Learning Envision / What Did Change, And How

The long lag between capability and competent use

A capability existing and a capability being used well are separated by an interval far longer than most forecasts allow.

The interval has identifiable components. Somebody must work out what the capability is actually good for, which is rarely what it was built for. Materials must be rebuilt around it rather than merely transferred into it, a distinction that takes a long while to become obvious. Practice must be developed, shared and refined. New entrants to the profession must be prepared in it during their training rather than retrofitted afterwards. Assessment and reporting must accommodate it, or its use will remain confined to the parts of the year where nothing is being measured. Each of these takes time, and they are largely sequential.

During that interval the capability is usually used to imitate what it replaced. A new medium first carries the old form, unchanged, and only later develops a form of its own. This produces a characteristic middle period where usage is high and benefit is low, which is easy to misread in both directions. Enthusiasts point at usage and declare success. Sceptics point at outcomes and declare failure. Both are looking at a system that has the capability but has not yet worked out how to use it, and neither reading tells you much about where it will settle.

The consequence for evaluation is that early results, whether encouraging or disappointing, carry less information than they appear to. Judging a capability during its imitation phase is like judging a draft. This is an argument for patience in assessment, for repeated measurement over long intervals, and for keeping capabilities available after the enthusiasm has passed rather than clearing them out. It is also an argument against the reflex of declaring failure at the first weak result, which discards things that had not yet been used properly.