ABSTRACT
An important goal of instruction is to prepare students for future learning. Educators hope that students will be prepared to learn from the next lesson, the next class, the next year, and opportunities beyond. Despite these hopes, assessment practices often overlook the goal of preparing people to learn, and this can make it difficult to judge the value of different learning experiences (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). For example, televised interviews with recent Harvard graduates revealed serious misconceptions about the causes of the seasons. Under this assessment, their Ivy League educations seemed useless. This is a severe mismeasurement. If these students cared to learn about the cause of the seasons, they would be more prepared to do so than most young adults who never went to college. If the goal is to prepare people to learn, then it is important to design assessments that are sensitive to that goal. As we demonstrate in the following section, assessments of preparation for future learning can reveal the hidden value of educational experiences that can look poor by many standard assessments.
