Theo Dawson: Beyond Teach to Test—Designing Educational Metrics That Work

Following our interview with Lectica Co-founder Zak Stein, Rufus interviews Theo Dawson, Lectica’s founder and executive director, about her journey into transforming education and the complex and critical science of measuring educational development.

Listen above or watch the episode here:

About the episode:

In this interview Theo Dawson, award-winning educator, scholar, & founder of Lectica Inc. speaks to her rich life story from drop out to conscious birthing doula to working inside of America's premier educational institutions. In her decades long journey, Theo has focused on realising a form of testing that actually supports students—recognising that contemporary 'education' often works in contra to natural learning processes. We 'teach to test' and education as a field often 'memory holes' decades of work to adopt the latest fashion.

Join us to explore development and how Lectica have, over three decades, developed new metrics for student development in K-12 which are also offered to professional organisations.

Corrections:

At 22:39 Theo refers to ‘Dopamine’ but means ‘Opioid’

At 44:58 Theo refers to 'Abstract Mappings' but Means 'Representational Mappings'

Chapters:

1:28 Theo’s story of growing up during the Vietnam War, leaving home and running with draft dodgers.

3:47 Becoming a mother and organising conscious doulas

6:57 How her life brought her to focus on the injustice of limiting education system

12:00 The ‘memory holing’ shadow in education and developmental science

15:00 The contra-Piaget movement in education, new ideas of ‘fairness’ in education

18:00 ‘Teaching to the test’

19:41 How learning really works, the role of the dopaminergic system, and how education undermines natural learning

26:19 Developmental science as very recent

36:00 Hierarchical complexity as development

50:00 The dangerous shift in education

59:29 Points of leverage in systems

01:02:57 A new system of measurement

01:17:00 Higher complexity does not equate to ethical participation

01:24:45 Is there a limit to human development?

Theo Dawson is founder and executive director of Lectica, Inc, a non-profit organization that develops and administers evidence-based, diagnostic, and formative developmental assessments; offers research and assessment services to clients in the private and public sectors; and builds knowledge about learning and its role in the future of society. She received her master's and PhD from University of California at Berkeley and has published widely in the field of cognitive developmental psychology. https://theo-dawson.medium.com/ https://lectica.org/about/cv-theo

Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author as well as a long-term zen practitioner. He is passionate about finding wiser, weller ways to live together. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: www.rufuspollock.com.

Podcast Production:

Jacob Kishere of SENSESPACE Studio

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