"One of the lousiest slogans we've come up with in education is that all children can learn," veteran teacher Carol Ann Tomlinson told her listeners. "The trouble with this slogan is that it leads to the belief that all children can learn the same thing in the same way on the same day," she explained.
In her presentation on beliefs and practices that shape assessment and instruction, Tomlinson targeted common notions that deflect good teaching. Her first target was the belief that all students are basically alike. "Until we understand the enormous differences in how students learn, what they know, and where they're coming from, we're sunk," she asserted, pointing out that no strategy works well for all learners. The important thing is for teachers to become hunters and gatherers of information about each child and to adjust instruction accordingly, Tomlinson said.
Her next target was the confusion of standards with standardization. "The standards movement is giving Procustes a brand new life," she observed, comparing the misuse of standards with the villainous son of Poseidon in Greek mythology who forced travelers to fit into his bed by stretching their bodies or cutting off their legs. "I'm not arguing against standards," said Tomlinson. "I'm arguing against something that's hideously artificial for far too many kids." Connecting standards with her first point, she observed that it's fine to have one standard, but only if we believe that all children are alike. "If we want to do right by children, we have to have varied standards," she asserted.
Tomlinson's final target was the practice of planning and assessing partial rather than whole learning, which she explained as the difference between facts and concepts. "It is very hard to engage kids with facts, but easy to do with concepts," she said. To illustrate, Tomlinson showed how topics (categories for facts) could be approached conceptually: when the topic is the Civil War, the concept is conflict; when the topic is planets, the concept is systems; when the topic is equations, the concept is balance.
Conceptual learning, Tomlinson observed, provides opportunities for every child to use the higher-level thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—but at different degrees of difficulty and complexity. "This kind of differentiated instruction is what brings assessment to life," she explained. "And unless we do this, we have no way to deal with student differences," Tomlinson concluded. "To create academically responsive curriculums, we must have differentiated instruction."