I find introductions hard. I forget my experiences, my skills and lose my train of thought as anxiety ensues me. Introductions can be a scary feat, sharing parts of yourself to a room of strangers. They can also lead to amazing experiences, providing a space for connectivity and reflection.
Tacit: understood or implied without being stated.
How does one quantify the skill or knowledge they have when they do not hold it in high regard. When it’s something they just do. Then the thought struck me – “Do students suffer from this?” The inability to introduce oneself, to express one’s ideas through traditional mediums. Particularly if those ideas flow in a continuous stream, which when verbalised sounds like rambling – similar to this introduction.
When we assess, we provide the objective and review the outcome, missing all tacit learning built up over time. Perhaps assessment should be designed to consider all aspect of learning. Taking into consideration all learning types and assessing through kinesthetics, written and verbal practices over a period. What would this assessment style look like? Would this be suitable for all areas of study? Can that which is tacit even be quantified?
Perhaps Harris, K said it best in the 2022 Spark Journal Embracing the Silence: introverted learning and the online classroom; “The sheer demand to contribute on tap – to simultaneously process the question, conceptualise an intellectually coherent response, and find the vocabulary and syntactical structure with which to deliver that response – can simply be too great an ask.”