Educational Leadership

The world is complex and the process of acquiring and updating ideas about it and the people and phenomena within it is often difficult and challenging. Research has demonstrated repeatedly that, for these kinds of difficulties, challenges and errors are critical to effective learning that sticks over the longer term. Yet, as robust and longstanding as this research is, there is no sign of there being much consideration of the learning process in policy discussions about higher education in Australia.

Student retention, post-hoc program/subject satisfaction, employer satisfaction, employment rates and even assessment tasks all focus on an outcome and are often decoupled from the process students go through to arrive there. The most important and lasting learning experiences are those that are not immediately satisfying and do not directly lead to a job.