Way way back in the day, when my collaborator and I started or Rigorous Test Development project, we came up with six core principles that we thought were essential to the work. Though we might phrase things differently today (e.g., three of those core principles can be found in our mantra, valid items elicit evidence of the targeted cognition for the range of typical test takers), we really cannot argue with our final core principle at all: Test development requires approaching the work with humility.
We have said “approaching the work with humility” and “engaging with humility” and all kinds of minor difference in phrasing, but this idea of humility remains central to the RTD approach. It’s the start pointing for so much — for collaboration, for individual learning, for organizational learning. It’s one of our original six principles — born of her observations about the major stumbling blocks to creating higher quality assessments.
Humility in the work begins with recognizing the limits of one’s expertise. That includes:
Recognizing that your own expertise DOES have limits.
Recognizing the expertise of others.
Recognizing the the areas of your own expertise — perhaps even fairly fine grained — both relative to each other and relative to the level of expertise of others.
Speaking from your expertise and listening when beyond your areas of expertise.
Recognizing the difference between interest and expertise.
Now, if one wishes to expand one’s areas of expertise, that’s awesome. But it does not happen simply because one wants it to.
Listen when those with expertise you desire speak and think hard about what is behind what they said (value, goals, priorities, knowledge, principles, etc..)
Ask questions of those with expertise — both to get them to be more explicit and to signal that you want to better understand what they are saying. (e.g., “Does that mean…”))
When one ventures to speak beyond one’s present expertise, own it explicitly (eg.g., “I’m not sure about this…” or “Maybe…”)
Now, there is CLEARLY a gender component here. Men often feel more free to speak outside of their expertise. Men often disregard women’s actual expertise (ie. thus, "mansplaining" is actually a very meaningful term). And too often, women have learned to downplay their own expertise or even to be unaware of it. I try hard to combat all three of these — both in myself and in the women I work with. But we are all products of our American culture, so that gender crap is going to to be present too often — including in me. This is part of why I encourage people I work with — including women — to interrupt me. I know that some people really have trouble with outspoken women, but I really hope that I am not one of them. I don’t think I am. But I am aware that I am a product of America culture, so there’s always that possibility.
I hope that I model questioning. I hope that I model encouraging others to speak. I hope I model elevating the voices and views of people I am working with. I know that I learn a ton by working with others that have expertise that I lack. For example, I have been working with the Next Generation Science Standards quite a bit this year, and my knowledge of NGSS has deepened (and I am seeing the more subtle issues within NGSS more clearly) by working with people who have far greater NGSS expertise than me. We are building stuff together, and I know that I am incredibly dependent upon them as a partners to help me to become more expert here — dependent upon them in ways that they likely don’t appreciate. Yeah, I’m still me. I still talk too much. But I run my thinking by them, because I am looking for correction and redirection. I cannot be confident in what I am saying unless I expose it to them for criticism. I know that I’ve got expertise and skills that they lack, and I also know that they have expertise, skills and experience that **I** lack. Thus, we are learning from each other and approach our work together with that stance/goal in mind.
So, yes, there is a place for arrogance in the work. (If there weren’t, how could I do it?) But even that can done with humility.
So, one aspect of approaching the work with humility is maintaining an open-minded learning stance — even if simultaneously holds a critical stance. This can be reconciles by leading with questions and actually listening to other people’s answers. Of course, one must be sure to apply that critical stance to one’s own ideas and contributions.
When people do not approach this work — or, likely, any work — with humility, the loudest and most confidence voices dominate, rather than the most knowledgable. Issues or objections get prioritized over each other, rather than reconciled in some best (or least bad) compromise. Often, the whole remains far less than sum of its parts.
I cannot say that humility ever came naturally to me. My own entry point into this principle — and my most reliable reminder of this stance — is my interest in learning from others. I am always looking for what I can learn from others and try to invite opportunities to do so. No, that is not the same thing as approaching the work with humility, but it is the easiest facet to me. The rest, I more consciously work on.