an even better position to support your learning.  If, however, you submit work that is 100% someone else's, there is absolutely no benefit.

The term plagiarism refers to taking credit for someone else's work.  It can be submitting an essay that someone else wrote.  It can be using a quote or content from a book or the internet without stating who actually wrote/created it and where you found it.  it is also getting help to answer questions and then not stating that you had help.  In all of these situations, the person receiving your work, without being told it is not completely your work, will tend to believe that it is your work.

Every year at KVA there are situations that call for a reminder of what plagiarism is, how serious it is, and how we can avoid it.  I am going to discuss the issues, the solutions, and my approach to learning and academic integrity here.

In a nutshell, if you use someone else's work in your submission, you should tell the content expert.  If it is an essay or formal report of some kind, you should cite it.  To do this, include a reference to the work in your bibliography or list of references (name of authors, name of work, publishing company and date, basically).  If it is a website, state the website and the date you accessed it, basically.  Ultimately, you want your reader to be able to find it if they wish to read it directly, and if they wish to read more in depth in the original work.  

Then, within your submitted work, wherever you use this reference, you cite the reference (refer to the work that is in your bibliography, so the reader can find it).  With a direct quote, you also give the page number so the reader can easily find the exact information in the original source.  

If you are paraphrasing the original work, you are not relieved of the responsibility of citing the original work.  You use it, you should reference and cite it.  Also, using a couple synonyms in the original quote is not paraphrasing.  To properly paraphrase, read the original passage, learn and know what the message is, then express that original idea in your own words.

Often we use common knowledge (basically, things that everyone may know, such as how to convert centimeters to inches, or the parts of the circulatory system, or the chemical name for salt) as sources in our research.  For example, a definition from a dictionary.  The dictionary does not own that definition.  But be careful, because often something that is common knowledge may still have some intellectual property attached to it, and would require a reference.  The specific combination of words of that dictionary in articulating that definition is novel, and thus referencing and citing is required.  However, if we are using the definition of a word based on our knowledge of it, you don't need to cite it.  Citing a source often adds legitimacy to your claim - a research paper with no citations reads like an opinion piece, or an editorial, and does not carry the same trustworthiness as a paper with citations.  We use citations to add trustworthiness to our work, not only from sharing an expert's view of a concept, but more importantly, citations show that we have done the work, learned about a concept, and have chosen the best quote from the sources we have used to establish this trustworthiness in our work.

The discussion around this that complicates the issue is that learning rarely happens without some sort of reference to an outside source.  This could be watching a YouTube or Kahn Academy video; talking to someone who knows (at least more than you); reading a book; observing someone; ...  Learning rarely happens without the use of outside sources.  But there is a difference between what you have learned and know, and what you regurgitate from another source.  

Last Daily Learning Tip was about Bloom's Taxonomy (the levels of knowledge, from information/memorization, to understanding, to application, analysis, evaluation, and then creation).  When you submit work for assessment to a KVA content expert, we look at the levels of knowledge required to create the evidence submitted.  For example, if you submit work on dividing fractions, I (as the KVA math content expert) know all the steps and rules you have to follow to successfully divide fractions.  You don't have to explain them to me, but I can see, based on how you apply them, if you have or have not mastered them.  If you submit someone else's work and you have not mastered dividing fractions, I will likely find out when I ask you a follow up question.  I will certainly find out if we have a conversation and you are unable to get help to answer the follow up question.  The goal of assessment at KVA is to find out what your level of mastery is for any topic in any course in any subject.  Content experts' jobs include judging if the evidence of your mastery seems to be consistent with what you already submitted, and to follow up with questions and perhaps ask for other evidence, if the initial submission is not trustworthy.  (there is already a Daily Learning Tip that discussed Trustworthiness, and the idea will be discussed in many more Daily Learing Tips).

My belief about the creation of meaning is that it is always constructed internally, in every human being.  All sources, lectures, instruction... are just information that we use when we construct knowledge.  There is always the step of internal construction whenever we learn anything.  (as such, memorization is not learning).

I also believe that when we learn, we learn things based on the function they will serve (also in a previous Daily Learning Tip).  If a person had a research project that he/she needed to pass an assignment, pass a course, get a job, keep a job, or progress down a novel research program, the function for each one of these is different, and the longevity of the knowledge is also different.  For things we need at the moment and can do and forget soon after, sources don't really matter.  We view one (or more) sources, get the answer, and move on.  But things that build, for which we will stay engaged, we need more trustworthiness, validity, coherence and cohesion with the knowledge, as connected to existing knowledge (and future knowledge) so the trustworthiness of the information becomes more important to create knowledge.  So sources are important.

Aside from the trustworthiness of our sources, we have been taught from a young age that the work we submit in school "has to be our own".  This may be misleading.  Think about it this way:  there is a difference between the source of the information, and our novel assembly and synthesis of what we find in those sources.  We always use sources when we learn (creation and invention is extremely rare).  It is a normal and expected part of learning.  However, we seem to think that we have to hide the original sources and claim that what we are "creating" is entirely our own.  A better strategy is to recognize and fully accept that we need sources to create knowledge, but to put that high value and importance on how we assemble it (making it more "our work" and more closely connected to our identities.)  If we disconnect these original sources from our identity, as "resources/sources," then we can attach our identity to the final product, the novel way in which we assembled, synthesized, and presented the final result.  This is what is attached to our identities, and this is what other people should cite when they use our results in creating their knowledge.

Citing or not citing is not exact.  If you are not sure, you cannot go wrong by citing.  It shows the reader you actually did research, which helps with the trustworthiness of your work.  In addition, it helps you understand and accept that learning basically occurs when you absorb, process, internalize, reflect on someone else's work and how it connects to your life and what you know.

One strategy you can use is to create a document whenever you look at a source.  Start with the name of the source, and the reference (that you would put in your bibliography) and the include all of the interesting bits from the source that you may use in your work, including both direct quotes with page numbers, as well as general ideas you find in the source.  When you refer to any of these in your work, cite the original work.  Its easy.

This is my experience with citations, sources, learning and plagiarism.  People from different disciplines may have others.  If that is you, and you wish to share please do.

As a final note, please know that learning is not a contest, or race.  Learning is not used, in your normal, daily life, to compare you to anyone else.  We learn to make our lives better, more productive, safer, and ultimately happier.  Accept that learning is based on using other sources and other people's work, but that what you learn and what your know is your own understanding of that content, and it functions to somehow make your life better, or to help you reach goals that will ultimately make your life better.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Sept 18, 2023

One of the elements of academics that is highly discussed is the extent of learning and thus the depth of knowledge that results.  Often we talk about cramming before a test or exam.  Also the assumption of how much "knowledge" remains a day or a week after an exam is taken is often discussed.  Today's DLT (Daily Learning Tip) addresses the different types (or layers) of knowledge that we experience as humans, in academic and non-academic learning, and their relationship.

In my last DLT I discussed the idea of trustworthiness.  When we experience something repeatedly, we tend to build trustworthiness in that thing.  When we answer 50 questions on a worksheet (and get most of them correct) we build trustworthiness in the techniques of solving the questions.  if we were to answer 5 (and got most of them correct) we would not build as much trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness is, in some ways, the glue that connects these different depths of knowledge to each other.

Bloom's Taxonomy has been discussed often in educational circles.  The first link below is a reliable explanation of Bloom's Taxonomy.  The second link is their image of Bloom's Taxonomy.

It looks like a pyramid, with 6 layers.  Each layer represents an increasingly deeper level of knowledge and skill.  The lowest level is the largest, and most superficial level, while the point at the top is the smallest, and the deepest and most profound level of knowledge and skill.  This by itself has value - it accurately shows us, proportionately, how much knowledge we have at any given time.  There are a lot of "facts" and memorized things, but very few bit of knowledge that address our ability to evaluate things, and create new things that don't exist.  This reflects our world: think of how much information is available to you (Google search, YouTube...) as compared to what is being created or invented at any given time.

To add "knowledge" to the largest and lowest level, we observe, experience, read, view, ...  To add it in an academic setting we do these things as well, in our day-to-day academic engagement time. In addition, cramming is a common way that we create this level of knowledge.

Re-read the names given to the levels.  I will list them here from the most to least superficial:

Remember - Understand - Apply - Analyze - Evaluate - Create.

Now think the different kinds of knowledge we have, and use, on a daily basis.

In order to understand something, we have to gather information about it, remember that information, and put it together in a cohesive and coherent manner.  In a sense, "Understand" is the first level in which we have knowledge (this can be debated, and it's not really fair as this point as we haven't really defined nor discussed the term "knowledge.")

Another reason Bloom used a triangle (pyramid) to illustrate this relationship is because we need a lot of Remembered information to create a little bit of Understanding, and we need a lot of Understanding to create a little bit of Application.  We need lots of each layer to create a little bit of the next layer.

As a result, we have the following relationships:

To create a lot of remembrance, we just need to experience a lot of information, in any form.

To create understanding, we need to gather, consider, connect and make sense of a lot of remembered information.  For example, to understand diameter we should gather information and facts about "diameter."  Diameter is the distance across a circle, through the middle.  The "line" that is the diameter is straight.  It does not extend past the edges of the circle.  The circle has to be a circle and not an oval or other shape.  A diameter can also be for a sphere (a 3-dimensional circle for which any "slice" through the center will result in a circle.)  We can gather more information about "diameter", but the idea is that this collection of sentences about diameter is larger that the idea of what diameter is.  To "understand" diameter is more than to read information about diameter.

To be able to Apply Understanding (the 3rd layer of Bloom's triangle) you have to have understanding.  To "apply" knowledge is to connect knowledge to some real, believable context (such as the real world).  Applying your understanding of diameter would be to take real world circles and spheres and indicate what their diameters are, and to measure diameters.

This also applies to larger concepts.  to extend the example, lets discuss Pi.  Pi, at the information level, can be described as the number 3.14.  it can also be described as the irrational number 3.14159265358979323...  It can also be described as the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of any circle.  Hmm, we understand what diameter is, but what is circumference?  You see how we, as humans, build knowledge as collections of more basic concepts and understanding?  The ratio of circumference to diameter is a naturally occuring concept that humans have articulated, studies, estimated, and used for thousands of years (not tens of thousands, but thousands.)  Whereas circumference, the distance around the circle, has been used, arguable, for tens of thousands of years (how much vine do I need to wrap around that tree trunk, or rock?)

The process continues.  To be able to analyze a situation accurately and with depth, we have to have extensive knowledge about that situation, which comes from being able to apply the collective knowledge, facts, cicumstances... about that situation.  Evaluation is a step deeper than analysis, and at the peak of the pyramid is Creation - the ability to make something new.

In academic learning, we use these different levels in different ways.  The typical examples are math and english.  In math we often spend lots of time learning about how we can combine numbers, using basic operations, to articulate relationships and solve problems.  This signifies the first 3 levels of Bloom's triangle: remember, understand, and apply.  In much of mathematics we are asked to analyze and evaluate situations, but P-12 mathematics is mainly about remembering, understanding and applying.

English, however, is a bit different.  In english we already know lots of words, meanings of words and phrases, and grammar.  Therefore English (english language arts) uses all 6 levels of Bloom.  We remember rules, poetry, phrases, grammar...  We understand meaning and symbolism.  We apply information and grammatical rules when we write and speak.  We analyze and evaluate other people's work, and we create our own poems and short stories and essays.  

Think about this - when you create a poem, how much of each level of Bloom's Taxonomy has to exist, inside your head, so that you can write a simple poem.  Now think of how much, at each level, exists for the person who created exemplary poetry, short stories, plays...  

We need each level below to create the next level.

The more we have at each level, the higher the quality of the next level.

Ask yourself, then, what is the goal of academics and learning?  To just reach the next level?  Or to master the next level?

Trustworthiness and Function in Learning

Sept 15, 2023

Today's Daily Learning Tip is about the function of what we learn, and the importance of learning things that are correct and true.

There are many philosophical approaches to the discussions of knowledge that compare what we learn to what is actually true.  For example, we do not actually know if there are aliens.  We may think we once saw a UFO, and we have very clear imagery from movies and the internet of what aliens and UFOs may look like.  The question is, can we know something that may not be true?  Can we know about aliens and ufos if they do not exist - if there is no life in the universe other than on earth?

The philosophical debates around this way of knowing have been active for thousands of years.  My discussion of this debate, here in today's Daily Learning Tip, will be limited to the contexts of personal and academic learning in grades 7 through 12 and the in post-secondary education (trade school or university).

First of all, how do we know if something we know, or are about to start learning, is true?  The simple answer is, you can't know if something is absolutely, objectively true or not true, for sure.  However, we do have practices in our daily lives that we use to help us lean towards something being true or not true.  I like to call this scale trustworthiness.  The things we are learning, we are more motivated to learn them if we feel they are trustworthy, and if we don't feel they are trustworthy (not to be confused with not knowing a thing at all) we tend to not be motivated to learn that thing.

Another measure of the value of what we know or are to learn is the function of the knowledge and skill, when we have it.  For example, if my bicycle gets a flat tire and I can't ride it, but I want to, I realize that having the knowledge and skill to repair it (so it inflates) has a valuable function in my life.  On the other hand, I can ask someone to fix it for me (my mom, my daughter, the bike shop...) which, if successful, diminished the value of having that knowledge (and thus diminishing its function in my life.)  

So we can attribute value to knowledge and skills we have, and those we are going to acquire/learn with the trustworthiness and function of that knowledge and those skills.

Often we do not realize, or cannot know, the trustworthiness of some knowledge, or the function of some skills, until they are acquired.  The function of knowledge and skills is a bit easier to establish.  Do we need the knowledge and skills to achieve something?  For example, fractions in math 7 may have no function in your everyday life, but passing math 7 so that you can start math 8 does have a function, which gives all of the knowledge to be mastered in math 7 a function (or perhaps your goal is only 80% for your final grade, giving 80% of the content in math 7 a function.)  Ask yourself any or all of the following questions:

- Do these knowledge and skills help me reach a goal?

- Do these knowledge and skills allow me to complete something so that I can proceed to something else that I want to do?

- Do these knowledge and skills help me solve a problem?

Trustworthiness is a bit different.  We have already built 

a near infinite amount of knowledge based on trustworthiness.  Think of this: walking or driving down the street where you live, after many repeated travels down this road, sometimes does not even attract your attention.  You have seen it all, repeatedly.  But, the first time you travelled down that road you may have been a bit overwhelmed with everything that you saw, and maybe a bit anxious.  By repeatedly experiencing the same thing, we automatically establish trustworthiness in that thing/experience.  If you say "hello" to someone once you don't really know what effect it has on others (they may say "hello" in return, or ignore you, or have some other response) but if you have said "hello" thousands of times and have received "hello" in return or have been ignored, you know what hello means because you have seen, repeatedly, reliably, what the responses are.

This is basically what the learning process is.  We experience something repeatedly and gradually make sense of it based on the usual responses.  When a response becomes an expected response, we have established knowledge about that experience.  When there is basically one expected response, then we can ignore the thing (like driving down your road for the millionth time.)

Trustworthiness is something that is established concurrent with learning.  Function is something that motivates us to learn.

Learning and/vs. Assessment

Sept 11, 2023

Learning:

In a nutshell (because we could discuss this topic everyday all year) learning is what humans do to increase and change what we "know" about the world.  The term "know" in the way I am using it includes skills as well (not just knowledge.)  From conception throughout life we learn.  In fact, the discipline of Adult Learning changed its name in many university programs to Lifelong Learning around 20 years ago.  The process of learning has been articulated dozens of ways, but each way has a few essential components:

Learning starts with experience.  For learning to be a consequence of experience, that experience has to be something new or unfamiliar.  for example, seeing a UFO.  Most of us has not seen a UFO, so when you finally see one you will like be surprised, confused, and perhaps a little disoriented.  This moment of this experience lets us know what we don't know/understand what we are experiencing.

Piaget articulated a couple of responses to this type of experience, which I believe explains very well how humans tend to proceed in this situation:

1) Assimilation.  You see a flying saucer (all of us can imagine this event/experience, as we have all read or seen a movie, or discussed this at one time.)  By assimilating this experience, we explain it based on what we already know.  If I see a flying saucer I may say, "its just a frisbee or a drone or a hallucination."  I don't have to learn anything to make this judgment, and the disorientation passes.  But, if I cannot explain the experience in a way that is convincing to me, and thus makes the disorientation go away, then I will likely proceed with...

2) Accommodation.  To reach this position, what you are experiencing (perceiving, trying to make sense of) has to be inconsistent with what you know.  With the UFO, we have been told many times that there are no such thing, or if there is, the evidence is unreliable.  so when you think something doesn't exist, but you face irrefutable evidence that it does exist, the disorientating dilemma is amplified.  Sometimes this takes a bit of reflection to get to this point, and other times it seems instantaneous.  With accommodation we adjust what we know to be more consistent with what we are experiencing.  Another example, a young child sees a furry, four-legged animal that someone calls "dog" and learns that four-legged furries are dogs.  When that child sees a cat he/she may call it a dog.  At this point the child has not had to distinguish between dogs and cats before, but now would have to (when told by mom, "no, honey, that's a cat.")  This is how much of our knowledge is developed and refined.  later this child would be able to distinguish between breeds of dogs based on more specific features.  Same process - accommodation.

In either case (assimilation or accommodation) we learn to make sense of our experiences.  This is learning.

The work of learning involves discovering, remembering, and fitting information into what we already know so that we can explain our experiences.  Happening upon a cat and calling it a dog may take a moment of explanation to learn the difference between cats and dogs, or it may take much more work.  There are many ways to get from the realization that you can't explain your experience, to being able to explain it in a way that is believable to you, makes sense to you, and fits with everything else you know (or at least those things associated with that experience.)  We will dig deeper into the actual mechanisms and activities involved in learning with future Daily Learning Tips.

Assessment:

The act of assessing involves 2 major activities: finding/observing evidence and comparing that evidence to a standard.  In education, assessment is student-centered and results in the teacher's/assessor's judgment of a student's ability (knowledge, skills) to perform or have knowledge at a specific standard.  At KVA we call these standards "outcomes."  There is another term used in education interchangeable: evaluation.  I use the terms differently: the act of determining a student's knowledge and skill is assessment.  The act of using a device (test, quiz, essay, presentation) to assess a student's knowledge and skill is evaluation.  Not everyone shares these.  Assessment is student centered and evaluation is method/instrument centered.

For any teacher to assess or evaluate a student's knowledge, learning, progress and/or mastery, her/she needs to consider the evidence.  If I am assessing a student's ability to add fractions I can use the evidence provided by a worksheet or test, but I can also use the evidence provided by conversation and observation.  In fact, I often make the joke that if a bagpipe solo can provide the evidence that a student has mastered adding fractions, then they should get the credit for that mastsery.

There are 2 overall categories of assessment: formative and summative.  We do formative assessment constantly.  It is the act of comparing evidence of learning to the standard/vision of what is to be learner (or a specific part of level within the overall expectation).  for example, a student is working toward learning how to add fractions.  I observe the student writing the fractions side-by-side with a plus sign between them.  this does count as progress and it helps me as the person supporting this learning to guide/suggest the next part of adding fractions.  In other words, it is much harder to add fractions if you don't know what the 2 fractions are that you are adding.  Seems trivial, but a student who did not or could not consider 2 fractions at one would likely not be able to add 2 fractions.  We use formative assessment to gauge where the learner is along the path of learning something specific.  Most learning requires a series of events or a few layers of knowledge.  Formative assessment allows us to distinguish between these multiple levels/layers and judge when the learning is progressing through these levels/layers.  Also, formative assessment is normally used in conversation between a learner and the knower/master/mentor (as opposed to ending in a grade that is supposed to represent the portion of the subject that has been learner.)

Summative assessment, on the other hand, is generally considered to be a summary of that student's learning.  Normally summative assessment is used to report, to the student/parents/stakeholders/... that student's overall level of progress and the portion of the expected knowledge that was actually learned.  Summative assessment is sometimes called "high stakes" assessment.  It regularly occurs in school, and often occurs periodically in a work situation (i.e., yearly assessment of an employee's competence).

The main difference between the two is that the former (formative) is used to help a student learn, and the latter (summative) is not used to help a student learn, but to report, at the end of the learning activity, how much the student has learned.

So, when we discuss learning and assessment, or learning vs. assessment, we should really be stating it this way:

Learning goes with formative assessment because formative assessment supports students' learning.

Learning does not go with summative assessment because summative assessment is designed to report a student's learning after learning has occured.

This is a simplified approach to these 2 types of assessment, I agree.  

My advice to the learner is to ask for and welcome any formative assessment from any master you mentor or teacher because this is how they determine what you know, what you don't yet know, and what path you will likely be following to learn what you don't already know, so that they can help you by explaining things, offering resources, etc...  Summative assessment is not really something you need during learning.

In many schools, in which one teacher is supporting many students, it is often difficult for the teacher to give direct support to any individual student through formative assessment, for the purpose of helping that specific student better understand the content and be more successful at learning.  Often classroom teachers carry out what they treat as formative assessment throughout the learning of specific content (probes, in-class assignments, projects, quizzes...) but are actually summative assessment.  Any time an assessment is added to your gradebook and is included in your final grade - that is summative assessment.

Keep in mind that learning takes time.  The goal of learning is to allow the learner to be able to explain his/her experiences.  Most learning in life does not involve summative assessment, but ALL learning in life involves formative assessment, even if its you, the learner, assessing your own progress.