Teachers as Architects of Learning

1. Teachers as architects: Designing and configuring successful learning experiences

"We design, plan and orchestrate learning like an architect designs, plans and orchestrates buildings or structures."

Shifting focus to learning. Teachers must transition from a teaching-centered approach to a learning-centered one. This involves understanding the process of learning, talking about learning, and reflecting on learning in ways that benefit the learner. By doing so, teachers can increase the likelihood of meeting learners' needs and closing the gap between what is planned, how it's taught, and what students actually learn.

Twelve constructs for learning. The book introduces twelve key constructs that teachers should consider when designing learning experiences:

• Questioning
• Self-assessment
• Observing and listening
• Explicit instruction
• Modeling and exemplars
• Support and safety
• Time
• Expectation
• Lifeworlds
• Desire
• Resources
• Existing knowledge

These constructs provide a framework for teachers to create successful learning experiences, ensuring that learning, rather than teaching, takes center stage in the classroom.

2. Questioning: The foundation of effective teaching and learning

"Effectively used, questions create the platform for ensuring teachers and students understand where learners are in their understanding, they provide the catalyst for motivating students to further their learning efforts, and they contribute to a classroom culture that promotes curiosity, wonder, and reciprocal respect while safeguarding learning as the number-one priority."

Purpose and practice. Effective questioning serves multiple purposes:

• Engaging and interesting learners
• Challenging existing attitudes and beliefs
• Stimulating recall of existing knowledge
• Narrowing thinking to key concepts
• Promoting higher-order thinking

To implement effective questioning, teachers should:

• Have a clear purpose for each question
• Promote a safe and supportive questioning environment
• Develop productive questioning practices

Creating a questioning culture. In a classroom where questioning is effectively used, you'll observe:

• Students connecting prior knowledge to current content
• Teachers sharing prepared questions throughout lessons
• Appropriate wait time after questions
• Dialogue focused on growth and discovery
• Purposeful questions designed to elicit specific responses

3. Self-assessment: Empowering students through reflection and feedback

"By supporting students to develop self-assessment skills and providing them with the opportunities to provide feedback to the teacher, teachers can be sure to create a learning culture with: High expectations, Positive self-beliefs, High self-efficacy, High engagement, Empowerment of students to be active decision makers in their learning, Collaborative relationships focused on the learning"

Shifting feedback dynamics. Traditional teaching often involves teachers testing students and providing feedback. However, research shows that feedback from students to teachers has the largest effect on learning outcomes. This understanding requires a shift in assessment practices, moving from a teacher-oriented process to a learner-oriented one.

Implementing self-assessment strategies. Teachers can support self-assessment by:

• Teaching self-assessment skills explicitly
• Providing time for students to identify learning goals
• Using learning continuums and maps
• Encouraging reflections during and after learning experiences
• Facilitating collaborative discussions about learning

Tools for self-assessment include:

• Learning continuums
• Learning maps
• Reflection templates
• Rubrics

4. Observing and listening: The power of sensory learning in the classroom

"The key to students feeling safe, acknowledged, and valued is through a teacher's ability to both demonstrate and facilitate deep empathetic listening that enables everyone to walk around in one another's shoes for periods of time."

Heightened awareness. Teachers who effectively use observation and listening:

• Understand what students are feeling about their learning
• Identify what is working for students and what is challenging them
• Model key elements of the learning process

Strategies for effective observation and listening:

• Know clearly what to look and listen for in student work and interactions
• Model what successful work looks and sounds like
• Build reflection time into the learning experience
• Collect data in a nonjudgmental way
• Use anecdotal notes about performance
• Ask students for insights into demonstrations or processes
• Use learning portfolios and student-led conferences

By implementing these strategies, teachers can create a learning environment where students feel heard, understood, and supported in their learning journey.

5. Explicit instruction: Clarity and structure in teaching for understanding

"Explicit instruction is a process that involves telling, showing, and then guiding until students obtain independence."

Four elements of explicit instruction. To effectively implement explicit instruction, teachers should focus on:

1. Generating attention: Clarify learning purpose and cater to learning preferences
2. Promoting memorization of learning: Assist students in retaining information through various strategies
3. Providing opportunities to replicate the learning: Give students chances to practice what they've learned
4. Providing opportunities to demonstrate the learning: Allow students to show their mastery or transfer of knowledge

Benefits of explicit instruction. When used effectively, explicit instruction:

• Helps students understand what thinking and processes are involved in tasks
• Provides tools and mental models for working through complex tasks
• Gives students a clear understanding of what success looks like
• Centers dialogue explicitly on the learning and intended outcomes

Explicit instruction is particularly useful when introducing new concepts, teaching complex processes, or practicing key skills and strategies.

6. Modeling and exemplars: Showing the path to success

"If we want our students to be successful, effective teachers provide students with the opportunity to see what it looks like to be both successful and unsuccessful, providing the opportunity to learn through investigating similarities and differences."

Power of demonstration. Modeling and exemplars provide students with:

• Visual and auditory pathways to rehearse, reinforce, and revise learning
• Mental models to anchor their understanding
• Benchmarks for both teacher and student expectations

Strategies for effective modeling:

• Represent learning through different modalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic)
• Incorporate cooperative groups
• Model thinking out loud
• Use social thinking to encourage student modeling
• Provide opportunities for feedback
• Utilize digital avenues for demonstration
• Maximize peer teaching
• Provide both successful and unsuccessful models of work

When modeling and exemplars are effectively used, students become clear about the learning process, engage more deeply, and feel confident in their ability to progress.

7. Support and safety: Creating an environment conducive to learning

"Classrooms must feel safe and secure."

Building a supportive environment. A safe and supportive classroom allows students to:

• Make mistakes
• Contribute without fear of ridicule
• Receive and provide constructive feedback
• Be themselves and think creatively
• Ask questions and be listened to
• Reflect on and assess their own work

Three categories of support:

1. Cognitive learning support:

   • Time for reflection and learning consolidation
   • Building metacognition into the learning process
   • Using graphic organizers

2. Behavioral learning support:

   • Using reinforcement
   • Shaping learning behavior
   • Developing student-directed learning goals

3. Structural support:

   • Providing examples and alternative approaches
   • Giving feedback through conferencing
   • Expressing positive expectations
   • Using social learning support
   • Creating a class learning plan

By implementing these support strategies, teachers create an environment where students feel safe to explore, take risks, and fully engage in the learning process.

8. Time: A critical variable in the learning process

"We cannot make the day longer, but we can increase or decrease the amount of time we give to students to support their learning."

Flexible use of time. Teachers should consider time as a variable that can be manipulated to ensure learning success. This involves:

• Moving away from inflexible week-by-week planning
• Allowing for differentiation and responding to student needs in the moment
• Focusing on deliberate concentration rather than merely covering material

Strategies for effective time use:

• Prioritize high-leverage standards and delve into them deeply
• Review and eradicate programs that don't contribute to essential learning
• Plan teaching around key concepts rather than set activities
• Integrate interdisciplinary learning authentically
• Review work ongoing to check for understanding
• Provide opportunities for duplication and replication
• Encourage memorization of critical concepts
• Find time for feedback

By consciously considering time in the learning process, teachers can create a more responsive and effective learning environment that caters to individual student needs and promotes deeper understanding.

9. Expectations: Setting the standard for student achievement

"You get what you expect. So the important question becomes, What are you expecting?"

Clarity in expectations. To optimize learning experiences, teachers need to clarify their expectations for:

• Key concepts: What students should understand at a conceptual level
• Key knowledge: What specific information students should know
• Key skills: What students should be able to do with their knowledge
• Key evidence: How students will demonstrate their understanding

Creating a high-expectation culture. Effective use of expectations involves:

• Communicating expectations clearly and consistently
• Setting expectations at the beginning, during, and at the conclusion of work
• Giving students opportunities to practice and deepen understanding
• Aligning assessment tasks with taught knowledge, skills, and dispositions

When expectations are effectively communicated and upheld, students show higher levels of achievement, engage in deeper dialogue, and take greater accountability for their learning.

10. Lifeworlds: Connecting learning to students' everyday experiences

"Too often, students see learning as something that is done to them and irrelevant to their daily lives."

Understanding lifeworlds. Lifeworlds are the sites in time and space in which students live, including their thoughts, feelings, and ideas about everyday life. By connecting learning to students' lifeworlds, teachers can increase motivation and learning success.

Strategies for connecting to lifeworlds:

• Provide opportunities for students to be experts in the classroom
• Discover what delights students
• Have fun with students
• Show interest without being intrusive
• Give students choices in their learning
• Understand and incorporate students' technological communication
• Collaborate in constructing the learning experience

By implementing these strategies, teachers create a learning environment that respects students' experiences, interests, and perspectives, leading to increased engagement and more meaningful learning outcomes.

11. Desire: Igniting the motivation to learn

"Desire is fueled by motivation and interest and vice versa. When we have a desire to learn something, we are more naturally interested and motivated to learn it, although desire can also build over time."

Fostering desire to learn. Teachers can generate interest and desire for learning through:

• Planning teaching and learning sequences that show clear connections
• Having students produce significant outcomes or products
• Building negotiation into various stages of learning
• Emphasizing what's most important
• Generating themes from student and community concerns
• Building classrooms that function as research centers
• Involving students in producing their own knowledge
• Using integrated approaches with topics of student interest

Creating playful learning environments. Playfulness can increase desire to learn by:

• Encouraging trial and error
• Providing unstructured time to explore new information
• Developing "new ideas" and "I wonder" graffiti boards
• Actively teaching creativity
• Using technology in playful ways

By focusing on generating desire and creating engaging learning experiences, teachers can increase student motivation and deepen learning outcomes.

12. Resources and existing knowledge: Building on foundations for effective learning

"To design a learning experience efficiently, we need to base it on students' existing knowledge."

Leveraging resources. Effective use of resources involves:

• Aligning resources with desired learning outcomes
• Using resources to generate understanding, focus attention, and scaffold learning
• Providing opportunities for practice and consolidation
• Supporting students in articulating their learning

Tapping into existing knowledge. Teachers should:

• Develop tools to assess students' existing knowledge (e.g., thinking tools, discussion tools)
• Encourage students to link new information to existing knowledge
• Explicitly point out links to prior knowledge
• Use questioning to prompt connections to existing knowledge

By carefully considering and utilizing both resources and students' existing knowledge, teachers can create more efficient and effective learning experiences that build on students' foundations and lead to deeper understanding.

Last updated: April 27, 2025