Today, we expect every student to be ready for the challenges of the 21st century – to learn more, to master new technologies, and to apply what they have learned in authentic/real-world contexts. The phrases “deeper learning” and “critical and creative thinking” have generated varied descriptions of the skills, knowledge, and dispositions students must possess to be able to sit at the table of opportunity and succeed in life after high school. Deeper learning happens when students become actively immersed in challenging tasks that require them to critically examine information, transfer what they have learned, and expand upon that learning to creatively experiment and construct new knowledge and insights. This does not happen in classrooms where the primary focus is getting students to comply with the work we’ve assigned and get correct answers to problems with known answers.

Too often math students lean on teachers to think for them, but there are some simple ways to guide them to think for themselves.

A brief guide to engaging students in narrative writing by having them program robots to act out their stories.

This report offers guidance – including practical advice – to education leaders and teachers in redesigning schools and classrooms by centering on learner agency, through a shift in the ownership of learning. It also provides clarity around the definition and meaning of learner agency and addresses the implications for high-quality practices in new learning models.

This webinar unpacks how Prospect North Primary School, Adelaide, Australia, ensures students take center stage in their learning by creating an environment where student voice is heard and instrumental to every facet of operations. Students and award-winning principal Marg Clark unpack how their school promotes agency, creating whole-child learning, and amplifying learnings through The Connection (an Australian network of best practice low SES schools) across the system.

Appropriately Challenging Goals are a foundational precondition for meaningful learning that occurs through cultivating student engagement and the development of intrinsic motivation. Students thrive most when teachers clearly describe the ultimate goals of instruction and when the goals are achievable, yet challenging.

Standardized rubric showing proficiency|in particular|competes in student-friendly language. Students are allotted choice in representing their mastery.

Constructivist Teaching involves providing students with learner-centered, active instruction, where students explore ideas, propositions, explanations, solutions and take subsequent actions. The main idea of this approach is that students “construct” their own meaning through experiential learning. In a constructivist environment students are provided authentic, engaging experiences to build understanding rather than being told through a traditional lecture approach.

Cooperative Learning occurs when two or more learners collaborate to achieve a common goal. Typically, cooperative learning programs seek to foster positive interdependence through face-to-face interactions, to hold individual group members accountable for the collective project and to develop interpersonal skills among learners.

This article from ISTE explains how teachers can create a Makerspace at their school. A Makerspace is a place where learners can come together to create or invent things|either using traditional crafts or technology:.

Teachers can take a step back and create lessons that put student explorations at the center of learning.

Portrait of a graduate bulletin board with grade level I can statements|in student-friendly language.

True engagement is fundamental to learning but as Daniel Pink shares in Drive, “People don’t engage by being managed. They don’t engage by being controlled. The way that people engage is if they get there under their own steam, and that requires sometimes enormous amounts of autonomy over people’s time (when they do what they do), over their technique (how they do it), over their team (who they do it with) and over their task.” This article shows the components of developing learner agency in students.

Effort Management is the process of planning and allocating one’s time and energy using tactics—such as mood management, goal-oriented self-talk, persistence, self-reinforcement or attribution of success to effort—to achieve a desired goal. It involves a combination of time management, goal-setting and task prioritization, as well as the ability to focus on the most important tasks and avoid distractions.

Student engagement is the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education.

Goal Commitment is a student’s determination to achieve a particular goal. Goal commitment is especially important when the goal is both specific and difficult to accomplish.

When students get to make decisions about their learning, it can be powerfully motivating. In any environment that requires attendance, there’s a significant risk of disengagement. Remove choice and you breed passivity or, worse, defiance. This article reviews student choice in several contexts and how to support students making choices in the classroom.

In this interview, Leadbeater spoke with Anthony Mackay about the lessons outlined in the paper and what they mean for the future of education.

In April 2017, approximately 40 teachers from four New Tech Network (NTN) high schools participated in a series of focus groups designed to collect information on the practices they used to build student agency among their students. The data collected from the focus groups were utilized to develop the Menu of Teacher Practices on Student Agency.

Metacognition is thinking about thinking and for instructional purposes, includes methods to help students understand the way they learn and make decisions about strategies to approach future learning.