“We talk about strengths and challenges: ‘Every student has those. What are those for you?’ [Students] get so used to everybody needing something different to be successful that it doesn’t necessarily faze them.”
Teacher from Gateway Public Schools88
What Students Need
Just as an effective secondary school curriculum must take into account the needs and interests of students themselves, so too the pedagogy—how the curriculum is taught—must be personalized and student-centered. The factory-model school assumes that all students learn in the same way, and if they do not, then they ought to be separated into different classrooms or tracks to be taught different material, which usually results in marginalized students receiving a lower-quality curriculum from less experienced teachers without a greater benefit to students with stronger academic skills.89
Student-centered pedagogy begins with structures that allow teachers to know students and their learning strategies well; takes place in a safe, inclusive school and classroom culture; values students’ identities and cultures; and enacts an authentic curriculum that is meaningful to students. All of these elements help create the essential conditions for a young person to learn. A student-centered pedagogy goes one step further and recognizes that each student is a unique individual who learns in their own way and who needs individualized support to meet their full potential.
Key Practices
Multiple Pathways to Learning
The more we know about how people learn, the more we understand that teaching must account for individual differences. While there are some common aspects of the developmental process, every human brain is different and develops in its own way.90 Students have different pathways and approaches to learning that enable them to process information and to make sense of their experiences. One out of every eight American children is identified as having “learning disabilities”—not because huge numbers of our young people are unable to function, but because they, like many other students who are not so labeled, have distinct learning needs.91 We now understand that the traditional classroom, with a teacher in the front of the room lecturing to rows of students, is ineffective if it is the only pathway to learning. Successful schools adjust their teaching modes to meet students where they are.
Psychologist Robert Glaser calls this kind of teaching an adaptive pedagogy. He argues that 21st-century schools must shift from a selective mode—“characterized by minimal variation in the conditions for learning” in which “a narrow range of instructional options and a limited number of ways to succeed are available”—to an adaptive mode in which “the educational environment can provide for a range of opportunities for success. Modes of teaching are adjusted to individuals—their backgrounds, talents, interests, and the nature of past performance.”92
Universal Design for Learning
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing pedagogy based on this scientific understanding of how people learn. (See Figure 6.) To create a learning environment in which all students can access meaningful learning, teachers start by considering different modes of engagement. How will the teacher motivate student interest, sustain student engagement, and facilitate productive strategies and self-assessment that enable self-regulation? What are the options that will support students to engage? Then teachers can offer multiple paths of representation, so students can understand new information, improve their language skills, and construct meaning and generate new understandings. And finally, teachers provide a range of opportunities for student action and expression, including physical actions using tools and different response methods; communication options; and supports for executive functions such as goal setting, planning, information processing, and monitoring progress. In each of these areas, teachers must offer multiple means for students to engage so that young people with different backgrounds, experiences, and histories with school can all access the curriculum.93
In the classroom, these approaches offer multiple instructional strategies that support active learning and give students different entry points to learning, allowing them to use what psychologist Howard Gardner calls their “multiple intelligences.”94 Teachers use diverse strategies ranging from whole class lecture and recitation to guided inquiry, small group work, discussions, independent work, projects, experiments, book and internet research, constructions of models and products, use of technology, and the arts for accessing and expressing ideas. This gives students multiple ways to hook into the content and understand the concepts being taught.
Teachers also use multiple representations of ideas that are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic; identify leveled texts and e-books that can adjust fonts and input modalities; and allow students to express their ideas in a variety of ways. These and other approaches allow greater access for students with identified learning differences and for English learners in mainstream classroom settings, and they also help all students learn more effectively.
In a student-centered pedagogy, teachers not only use multiple approaches, but they also help students understand which learning approaches work best for them. When students develop metacognition, or an understanding of their own thought processes and how their brain best operates, they can take ownership of their own learning, making adjustments and advocating for what they need to succeed. A teacher with Gateway Public Schools in San Francisco—a school initially launched for students identified with disabilities—explains, “We talk about strengths and challenges. ‘Every student has those, what are those for you?’” Then, she says, students “get so used to everybody needing something different to be successful that it doesn’t necessarily faze them.”95
Figure 6. Universal Design for Learning Framework
Source: CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning guidelines version 2.2 [Graphic organizer].
Additional Classroom Supports
Traditional secondary schools often assume that the only way to support students with different needs or skill levels is to separate them into different tracks. Unlike grouping for instruction that occurs for specific purposes and changes as needed, tracking predetermines learning opportunities for many years, including students’ options after high school. It is very difficult to create an identity-safe, inclusive school climate when the course schedule itself separates students into “higher” and “lower” achievers. Students in lower tracks understand these nuances and get the message quite clearly that they are not expected to achieve at high levels. Effective schools ensure that as many courses as possible have a heterogenous mix of students and provide rigorous coursework to everyone, along with extra support for students who need it.
Intentionally inclusive schools like Bronxdale High School 96 in New York City and Gateway Public Schools 97 illustrate how to provide access to a rigorous project-based curriculum to a wide range of students of varying initial achievement levels, including those with identified learning disabilities, without segregation or tracking. In addition to the strategies previously identified, they often use coteaching, where there are two teachers in inclusion classrooms, one trained in special education, to plan curriculum jointly and support the wide-ranging needs of learners.
The Internationals Network for Public Schools98 illustrates how to provide in-class supports for English learners at the secondary level. This group of schools serves newcomers who have not yet learned English in rigorous college preparatory pathways by integrating language development into every content-area course, so students engage with academics while learning English and also maintaining and developing their native language skills. Multilingualism is viewed as an asset rather than a barrier to engaging with challenging curriculum. Teachers in Internationals schools plan together and use many of the curricular and instructional strategies described in this publication: project-based curriculum rooted in collaboration and multiple forms of engagement, representation, and expression (including the use of tools like Google Translate). They accomplish this with specialized teaching in the core classroom, rather than in a tracking system that reduces access to challenging content. Their work has shown that when adolescent English learner students are supported effectively, they do well in high school and are well prepared for college and careers. (See “In Practice: Project-Based Learning” in Feature 4: Deeper Learning Curriculum.)
Supports Beyond the Classroom
High-Quality, High-Intensity Tutoring. One of the most useful and equity-enhancing interventions on top of good teaching is high-quality, high-intensity tutoring. Studies have shown that when done well, high-intensity tutoring can produce significant gains in student skill level, catching students up and allowing them to move ahead in a matter of weeks rather than years.99 Effective tutoring cannot be accomplished by a rotating group of untrained volunteers, or by infrequent or inconsistent sessions. Effective tutors can include credentialed teachers, paraprofessionals, or knowledgeable volunteers who have received significant training. Studies suggest that effective programs organize tutors to work with students at least three times per week for 30 minutes or more, in groups of five or fewer.100 When tutoring is aligned with what is happening in the classroom, students can apply their new skills and experience success that builds on itself.
Successful secondary schools often make time for tutoring opportunities in extra “lab” or support periods available to all students—sometimes attached to specific courses, such as Algebra or Physics, and sometimes as part of a resource room open regularly to all. They may also arrange for after-school tutoring or support time, Saturday school options, or online tutoring options from trained volunteers, teachers, paraprofessionals, or more advanced students.
Blended Learning. As difficult as the COVID-19 pandemic was for students, families, and educators, it had a silver lining: Public schools dramatically increased their capacity in terms of technology and online learning. For decades, these tools have been used effectively in conjunction with quality in-person instruction to provide some students with more robust learning opportunities that are tailored to their needs. Now it is clear that these opportunities must be available to all. Blended learning, or hybrid learning, refers to models where classroom learning is supplemented by asynchronous online course components that give students control over the pace and direction of their own learning. At the high school level, a simple example is moving teacher lectures to videos that students can watch on their own time and at their own pace, allowing class time to be used for more in-depth interactive and inquiry-based activities, as well as expert guidance from teachers. Independent online learning can allow students to do anything from practicing basic skills to engaging in complex research projects.
Recent research on technology-supported learning has found that well-designed blended instruction can be more effective than in-classroom learning alone when it:
- Combines in-person and asynchronous instruction in strategic ways that allow students to engage deeply with both the subject matter and teachers or groups of peers. The more intense the interaction among students, teachers, and interactive content, the deeper the learning.
- Gives students control over how they engage with online content. Students do better when they can go at their own pace, on their own time; when they have some choice over their learning strategies; and when materials enable them to engage deeply and critically with course content.
- Provides high-quality interactive multimedia materials. For example, students whose teachers integrated the use of the Pathways to Freedom Electronic Field Trips—an online collection of interactive activities designed by Maryland Public Television—in their teaching about slavery and the Underground Railroad outperformed those who had the same unit without these materials. Science students who used a virtual web-based science lab, which allowed them to conduct virtual experiments while teachers observed student work and corrected errors online, outperformed those who did an in-person manual science lab. Special education students who used a web-based program that supports writing in action (by prompting attention to the topical organization and structure of ideas during the planning and composing phases of writing) outperformed those who had the same materials in hard copy in the classroom.
- Provides opportunities for formative feedback, reflection, and revision: for example, offering resources for further practice and research when students answer an item incorrectly, providing prompts for students to reflect on their problem-solving activities or provide explanations regarding their work, or asking questions as students design studies to support their thinking processes.101
Explicit Teaching and Scaffolding
Teachers in effective schools work to ensure that students are taught the skills they need to develop and will be expected to apply. Instead of reducing the demands of the curriculum, the schools use formative assessments to understand what skills students already have and then construct a curriculum that explicitly teaches students how to study, how to approach academic tasks, how to read and write at a college level, and how to evaluate their own and others’ work. This requires that teachers be conscious about teaching the skills needed to enable student success.
Explicit Teaching of Academic, Social, and Emotional Skills. The explicit teaching of academic, social, and emotional skills is especially important in high school. Much high school teaching assumes that students have already mastered advanced skills in reading, writing, and inquiry. Yet many 9th-graders are underprepared for high school. Some can only read at a basic level; are quickly swamped by the demands of serious academic texts; and do not know how to conduct research, synthesize information, or plan and structure a paper, experiment, or project. When students’ skill gaps are not addressed, they often feel like a failure and begin to opt out. Effective high schools support less-skilled students to succeed not by offering a dumbed-down curriculum in a lower track, but by redesigning to make time and space for explicitly teaching the skills they need. This may occur within the core classroom, in special lab courses attached to rigorous classes in a separate period, in resource room settings, through online supports, or in small group tutoring contexts during or after the school day.
Effective schools also integrate social, emotional, and cognitive skills into instruction, explicitly providing instruction in how to recognize, name, and work through emotions, including anxiety about academic tasks and other school happenings; how to work collaboratively with others; how to engage in productive struggle toward learning and to persevere when challenges are encountered; and how to develop a growth mindset by seeing the process of feedback and revision as an opportunity, not a threat or a failure.
Scaffolding. In addition to teaching skills, student-centered teachers also provide careful scaffolding for student tasks. Instead of simply assigning students a research paper, for example, they lead students through a step-by-step process, from framing a question to finding sources to taking notes to developing a thesis to outlining to writing and editing, which leads them to a high-quality finished product. Students with different skill levels or learning needs receive different kinds of scaffolding. For example, a student who has never written a research paper before might be given model thesis statements from which to select and helped to write an outline for the paper, while a more experienced classmate might be expected to develop their own original thesis and outline.102
One way to scaffold learning is through well-designed group work. Such collaborative learning starts with the design of “group-worthy tasks” that require different kinds of skills and abilities, and it is implemented through roles that support distributed expertise among the members. The learning process is often further structured through a set of questions or activity guides that provide substantial scaffolding, and it is accompanied by active peer and teacher coaching and assistance. Groups may present their findings or products and are taught to reflect on the work itself and on their group processes using rubrics that are themselves a form of intellectual scaffolding. This combination of factors, when applied to authentic, open-ended tasks, enables what educators Elizabeth Cohen and Rachel Lotan call complex instruction, an approach that has been found to support increased achievement that is also more equitably distributed.103
Feedback and Revision
Another important characteristic of schools with a student-centered pedagogy is a learning environment in which teachers are aware of what students are thinking, and where the curriculum does not move on when students do not learn immediately. Unlike the traditional “teach, test, and hope for the best” approach, student-centered teachers do not say, “You got a C- on this assignment” and then move on to the next unit without looking back. Just as mastery is developed in the real world—whether by an Olympic skater, a musician, an athlete, or a scholar—work is structured so that students have the opportunity to tackle difficult tasks by iterating toward excellence.
Culture of Revision and Redemption. Teachers construct a culture of revision and redemption that encourages students to attempt challenging work, provides continual opportunities for practice and revision, and supports students in developing the courage and confidence to work continuously to improve in their successive efforts. Within the guidelines of a performance assessment system (see Feature 6: Authentic Assessment), students can revise a piece of work again and again until it becomes better, and it becomes better still, finally meeting the standards the school has set.
Feedback. A student-centered pedagogy also establishes regular feedback among members of the classroom community as a gift. For example, students might be expected to read one another’s essay drafts and provide comments using a rubric that identifies key features of quality. In this way, students internalize standards and begin to apply them to their work on a regular basis. At the end of a lesson, a teacher might ask students to provide feedback on what they learned or which parts of the lesson worked more or less well for them. Periodically a teacher might host a community circle to discuss the effectiveness of the class. Soliciting feedback in multiple ways elevates student voice in the classroom and creates a culture in which everyone is always learning, including the teacher.
Educators who have worked to implement a student-centered pedagogy will understand quite well that it is very challenging to do so unless the school is already redesigned to support this kind of learning. If a teacher has a pupil load of 150 students or more, it will be more difficult to provide individualized scaffolds or ask students to do multiple revisions of a piece of work based on feedback. If the school uses pacing guides based on the expectation that the teacher’s role is to “give a chapter, give a test, give a grade,” teachers will feel there is no time to offer meaningful performance tasks that can guide a deeper learning process. If a school’s culture is not safe and inclusive, students will be less able to focus on the in-depth thinking and effort that challenging work requires. If teachers do not have time for collaboration and professional development, they may not know how to adjust their instruction to meet students’ needs. The features described here do not operate in isolation but rather build on one another to create environments in which all young people can thrive.
School Profile: Teaching So That All Students Can Learn at Gateway Public Schools
Additional Resources
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This resource describes six scaffolding strategies that practitioners can use to support student learning: (1) show and tell; (2) tap into prior knowledge; (3) provide time to talk; (4) pre-teach vocabulary; (5) use visual aids; and (6) pause, ask questions, pause, review.
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