Our Approach
We believe teachers and students are partners who construct an effective teaching and learning space together. For their shared space to be effective, teachers and students BOTH need:
The appropriate mindset
For students this means understanding:
- Their role as partners in building the learning space
- How to move from passive recipients to active partners
- How to use mistakes as growth opportunities (what many call resilience)
For teachers the appropriate mindset requires understanding:
- How people learn
- What makes teaching and learning spaces effective
Knowledge, skills, and resources that align the partners with each other
For students this means having:
- Clear learning goals
- Clear paths to those learning goals
- Strategies for learning, organizing, and integrating new information
For teachers this means having:
- Sound curriculum and instructional design strategies
- A variety of evidence based teaching practices they can use well
- Resources for engaging students in positive challenges
- Techniques for diagnosing and resolving specific teaching & learning challenges
Appropriate, ongoing, informative evaluation
For students this means having:
- Useful, meaningful self-assessment tools and strategies
- Actionable guidance and feedback from their teachers
For teachers this means having reliable ways to assess:
- Students’ individual and collective learning outcomes
- Impact of specific instructional activities on learning outcomes.
We start by looking for barriers that keep teachers or students from creating effective shared spaces. Then usingĀ 9 practical pedagogical principles as our guide, we design, build, and assess resources aimed at reducing or even eliminating those barriers.