1. Questions are valued over answers
Questions are more important than answers. So it makes sense that if good questions should lead
the learning, there would be value placed on these questions. And that means adding currency
whenever possible—grades (questions as assessment!), credit (give them points—they love
points), creative duration (writing as a kind of graffiti on large post-it pages on the classroom
walls), or simply praise and honest respect. See if you don’t notice a change.
2. Ideas come from divergent sources
Ideas for lessons, reading, tests, and projects—the fiber of formal learning—should come from a
variety of sources. If they all come from narrow slivers of resources, you’re at risk of being
pulled way off in one direction (that may or may not be good). An alternative Consider sources
like professional and cultural mentors, the community, content experts outside of education, and
even the students themselves huge shift in credibility.
3. The students ask the questions—good questions
This is not a feel-good implication, but really crucial for the whole learning process to work.
The role of curiosity has been studied (and perhaps under-studied and under-appreciated), but
suffice to say that if a learner enters any learning activity with little to no natural curiosity,
prospects for meaningful interaction with texts, media, and specific tasks are bleak.
4. A variety of learning models are used
Inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, direct instruction, peer-to-peer learning, school-
to-school, eLearning, Mobile learning, the flipped classroom, and on and on—the possibilities is
endless. Chances are, none are incredible enough to suit every bit of content, curriculum, and
learner diversity in your classroom. A characteristic of a highly-effective classroom, then, is
diversity here, which also has the side-effect of improving your long-term capacity as an
educator.
5. Classroom learning ’empties’ into a connected community
In a highly-effective learning environment, learning doesn’t need to be radically repackaged to
make sense in the ‘real world,’ but starts and ends there as great as it sounds for learners to reflect on Shakespeare to better understand their Uncle
Eddie—and they might—depending on that kind of radical transfer to happen entirely in the
minds of the learners by design may not be the best idea. Plan on this kind of transfer from the
beginning; it has to leave the classroom because they do.
6. Learning is personalized by a variety of criteria
Personalized learning is likely the future, but for now, the onus for routing students is almost
entirely on the shoulders of the classroom teacher. This makes personalization—and even
consistent differentiation—a challenge.
7. Assessment is persistent, authentic, transparent, and never punitive
Assessment is just an (often ham-fisted) attempt to get at what a learner understands. The more
infrequent, clinical, murky, or threatening it is, the more you’re going to separate the ‘good
students’ from the ‘good thinkers.’ And the ‘clinical’ idea has less to do with the format of the
test, and more to do with the tone and emotion of the classroom in general.
NatalieR answered the question on February 11, 2022 at 12:10