Guru's Handbook

Recently I was asked to discuss the notion of “advanced.”

As teachers, we typically rank students by the level of work they do. This may be a formal or informal ranking, but we know who can do what kind of work, and how well, and how they compare to each other. It is also typical for students to attempt to determine their status and rank, especially when the teacher does not.

There are teachers and schools who intend to avoid this, believing such comparisons to be counter to the kind of teaching they want to do. Comparisons can indeed give rise to students focusing more on status-building and competition than study. Some teachers believe this interferes with learning, and look for ways to minimize competition by eliminating rank, status, or any indication of comparisons made by the teachers.

This is hard to accomplish. Without a greater cultural context outside the school that supports the lack of such comparisons, or gives another way to view different levels and abilities, the student will go from the class into a world where comparisons are expected, and will bring those beliefs back to the class. You cannot separate the teaching from the student’s greater world unless you separate the student from that world. Depending on your goals as a teacher or in creating your school it may nonetheless be worth the attempt. But you will not gain success in a non-competitive model if you do not understand its opposite. You must know what is common to create what is not.

I am not implicitly offering a judgment about ranking and competition and learning. I believe it depends on the students, the study, the goals of the teacher, and the greater cultural context. I believe it is important to understand the forces at work before attempting to steer them.

The concept of “advanced” work implicitly requires a comparison. Without comparing one student’s work to the next there is no concept of advanced work, there is simply what the student is doing, now. Perhaps your student is progressing faster than you expect when you consider previous students, so you are comparing them to your memory. Perhaps you look at two students with similar histories and see that one more skillfully applies your teaching and conclude that one is more advanced. Whatever the case, if you have only one student, and no history by which to judge progress, you are unlikely to think of that student as remedial, average, or advanced, but simply as your student. It is a rare teacher who can consciously apply this lack of judgment to multiple students. Rarer still is the student who will themselves refrain from creating comparisons and ranking, even if they say nothing to you. What you as teacher say, or fail to say, about such comparisons will guide your students in what they say about such things, and perhaps to some degree what they think. Their culture and peers will guide them even more.

In some schools, the time the student has been studying is implicitly considered a part of the student’s status. This happens out of a sense of respect for the student’s having survived the study longer than a newcomer. This is status based on time served. Even among schools and teachers who fervently claim that skill is all that matters, more respect and status will be given to those students who have been there longer than to those who have recently arrived, even if the skill levels are reversed from what might be expected. I make this point to create awareness of this subtle social force, not to either disparage or encourage this practice. If you have many students, these forces are in play whether you mean them to be or not; look for them, understand them, and then decide if you want them or want to change them.

It is typical to group students by skill level so that the teacher can more easily teach subjects that more of them understand similarly. Another approach is to mix students of different skill levels, and see how they learn together. This provides an opportunity to observe “beginner” and “advanced” students together and see how they differ and how they do not. I advocate this as a way for the teacher to learn, as well as the the students.

What is advanced work? Is it having all the basics well in hand, whatever you consider to be the basics, or at least comfortably familiar? Is it an ability to use the parts of the whole together smoothly? Is it a sense of how various aspects and levels of the study connect? If so, can a student disregard details that may be foundational and press immediately toward the more complex studies, if they are able to see how things connect more deeply from the start?

These are not questions simply or easily answered. One teacher’s advanced work is another teacher’s basics. The question of what is advanced work is personal to the student and the teacher. What is easy for one teacher may be easy for their student as well. What is easy for one student may trip up another student. For any study not artificially simple, there is no single linear path on which we can make marks to indicate what part of the study is advanced and what part basic. Indeed, it is often a struggle for those who construct study plans to determine what should come before what for just this reason.

In some sense, it does not really matter. You are teaching a student or set of students and not a subject. You will teach them what you can, and you will find out what and how fast they learn. If necessary, you will put off what might be considered more basic by some to teach what seems more appropriate at the moment, even if it is considered to be more advanced by others.

The notion of fundamental study versus advanced study can be useful and is sometimes quite appropriate, as when ranking is needed, but tools to determine a student’s ability, such as standardized tests, evaluate only a small slice of the student’s capacity and understandings, and too often this is mostly the ability to take tests.

If the subject is reading, we can say that reading a children’s book is less sophisticated than the reading and comprehension of an adult-level book. But this presumes that longer words, longer sentences and more complicated concepts are necessarily more sophisticated. Some poets who use simple words and short sentences to imply subtle concepts might not agree. Context is relevant in determining whether work is advanced or not, and the student is a critical part of that context.

So what do I mean when I write of an advanced student? I mean someone who is not new to the study, who has a level of comfort with the study beyond what might be considered basic — again, by some — who can apply skills to a larger and perhaps more subtle scope of the study, for whom highly integrated approaches to the work are not out of the question. Any given beginner might also be capable of such work, just as any given student having studied for a long time might be not be.

How many of us, having studied a simple thing at 18, pick it up again at 40 to find that our understanding has deepened the concept, and it is not now as simple as we first thought? A student’s sophistication is as much about the way the student understands the work as it is to do with what part of the work they are focusing on.

Just as it is important to understand that advanced study is more about how the subject is viewed than what is being viewed, it is important to know when it matters that a student’s ability is advanced and in what context. When it comes to asking yourself if your student is advanced enough for something, let the application of the answer be your guide; if the question is: “are they ready to teach?” the answer goes beyond their ability in the subject matter and includes their ability to teach. If the question is, “are they ready to take on more sophisticated and challenging work?” the answer goes beyond their ability to do that work, but also must be answered in the context of the social fabric in which they learn: the school, the other students, and the teacher.

Sometimes it seems that we teach in circles. We teach the same things, over and over, and the student learns, perhaps, but (in our more cynical moments we may believe) perhaps simply run over the same ground again and again. Often we as teachers do not see the spirals on which the student’s understanding travels, how a mind can travel around the same material, but go deeper and deeper.

Where you can, separate out the issues of rank and status from the circles and spirals of understanding that show progress. Separate out the questions of suitability for related tasks such as teaching and responsibility and leadership from the question of depth of knowledge of the study.

The student doing advanced work may seem to be studying the same material as the beginner. Look not only at the specifics of what is being studied, but at how it is being understood. When you need to answer questions about your student’s level of work, understand these questions in the context of the student. Look at how the student understands. Look for spirals.