Personal Epistemic Learning Activities and Objectives in a Standardized School

America has built an education system wherein arriving at the right answer matters more than the journey of discovery. Is it any wonder students are taking shortcuts when we've taught them the destination is all that counts?

Taking a Field Trip

A teacher drives a school bus with thirty students aboard through the city of Chicago. The teacher's goal is clear: transport students safely to the Art Institute by noon. Success means arriving at the designated location on time. But each student experiences a different journey despite sharing the same vehicle traveling down the same city streets.

One student stares out the window at towering skyscrapers of downtown Chicago. The architectural details captivate them. The way glass and steel inscribe patterns in the sky is mesmerizing. They're mentally cataloging design elements they might incorporate into their own drawings later. When the bus arrives at the museum, they're already filled with inspiration from the cityscape itself.

Another focuses on the people along Michigan Avenue. They notice how pedestrians crowd together at crosswalks, how street performers attract crowds, how people ebb and flow in and out of groups in seconds. These human dynamics fascinate them more than any painting they'll see. Their mental notebook fills with observations about social behavior rather than architectural notes.

A third barely glances outside. They're deep in conversation with their seatmate about a book they're both reading. The characters and plot twists seem more real than the physical city passing by. Their journey happens through this literary discussion rather than through visual stimuli. The bus could be anywhere, and their experience would remain unchanged.

This disconnect helps explain challenges in today's educational environment. Teachers establish what they will present and cover. They determine what content appears in lectures, activities, and readings. They decide what assignments students must complete. These teaching intentions represent a single predetermined journey with a fixed destination.

Learning, however, happens differently for each student. Every learner constructs personal meaning based on their unique background, interests, and cognitive patterns. Research from Harvard's Project Zero confirms this reality, showing that "thinking is fundamentally social and emotional as well as cognitive" and that effective education must account for these individual differences in how students process information.

This distinction matters in today's AI-saturated environment. While recent Turnitin data shows only about 3% of student papers are primarily AI-generated, the concern extends beyond prevalence. When students submit AI-created work they cannot explain, they've satisfied assignment requirements without developing personal knowledge. As many surveys of high schools have found out over the past three years, though it is impossible to know for sure, many students who use AI for assignments do so to complete tasks quickly rather than to enhance understanding.

The issue isn't solely student ethics but partly our approach to education. Traditional assessment often emphasizes products over processes. As Melbourne University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education notes, "shifting the emphasis from assessing product to assessing process" represents one of the most effective strategies for maintaining academic integrity in an AI era.

Building a Better Learning Trap

Addressing this challenge requires balancing structured learning objectives with space for individual meaning-making. Harvard's Project Zero offers a treasure trove of evidence-based "Visible Thinking" routines that make student cognition public and assessable while maintaining curricular goals. These structured frameworks provide scaffolding for novice learners while allowing for personal discovery.

This means redesigning assessment to incorporate visible thinking processes. When students document their research process, create concept maps, or maintain reflection journals, they create evidence of intellectual development that AI cannot easily simulate. A 2023 study from Yale found that readers cannot reliably distinguish between AI and human essays when looking only at final products, making process documentation increasingly important. As teachers gain more experience working with AI, and as students develop greater appreciation for their own brilliance, the need to focus on separating words generated by an LM and those used by the student may become less salient.

Consider asking students to articulate their own epistemic goals within the framework of course objectives. Before starting a research paper, students might identify specific knowledge they hope to develop, creating what Project Zero calls a "learning contract" that balances teacher guidance with student agency. This approach maintains essential content knowledge while fostering metacognition.

Implementation requires thoughtful scaffolding. For example, a "See-Think-Wonder" routine from Project Zero provides a structured template for students to document observations, interpretations, and questions when approaching new material. Such routines work across grade levels and require minimal technology, making them accessible in diverse educational settings.

Classroom activities must integrate content exploration with skill development. The University of Technology Sydney's "Learning Journeys" framework demonstrates how teachers can design experiences that balance content mastery with process skills. Their case studies show improvements in student engagement and retention when learning focuses on both journey and destination.

Resource constraints represent a real challenge. As a retired teacher, I must admit I don’t envy teachers in the trenches right now. Resources range from basic supplies, tools, and materials to administrations that respond to media hype rather than diligent study of the facts. Most importantly for teaching, teachers face significant workload issues when implementing process-based assessment. As reported in Business Insider, many educators already struggle with the time demands of detecting AI misuse. If this strategy is to work at all, solutions must be scalable and sustainable. Low-tech options like reflection journals can provide process evidence without requiring expensive technology, but teacher time to deeply read student reflections is scarce and must be factored into costs.

To make good use of new tech tools, educational policies must evolve to support authentic learning without abandoning clear standards. Research from the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning shows that effective assessment rubrics can evaluate both content mastery and thinking processes. Their sample rubrics assess not only what students know but how they arrived at that knowledge.

At Journey's End: The Museum

The school bus has reached its destination. The Art Institute of Chicago rises before them, grand and imposing. The teacher escorts students into the American Art wing with a clear itinerary: thirty minutes at Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," followed by Grant Wood's "American Gothic," concluding with Georgia O'Keeffe's "Sky Above Clouds IV." Each painting represents an important teaching objective in American realism and modernism.

The students stand before "Nighthawks," notebooks open. The teacher delivers prepared remarks about isolation in urban environments, pointing out the composition's use of light and shadow. A museum guide adds historical context about post-war America. Students nod and take notes. From all appearances, learning objectives are being met.

Yet reality tells a more complex story. One student stands physically before "Nighthawks" while their attention has drifted to the small Willem de Kooning sketch hanging nearby. The abstract forms speak to them in ways Hopper's realism doesn't. They're developing a personal aesthetic preference that extends beyond the lesson plan.

"Please pay attention," the teacher says, noticing their wandering gaze. The student obediently returns focus to the designated artwork, but their genuine learning moment has been interrupted rather than integrated. Research on visible thinking strategies suggests that acknowledging these divergent interests rather than. interrupting them actually deepens engagement with required content rather than distracting from it.

This scene captures what makes teaching so incredibly absorbing and interesting. I’ve always been sensitive as a teacher to getting out of the way of my students. Well-thought-out learning objectives provide necessary structure and exposure to important content and definitely help. Without these instructional guideposts, students might never encounter certain ideas or works. Yet genuine learning always extends beyond these boundaries. Each student constructs personal meaning from shared experiences.

What To Do

The solution isn't abandoning teaching objectives but creating space within them for individual discovery. Harvard's Project Zero offers a range of thinking routines that structure this balance, like "Connect-Extend-Challenge," which asks students to connect new ideas to prior knowledge, extend their thinking, and identify challenges or puzzles. These routines maintain focus on learning objectives while honoring personal meaning-making.

AI has made this tension more visible. When students use technology to generate work that satisfies requirements without engaging their own thinking, they're responding to an educational system that sometimes values compliance over curiosity. By acknowledging that meaningful learning combines clear objectives with personal engagement, educators can create experiences that students genuinely want to engage with directly.

The true art museum experience happens when thirty individual journeys of discovery unfold within a thoughtfully designed framework. The bus reached its destination, but the learning happened in thirty different directions beyond the awareness of the teacher. As Project Zero's research demonstrates, making these individual thinking journeys visible enriches not only individual understanding but collective knowledge construction.

In a world where AI can generate polished products, education must refocus on human processes of discovery, connection, and meaning-making. By designing assessments that value these processes alongside content mastery, we prepare students not just to resist the temptation of AI shortcuts but to develop the thinking capabilities that brought AI into the world in the first place.