High-ability Learners

The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way. Howard Gardner

TThomas Edison, arguably the most successful inventor in US history, was kicked out of school because he seemed unable to concentrate. Winston Churchill, perhaps the most important statesman of the 20th century, was regarded by his family as an academic embarrassment. Albert Einstein, one of the most influential physicists who ever lived, failed to earn a sufficiently high examination score to gain admission to polytechnic school.

In the cases of Edison, Churchill, and Einstein, poor academic performance should be traced not to an inherent lack of intelligence but to an educational system’s failure to engage learners who possess an unusually high degree of ability. By subjecting every learner to the exact same approach to teaching, educators were in effect keeping their highly capable students’ gifts hidden from view and preventing them from becoming truly engaged with their studies.

Someday, educators are likely to look back on the way we educate radiology learners with the same dismay we feel for the education afforded these geniuses. They will recognize something obvious that we fail to see—namely, that standardized approaches to education have some value in assuring that average-ability learners meet minimum standards, but they do a remarkably poor job of drawing the best from the high-ability learners that populate medical schools and radiology residency programs.

High-ability learners constitute perhaps the top 5% or so of the general population. For them, memorizing new material and mastering new concepts comes relatively easily. To sustain their interest in learning and draw them toward their full potential, it is necessary to provide opportunities to follow their curiosity’s lead in generating novel questions and new ideas. The failure to provide such opportunities can result in boredom and poor academic performance.

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High-ability Learners

Further Reading

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Accuracy of Cyst Versus Solid Diagnosis in the Breast Using Quantitative Transmission (QT) Ultrasound

An Abbreviated Protocol for High-risk Screening Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging