Instruction is designed and facilitated with a balance of diverse research-based practices and philosophical frameworks such as:
Active Learning
Center for Educational Innovation, Center for Teaching Innovation at Vanderbilt University, and Yale Center for Teaching & Learning suggest that how you facilitate the process, each step, is what activates the learning. Activities that propel participation are centered in the instructional design and facilitation, whether they are specific or open ended it is that actions students take.
Activities:
- Invite students to participate in learning
- Involve learning by doing
- Developing conceptual awareness
- Supports meta-cognition or self-awareness of one’s own knowledge and learning
- Applying knowledge through experience
- Transfer skills across contexts
- Support Bloom’s Taxonomy, moving from remembering and understanding to analyzing and creating
Concept , Inquiry-driven, Project-based Learning
- Emphasizes the student’s role in the learning process.
- Students are encouraged to explore the material, ask questions, share ideas, make active decisions, think critically, and take lead
- Inquiry or the posing of questions/problems/scenarios drive student learning rather then telling students what to think. Various inquiry tools are utilized: confirmation inquiry, structured inquiry, guided inquiry, open inquiry
- Students work for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, complex question, problem, or challenge, often with basis in the real world
- Students continuously ask questions, seek resources, apply information
- Students work through questions, develop answers, develop deep understanding, and construct knowledge through projects
- Projects are not audio didactic discussions with add-on posters, art activities community engagements; projects are integrative and co-curricular; the theme or concept organizes the sequence of activities but diverse fields of expertise overlap and are resources as well as used and applications of creating and doing projects
- Students focus on essential and meaningful key concepts and principles which are “building blocks of meaning,” and help students:
- Understand rather than memorize
- Retain ideas and facts longer because they are more meaningful
- Make connections between subjects and facets of a single subject
- Relate ideas to their own lives 5.Build networks of meaning for effectively dealing with future knowledge
Multi-sensory learning & Multiple Intelligences
- Teaching that involves the activation of the various senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile.
- Designs content through diverse access points for all styles of learning styles including visual, kinsethetic, tactile, auditory, interepersonal, interpersonal, mathematical, scientific, etc.
- Supported by research and modeled in cognitive neurosciences, physiology, and work in diverse fields such as Occupational Therapy: it includes an understanding of the relationship between our mental processes, physiological processes, sensory integration and perception, and more!
- Best-practices research in teaching reading and mathematics include multi-sensory approaches because of the way in which words and numbers serves as semiotic stand-ins for visual-spatial concepts.
- Many evidence-based programs designed to support students with Dyslexia, Autism, Communication differences, etc. are based on research on multi-sensory learning. Classrooms that are use multi-sensory techniques as part of instruction, routines, norms are more inclusive of diverse learners.
Universal Design Learning
- Research-driven framework
- Inequity for low-income students, ELLs, students with disabilities is not merely unequal access to rigor but an understanding that inequity can be created by the structures, systems, approaches themselves. By creating instruction and programing that is designed inherently with multiple access points, or differentiation, designing instruction so it meant for many differently users we say it is equitable-by-design.
- UDL is an educational research adn practice platform, that is now also supported in some policy. It is rooted in architectural school of thought that unpacked the ways physical spaces are design – in terms of accessibility – literally how do these structures make it functional or dysfunctional for different bodies, personhoods, abilities.
- UDL asks us to design instruction inclusive of multiple means: 1. of Representation or means to deliver information 2. of Action and Expression: various ways for students to actively construct and demonstrate understanding 3. of Engagement: learning activities that optimize individual choice, autonomy, are authentic, and as a result, are motivating and engaging
- UDL is easily incorporated into Active Learning methods.
Scaffolding
- Scaffolding means chunking more complicated ideas and skills into smaller steps. The steps are sequenced towards larger skills or concepts which require the prior knowledge. It is like building a ladder towards larger goals. For example, developing techniques for balancing on ice skates may be needed or a useful tool before getting to the goal of completing a triple axle on ice skates. With a deep strength and confidence in keeping balanced, one can tackle other techniques and do them with more grace, efficacy, and independence.
- It is NOT making tasks easier. Even though its “broken down,” it is more cognitively valuable and EQUITABLE. Students can’t just skip understanding or mastery, copy/regurgitate like a worker bee. They must interlinear, embody, meta-cognate, and apply.
- They internalize competencies allowing them to apply it to more difficult work with increasing independence. You are “meeting students where they are” without limiting them to that.
Scaffolding creates a real opportunity to pull students along their ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) as described by Developmental Psychologist Vygotsky. Simply, every person has a starting point (where they are at in terms of knowledge, skills, and understandings) and then a unique trajectory of growth. Scaffolds ensure that students ‘get it’ along the journey. Your providing a tool of deep conceptual or skill development that can be applied and generalized.
Little Scaffolding
Little Scaffolding means metacognating on what steps or concepts are required to understand or do something. The large goal is achieved by breaking concepts or skills into smaller steps so that it is not only more digestible but in so you have the competencies needed to perform subsequent steps.
Big Scaffolding
Little Big scaffolds get chunked together in a sequence that is one lesson/activity/program. Bigger scaffolding is the sequencing of the smaller exercises/projects in order to develop increasingly more complex applications and opportunities to practice the larger goals. Often, we may talk about task analysis in terms of making smaller steps very clearly outlined and named for students; this is often considered a reserved tool for students struggling with executive functioning. However, naming the steps can help all students and the teacher meta-cognate, ‘own’ their own learning, retain and apply it to other contexts.
Arts-integration
• Learning happens through the artistic and creative process; through making and ding and playing with materials and ideas
• Students study arts-specific content AND the content of other subjects simultaneously
•Evolving needs of both or all subjects are met
•Creative process connects or supports connections between the art form and other subjects
•Students make connections between an art form and another subject
•Research includes: Silverstein & Layne (2010), and Diez & McKenna (2017)
•Participants construct and demonstrate understanding through the creative process
Interdisciplinary/ Multidisciplinary Instruction
Course structure and content is taught weaving together elements of multiple domains. It is a comprehensive method covering a theme, ideas, topics by integrating multiple knowledge domains. Boundaries of traditionally defined discipline or curriculum are crossed, as understandings, concepts, techniques, practices from each domain are incorporated into the learning activities.
Knowledge is understood as intersectional, deep, overlapping and integrative in nature. This way of thinking about knowledge is also tied to respecting and integrated diverse ways of knowing and thinking about learning. This is tied to cultural and ability responsiveness. With interdisciplinary models, constructivist frameworks are more easily manifested in practice. Because knowledge and undertanding is about making and continually uncovering connections and intersections, as well as gaps therein. Interdisciplinary approaches often inherently overlap with project-base methodologies. Where the focus is on deeper understandings, cognitive and socio-emotional skills, sustained learning, and on going process. Since interdisciplinary approaches ‘borrow’ methodologies and means of different disciplines, there is an inherent acknowledgment and respect for different kinds of knowing and understanding. No subject is privlidged, rather each subject is valued for different kinds of opportunities, information, ways of understanding, accessing and making understandings visible.
Constructivism
In short, Constructivism is a learning-teaching and developmental psychology framework. In this framework, teachers embody a deep respect for each learner as well as the learning community(ies) as a whole. The framework acknowledges that each learner has their own unique knowledge. Every learner is capable of engaging with knowledge, but also in creating and contributing to the construction of knowledge. This means learners of all kinds have agency and are treated as such. This does not erase differences in experience, access, ability, etc. Conversely it elevates and leverages our diverse realities as wisdoms and the opportunities pluralistic thinking offers. These truths are part of the learners knowledge. It situates a dedication to actively creating and shaping environments which ensure all learners can move across their unique learning trajectories in ways that are meaningful within in their own ways of understanding, that different learners may come to different understandings, and ensures that each learner has access to meaningful opportunities to expand and shift their understandings. The framework acknowledges and respects that learners’ have understanding and knowledge based on their own experiences prior to entering school and outside of school, as well as within the “classroom” in what ever way classrooms manifest. It respects that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiencing things and reflecting, reconciling it with prior ideas and experiences, allowing ones own ideas to change or choosing to discard new information as irrelevant. Constructivism says that we are or are capable of being active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, engage in active learning, share, reflect, and assess what we know individually and together. We must also create opportunities that support and nurture agency. Constructivists allow for many different teaching practices and methods, as it is a framework not a script. Generally speaking though, student voice and participation is valued and centered throughout the process. This does not mean teachers don’t share knowledge but rather it also acknowledges that teachers bring unique knowledge into the shared space; it does not mean students teach themselves nor that teachers are the sole producers and distributors of knowing. Teachers still purposefully design the social environment. However, student interest, questions, conceptions co-guide or direct and redirect the process, and are centered as core considerations in the design process. Knowledge is developed through iterative process together with students. Teachers take the position of guide/facilitator/curator of opportunities to engage students in and with knowledge and understanding. Generally, active techniques support experimenting, solving real-world problem solving, inquiring, creating, making learning visible, applying understandings, and continually enhancing and building on understandings. Teachers make sure they understand the students’ preexisting conceptions and guide students to build and expand on them. Students are also seen as teachers. The teachers job is to pull students along their unique trajectories through the social-learning contexts.
Play
Play is another way to talk about inquiry. Inquiry happens through interactions that aim to stretch thinking to higher levels. Play requires the use of multiple senses to convey thoughts and emotions, to explore the and understand environment, connect prior understandings with new ones, to test out new knowledge and theories. Play is reenacting experiences to solidify understanding. And it is here where children first learn and express symbolic thought, a necessary precursor to literacy. Play includes the primary forms of storytelling, negotiating with peers, problem-solving, improvising. Play involves working with and through the the limitations and possibility of of materials and contexts. Play is the foundation of and for symbolic reasoning. Play motivates and stimulates development and acquisition of skills, concepts, language, communication executive functioning, and emotional literacy. Play is exploration and discovery, application of knowledge with flexibility and higher-level thinking. Play is creativity. Art can be one way to play intelligently. Play can support intellectual and socio-emotional maturity. The power of play can be leveraged for all ages and learners.
Making Learning Visible & Tangible
Many classrooms and research programs inspired by the innovative educational philosophies of Reggio Emilia, understand that documentation does not merely serve for display of product but as a tool and strategy for propelling deeper learning. The collection of visual ‘data’ or artifacts of the learning process can support both students and teacher in meta-cognating, thinking about inquiry and ones own understandings. The documentation, an embedded, empirical, holistic assessment, allows teachers to look beyond the surface to understand who their students are, what they come to know, and how they come to know it. In many ways this methodology, reduces the subjectivity of a single person’s or a singular methodology of analysis and interpretation. Artifacts of learning are used within, during, and often retooled for use throughout the learning process. Artifacts may include visual anchors, project exemplars, tangible tools manipulated by students, photographs of students creating, elements of projects throughout the process, videos of student work, and much more. Artifacts provide a cognitive substrate for students meta-cognition, for deeper investigation, as well as for the teacher to track and observe deeply what students are learning over time. The artifacts within the classroom are both the relics and living tools of learning.
Creative Integrative Teaching
Creative Integrative Teaching incorporates elements of all of these best practices to create a deep integrative neuro-developmentaly rich, culturally responsive, and ability empowering approaches to teaching and learning.
See more on the Arts & Movement Integration page and the Creative Integrative Teaching (c)