Students need specific thinking—or Habits of Mind—to engage with problems and become self-directed learners, write Arthur L. Costa, Bena Kallick, Jay McTighe, and Allison Zmuda. A curricular approach based on enhancing students' understanding of conceptually significant, transferable ideas can help schools teach these dispositions.

Arthur L. Costa

Bena Kallick

Jay McTighe

Allison Zmuda

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Dispositions by Design thumbnail

Critical thinking

Habits of Mind

Understanding by Design

Dispositions by Design

Instructional Strategies

"We might view the movement rom teacher-directed to student-driven learning as a set of controls, much like the controls on an audio sound board," write Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda. For each element of personalization, the teacher can turn the volume up or down, amplifying or reducing the amount of student agency depending on the subject matter and students' needs. In this article, Kallick and Zmuda show how seven elements of personalization (goals, inquiry and idea generation, task and audience, evaluation, feedback, instructional plan, and cumulative demonstration of learning) change as teachers move toward greater student control.

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Challenged

Whole Child

Orchestrating the Move to Student-Driven Learning

We say we want engaged learners, but so many of our policies and practices focus on creating compliant learners–students who are easy to manage, do what's expected, and participate when there's little risk of being wrong. Now compliance may make for a smoothly run classroom, but it doesn't help students expend the effort they need to meet the demands of challenging standards or take what they've learned and apply it to their lives. The authors suggest that if teachers want real engagement rather than mere compliance, they need to provide clarity so students are clear about the goals of learning, offer the right context so students can make their learning relevant to their lives, create a classroom culture that signals that you're genuinely invested in their learning, and provide the appropriate challenge so students find real meaning in their school experiences and persist even when faced with difficulty along the way.

Robyn R. Jackson

Student engagement and motivation

Instructional strategies

Four (Secret) Keys to Student Engagement

Online education troubleshooting guides enable schools and school districts to pool the collective expertise of their educators to improve teaching and learning. Such guides codify common instructional problems and create interactive databases of tried-and-true solutions. This article provides several examples of troubleshooting guides in action. The authors walk readers through the process of developing troubleshooting guides and point out that this process offers a shared purpose for professional learning communities as teachers and administrators work together to identify, analyze, and address common learning problems.

How to Be an Education Troubleshooter

Quick Reference Guides

Print Books

Personalizing Learning in Your Classroom (Print Book)

Personalizing Learning in Your Classroom

Personalizing Learning in Your Classroom (Quick Reference Guide)

Soft Cover

Students at the Center: Personalized Learning with Habits of Mind (Print Book)

Students at the Center: Personalized Learning with Habits of Mind

Real Engagement: How do I help my students become motivated, confident, and self-directed learners? (ASCD Arias) (Print Book)

Real Engagement: How do I help my students become motivated, confident, and self-directed learners? (ASCD Arias)

Breaking Free from Myths About Teaching and Learning: Innovation as an Engine for Student Success (Print Book)

Breaking Free from Myths About Teaching and Learning: Innovation as an Engine for Student Success

Allison Zmuda

About

Expertise

Articles by Allison

Dispositions by Design

Orchestrating the Move to Student-Driven Learning

Four (Secret) Keys to Student Engagement

How to Be an Education Troubleshooter

Books by Allison

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