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Sal Khan: Let's teach for mastery -- not test scores

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Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven't always grasped the basics? Yes, it's complicated, but educator Sal Khan shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.

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Synthesis of Researchon the Effects ofMastery Learning inElementary and SecondaryClassrooms 

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Synthesis of Researchon the Effects ofMastery Learning inElementary and SecondaryClassrooms 

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How Can I Implement the Mastery Learning Model in my Classroom?

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How Can I Implement the Mastery Learning Model in my Classroom?

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Mastery Learning is a model where students are expected to master a learning objective or goal, before they can move on to the next goal. This is a model that was first described in the 1960's and has been proven effective by many researchers.
Process
In a mastery learning classroom, teachers break up their curriculum into a series of skills or instructional units. The teacher will usually teach a topic, and then conduct an evaluation to record each student's understanding of that unit. Next, students who have mastered the unit go on to do enrichment activities while the students who didn't achieve their goals are given additional opportunity to practice their skills.
Benefits
The mastery learning model has been found to be beneficial in many settings. It allows struggling students an opportunity to master critical concepts before new content is introduced. At the same time, it provides a challenge for high achieving students. This style of education allows gifted students to accelerate through the program and move on to either the next level (year) or to engage in extension studies which will broaden their understanding of the subject.

The model also allows for an individual learning pace. In addition, feedback that is given during this process is helpful for the student. This model stands for the fact that every learner can learn if given the time and the right learning environment.
Strategies
Even though, you may not be an expert in mastery learning, you can implement this concept in your classroom with these simple ideas and strategies.

Take time to plan your curriculum and break it down into units. Write down learning goals or objectives for each unit. Ensure that the units are planned in a sequential manner, and adequate time is given to develop critical skills.

The next step is to plan how you will evaluate these skills. Formative assessment strategies can be used to develop an effective assessment.

For those students who are able to show mastery of the learning goals, you can use enrichment activities to take their learning further. Some ideas are games that require the students to practice their skills, working in pairs on problems or research, group projects etc.

For those students who are unable to achieve their goals, plan activities that will help them further practice their skills. Keep in mind that this set of activities are different from the initial instruction method. This helps accommodate a greater range of learning styles. Provide additional learning materials and activities that allow for visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners. After providing sufficient time and opportunity, retest for mastery of skills.

Flipped classrooms are a new strategy that can be used with mastery learning. Here students listen to lectures at home, and come to the classroom to interact with the teacher on those subjects. Online tests can be done to test mastery even before the student enters the classroom.

Computers, the internet and the use of technology in the classroom has made mastery learning easier and more practical today, compared to a couple of decades ago.
Learn More... Take a course
Discuss Here: What are some aspects of the mastery learning model that you are already using in your classroom?

About PLB

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How can I Implement the Mastery Learning Model in my Classroom?

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The mastery learning model has been found to be beneficial in many settings. It allows struggling students an opportunity to master critical concepts before new content is introduced. At the same time, it provides a challenge for high achieving students.

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Using Mastery Learning for Success with Difficult Students

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Using Mastery Learning for Success with Difficult Students

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I tried every trick in the book: framing the lesson, detailed instructions, hands-on learning, proximity, hand signals, rewards, punishment, and ultimatums -- all to no avail. My middle school Spanish students continued to want to chat, throw paper airplanes, get out of their seats, and disrupt instruction. Only two things that seemed to work in getting my students to pay attention were total physical response (TPR) and worksheets.

I was in a quandary because I couldn't do TPR all the time and I only do worksheets as a last resort- though I was reaching that point very quickly.

In taking inventory of the situation (called reflection), I realized that several of the students already had Spanish language skills, and that these were some of the ring leaders of classroom disruption. Rather than let their energies be used to disrupt the class, I decided to enlist their aid in helping the students learn in Spanish. This takes some trust and certainly is a risk.

Defining Mastery Learning

I couldn't have them doing my job of teaching, but I could have them help the student to gain mastery over Spanish basics that I had already taught through a system called mastery learning.

So what is mastery learning? The concept is simple: Students master concepts and skills before going onto other learning. How do you know they mastered it? You give them tests. If they do not reach mastery, then they go back and study and take the test again until they pass it. Benjamin Bloom, of Bloom's Taxonomy fame, came up with mastery learning in 1971. This was a time when leveled readers became popular, as well as many other "go at your own pace" programs.

I had noticed that because of the unruly nature of my Spanish classes, a large portion of students had not mastered some of the real basics of Spanish using traditional methods. I also discovered that some of the basic concepts of Spanish that they should have learned the year before had not been learned. I realize that part of the difficulty is that I am teaching a high school level course in middle school, and the other part is that learning languages is not easy, no matter what age.

In the Classroom

The first thing I did was to find basic explanations of Spanish concepts and put them in study sheets that my Spanish speaking helpers could help the students understand as they individually reviewed the information. Using the mastery-learning concept, I engaged these Spanish speakers to help small groups of students in my class (no more than five) to master concrete concepts such as plural of nouns, verb agreement, and subject pronouns. They read through the sheets and they looked at the examples together.

The Spanish speaking helper would ask "checking for understanding" questions and once they felt their small group was ready, they would administer a small quiz on that subject. The students would retake the quiz until they got one hundred percent correct.

Students keep track of their progress on a chart they have in their binders. For extra motivation, I made charts with their student numbers and placed them on the wall and would fill in a square for each concept mastered.

After five concepts mastered, the students get certificates of mastery. Twice a week the class time is dedicated to mastery learning while the other three days I focus on conversation, vocabulary development, and pronunciation.

Refocusing the effort of my Spanish-speaking students using mastery learning has made all the difference. I am happy to report that the misbehavior was curbed to a great extent and the students were able to focus on learning Spanish once again. What are your successes with mastery learning?

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Using Mastery Learning for Success with Difficult Students

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I tried every trick in the book: framing the lesson, detailed instructions, hands-on learning, proximity, hand signals, rewards, punishment, and ultimatums -- all to no avail. My middle school Spanish students continued to want to chat, throw paper airplanes, get out of their seats, and disrupt instruction.

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What is Mastery Learning? A Different Approach to Learning

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What is Mastery Learning? A Different Approach to Learning

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A lot of students are bad at math, science, languages, and so on. Once they can't master an exercise or solve a math problem, they give up. They think they are just not born for math. But that is the wrong mindset. Not being able to master a course isn't fixed.

Yes, some students are slower in mastering courses and solving exercises than others, but that doesn't mean they can't learn it. That there's nothing that can be done about it.

Today, learning happens in a classroom, with a lot of other students. The teacher teaches a lesson and goes on to the next one. If a student can't master that lesson or learning material, there are many ways schools try to support those students to catch up. But since every student is more or less on the same time schedule, there's only so much you can do. At some point, you have to move on to the next topic. Those that weren't able to catch up, will struggle more and more, and eventually fall so far behind it becomes impossible to catch up. They become the students that " just aren't that good at X ".

Mastery learning aims to change that, primarily by letting go of the concept that everyone is on the same time schedule. It requires more differentiated learning, giving students more time to go over the learning material, giving them extra explanation and support. What would happen then? Yes, he would eventually also master the learning material, just like anybody else. He got there! Does it matter how long it took to get there? Or that he had some trouble on his way up?

That's what the mastery learning method is about. In this blog post I'll explain you what it stands for, why this way of learning is so important, why the method failed in the past and why it's now finally achievable. Let's dig in!

What is mastery learning?

Here's how you could explain it. Take a look at learning karate. You start from a white belt. And only when you master those beginner skills, you move on to the yellow belt. That's just the way it goes. And it's the same with learning how to play an instrument.

Mastery learning focusses on mastering a topic before you move on to a more advanced one. That sounds logical, right?

Well, it's absolutely not what we're doing in schools today. We group students together, usually by age and perceived ability and we put them all together at the same pace. Teachers have to follow the curriculum and have to get everything done in one year. I like to think of it as a train. Everyone needs to keep up, because the train rides on.

Students who have difficulties with a topic, will typically continue to have difficulties with related topics in the future. A student has to master the basics of a course first, before he can build upon that knowledge. Students who fall behind at some point, risk becoming (or even self-identify as) "the weak student". Self identifying as "bad at X" is particularly worrisome because it's indicative of a closed mindset and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it aren't only the "weak" students that get more and more behind. Even the students who get 80% on their tests still didn't master 20% of the learning material. So what happens with that 20%? Eventually, those students are also getting stuck somewhere because they need some knowledge of that 20% to move on. This way students start to disengage.

Today's school system

We all know how our school system works. Why is it so different from the work place? If you didn't notice the different mindset, take a look at the following example, explained by Sal Khan from Khan academy.

Sal makes the analogy with construction. Bring in a contractor and say, "We were told we have two weeks to build a foundation. Do what you can."

So the workmen do what they can. Maybe it rains, maybe some of the supplies don't show up. After two weeks the inspector comes to check on the foundation and says "Ok, the concrete is still wet right over here, and that part's not quite up to code. I'll give it an 80%."

Then you say, "Great! That's quite good. Let's build the first floor." And so does the story goes on. After the 4th floor the whole structure just collapses.

It's not the fault of the contractor, or that you needed better or more frequent inspection. Just like it's not the fault of the teacher. Here's what really happened: the whole process is broken. We build right on top of al those little gaps because we didn't have enough time. Because the train rides on.

Is mastery based learning impractical?

The mastery approach suggests that every student is on his own track. So how can this possibly work in a classroom? Education would have to be personalized, you'd have to have private tutors and different worksheets for every student.

It sounds really new and impractical, but the truth is, that 100 years ago, there already were experiments where they did mastery-based learning and saw great results. They also said it would never scale because it was logistically difficult and impractical.

But that's not an argument that holds anymore. We live in a digital age where everything is possible because of new technologies.

Students can see an explanation at their own time and pace because of on-demand video. When a student needs to practice and get feedback, you can use adaptive exercises like the ones you make with BookWidgets. We now having learning dashboards that help teachers see patterns and flaws in the learning material, or identify which students are struggling and falling behind. I'm convinced that future advances in artificial intelligence will support teachers even more and turn personalized learning into "the new normal".

Because of this, students can finally master the concepts while building a growth mindset, grit, perseverance and taking agency over their learning. The classroom changes too. Students don't have to focus anymore on the lecture. They can now interact with each other and get a deeper mastery over the material.

Is the mastery learning model still difficult to understand? Maybe this video from Sal Khan might help you to master it. Can you see what I'm doing here? ;)

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What is Mastery learning? A different approach to learning

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A lot of students are bad at math, science, languages, and so on. Once they can't master an exercise or solve a math problem, they give up. They think they are just not born for math. But that is the wrong mindset. Not being able to master a course isn't fixed.

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Mastery learning methods suggest that the focus of instruction should be the time required for different students to learn the same material and achieve the same level of mastery. This is very much in contrast with classic models of teaching, which focus more on differences in students' ability and where all students are given approximately the same amount of time to learn and the same set of instructions.

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Five Key Lessons for Mastery Learning Startup

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Five Key Lessons for Mastery Learning Startup

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As I see it, the biggest challenge we face in American public schools today is this: we've got an antiquated factory-based school model, and a workforce that has proven particularly effective in implementation. Let's face it: most of us were taught this way as students, and most of us were trained this way as teachers. I among.

For the last several years, I have had the opportunity to serve as the Mastery Learning Specialist at the School District of Philadelphia, a position made possible by the Carnegie Corporation's vanguard school design grant, Opportunity by Design. The grant afforded us as a design team a full year to engage in deep research, scan the field, visit exemplary school sites, talk with stakeholders, design, get feedback from experts, reflect, and iterate on our work.

The experience was transformative. Out of this collaborative design experience have emerged multiple open admission, competency-based schools in Philadelphia, and an open-source competency model, designed and developed as a collaboration between the School District of Philadelphia and nonprofit partner, Building 21. We call it the Learning What Matters Competency Model. The LWM Competency Model has been described by experts as "a major contribution to the field," and "one of the strongest, personalized, competency-based models in conception." I share that not to boast, but to say, we took the work very seriously, we were set up for success by the resources invested in the project, and we are now keen to explore opportunities to share the model broadly and invite others to improve, and build upon, the work.

I have come to believe that if you are serious about innovation in education generally, and about transforming outcomes for historically underserved youth specifically, you've got to study up on competency-based education (CBE). In every way, CBE challenges the dominant pedagogical model of our American public schools and the assumptions on which it is based. It embodies the principles that I believe must guide and ground the work of redesigning our public schools.

Competency-based education is, interestingly, both ancient and nascent. It is the core of our oldest apprenticeship models that span history and pre-date our formal schooling institutions, yet at the same time, it is an emergent and rapidly growing strand within our current education landscape. Schools and school networks are leading the way in practice. Funders are prioritizing "mastery-based" or competency-based (my preferred term) learning models. Many states are making significant shifts in policy in order to provide the flexibilities needed, such as removing seat-time mandates, rethinking the Carnegie credit as the time-based unit of learning, and exploring flexible promotion, crediting, and graduation pathways and policies. In other words, this is happening - and it's a powerful and important tide of change in our time.

Drawing from my experiences and observations over the last several years supporting three new competency-based school startups in one of the largest, poorest urban school districts in the United States, I submit to you five key lessons for mastery learning startup:

1. Understand the key shifts.

2. Define mastery, then build your policies around it.

3. Apply the 80/20 rule.

4. Stage the work; nail instruction and stakeholder communication.

5. Hire with care, and for a specific set of skills and dispositions.

1. Understand the key shifts.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of dedicating time to exploring together as a team, and reaching a shared conceptual understanding of, the key shifts of competency-based education. Specifically, what do these principles mean for our practice? This is the most important question, and it merits much deliberation as a team. The shifts are significant, and they can be difficult to navigate because they not only create new demands on teacher practice and performance, they require a different way of thinking about teaching and learning that diverges from today's K-12 norms.

So what are these key shifts in practice called for by CBE? The following table was constructed as a synthesis of the most significant shifts of CBE.

Understanding the Key Shifts:
The "From-Tos" of Competency-based Education

I've heard it summed up before quite elegantly: In contrast to traditional schools, in which "time is the constant, and learning is the variable," in competency-based learning models, "learning is the constant, and time is the variable."

So where to start? Let me share an open-source gold mine of resources for understanding competency-based learning more deeply, and for supporting your design and implementation efforts. Check out the "Mastery" page of reDesign's recently published Design Lab. This is the culmination of a knowledge-building projected funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and completed in partnership with Springpoint Schools, all aimed at "making mastery accessible" to educators across the field. It is stellar, and it is free!

You can also check out our ever-evolving LWM website to see a concrete competency education model, steal our competencies and rubrics (go for it!), or glance at our student handbook that explains the model in family-friendly language and visuals: www.competencytoolkit.org.

One of the reasons this early conceptual understanding is key among school leadership and faculty is that, in a new school model, you've got a critical first year to build buy-in among your stakeholders. If your teachers are not equipped with the tools for explaining and reinforcing the model for students and families, it's likely everyone is going to attempt it in their own way. I've witnessed the flurry of confusion that follows. A few suggestions for getting ahead of this challenge:

Create a mini rolodex of helpful analogies to draw from (e.g., Driver's License comparison for performance-based assessment; basketball scrimmage vs. game time for formative vs. summative, and so forth);

Develop a clearly defined lexicon that everyone is using purposefully (e.g., Glossary of Terms)

Define a consistent set of school-wide practices, norms, and visualizations to help students understand how learning happens in the new model (e.g., Check out Matchbook's GPS Learning Cycle - beautiful!)

There is an inherent tension in hiring teachers for school models that don't yet exist. If you can take everyone through a shared learning cycle of the key shifts in competency-based education and the implications they'll have for your team, you will be making a critical investment in your first year of implementation.

2. Define mastery, then build your policies around it.

If you scan the field, you'll notice that mastery means many different things to different folks. Some define mastery as "80%!" Some define mastery as "Advanced!" Others use the term mastery, but have not yet defined it. It is important to be clear, thoughtful, and I would argue, quantitative, when you define mastery. You'll want a consistent set of tools (rubrics, a rating system, scoring rules, and calibration protocols) for measuring it fairly and consistently, too. The tricky part is that you may not be able to arrive at your definition of mastery until you've walked through a number of prerequisite steps.

Are you up for a game of twenty questions? I share the following question set as an exercise in bringing clarity and specificity to your definition of mastery.
Defining Mastery
In our LWM model, we let the five key tenets of competency-based education and our reflections on work and life in the world be our guide to answering each of these questions. We spent months researching, reflecting, drafting, and revising before we finally landed on our definition of mastery.

A quick snapshot of our steps:

First, we designed competencies based on nationally valued standard sets ( Common Core, Next Generation Science, C3 Framework for Social Studies, and others) and structured them simply as groupings of related skills. We looked at every example set of competencies we could find, and largely based our design work on that of Great Schools Partnership graduation standards. We then drew on our team's expertise, and that of the advisors we engaged, to make decisions about adaptation.

We organized our competencies by subject area to keep it simple for stakeholders, even though most of our competencies are interdisciplinary. For example, we categorized "Argumentative Writing" under ELA, and "Data Analysis" under Science, even though in practice we expect to see interdisciplinary tasks and projects across learning spaces. Not only did this simplify our message to stakeholders, it also made mapping competencies to traditional courses easy, which we had to do in order to be in compliance with district and state policy.

Next, we built rubrics (we call "continua") for every one of our thirty-four academic and efficacy competencies, which are essentially student-facing learning progressions. Note that we built continua for competencies, rather than for performance tasks or assignments. This was a philosophical as well as a practical decision: we wanted our competencies to anchor every learning activity and assessment, and we also wanted teachers to be creative when designing tasks without having the endless burden of designing task-specific rubrics.

We decided to make our performance levels numerically match grade levels, and then decided that our performance levels would also serve as our rating system, such that if you earned a "9" on the continuum, this meant you were performing at a 9th grade level. We preserved grade levels (and matched performance levels) to make this familiar and simple for stakeholders: "If your grade level matches your performance level, you're on track!"

Our rubric construction was guided by the language of grade level standards as well as every exemplar, open-source rubric we could get our hands on. We refused the typical deficit language of rubrics (e.g., "what's missing"), and instead, crafted performance descriptors using developmental, student-facing language that kids could understand, and that both teachers and students could use on a daily basis. Check out Asia Society's work on Educating for Global Competence for another example of a similar appreciative approach. In essence, our rubrics were designed to serve as student-friendly learning progressions that would guide instruction, evaluation of learning (down to the skill level), feedback cycles, and revision of work.

Once we had our competencies, our rubrics, and our rating system, then we set our evidence requirements and finally defined mastery. In principle, mastery means demonstrating proficiency of skills in multiple ways and in multiple contexts. In practice, mastery means completing a quantified body of work at an overall performance level that matches a numerical threshold set for mastery at each grade/performance level.

For example, to show mastery within a 9th grade course, you need to demonstrate an average performance of "8.5" overall (an average of skill ratings) on all course competencies. The average is always a "best-of" for the evidence requirement. An illustration: if there are two required demonstrations of the competency, Lead a Scientific Investigation, and you submit four tasks over the term of the course, then only your top two are calculated as part of your overall performance so you're not penalized for what is ultimately your demonstrations of growth. It's important to note that, in our model, performance tasks are the only work products that contribute to a student's mastery portfolio. Everything else is simply in service of this mastery portfolio.

Here is an example of one of our science competencies, which is made up of six measurable skills. Based on ratings for the two required tasks, this 9th grade student has exceeded the minimum threshold of 8.5 for showing mastery at a 9th grade level (on this particular competency).

By redefining learning in terms of specific, measurable skills - rather than in terms of courses and units of time - schools are positioned to undergo a radical re-orientation toward outcomes. Imagine what is possible in the way of personalizing student learning! Nobody gets stuck in a course (or retaking a course without consideration of what was actually learned and what wasn't). Every learning space, every learning moment, is purposefully connected to a clearly defined outcome. Schools can reclaim a powerful value proposition: we'll help you discover the joy of building useful skills, and we'll help you prepare for life after school.

Here is an excerpt of the continuum that matches the science competency referenced above, for the first skill "Ask a testable question:"

Finally, we built a conversion chart by which we could convert students' overall course performance levels to traditional course grades. To make this work within our school district, we mapped competencies to traditional courses. We also flipped Honors credit on its head: instead of students being rostered to an Honors course based on past performance (which is arguably subject to bias), we give students the opportunity to earn Honors credit by their performance on their portfolio of work. For example, as a ninth grade student taking a 9th grade course, if you earn an overall performance on course competencies of "9.5," you have earned Honors credit and thus a higher weighted GPA. Unfortunately, the state of Pennsylvania penalizes schools who don't have a certain number of students rostered to Honors at the beginning of the year - an example of a state policy that needs to be re-examined to support this approach.
Mastery Grade Conversion Chart
You might ask, how did you set the evidence requirement for the portfolio? Why did you decide that two argumentative essays were required for 9th grade mastery, but let's say, four argumentative essays are required for 12th grade mastery? We love this question!

We looked at a study conducted by reDesign, in which they scanned the syllabi of freshman level courses in higher ed institutions across the US - from some of the most competitive, to some of the most open. They found a remarkably similar set of tasks that first-year college students are expected to complete. They also found a remarkably similar workload. You can check out their findings here. We used this work as our benchmark for "college readiness," and then attempted to scaffold the workload backward.

A word to the wise: watch out for tech platforms that have already defined mastery for you! For example, we looked at several products that claimed to be "mastery-based gradebooks." However, they did not allow you to customize your competencies, or more important, customize the evidence requirement for a particular skillset. For them, it was one-and-done: if you achieved 80% on a standard, then yay! Mastery! Meh.

We couldn't find anything that allowed for the level of customization we needed. We opted to build our own open source competency-based gradebook for the LWM model, spearheaded by the nonprofit, Building 21. I won't go into details here, but do reach out to tom@b-21.org if you'd like to learn more about the open source system.

Here's a screenshot of the teacher view, with competencies on the Y axis and students on the X axis. Percentages represent progress on evidence requirements, by competency. One really exciting feature? None of this data is confined to a course. It's a true, meta view of students' performance and progress on competencies, which they can build and demonstrate in any learning space. All the data feeds into the same profile, an infrastructure that creates exciting opportunities for rethinking learning spaces and interdisciplinary learning experiences.

Back to the point, here: it's important to define mastery upfront for your stakeholders. Even if you only have a working definition to begin with, put it out there in writing and visuals. I've seen the end-of-year confusion and frustration that can be caused when these expectations for student performance are not clear from the beginning. It simply isn't fair students or parents, particularly when crediting decisions hinge upon your definition of mastery.

One other important point for consideration: decouple your conceptions of mastery and crediting. These are two very separate things. Mastery is about demonstrating skills at particular performance levels. Crediting, in our current Carnegie-unit world, is about assigning value to time spent in courses toward an ill-defined "graduation-ready" outcome. So don't jump to the conclusion that mastery is the requirement for crediting without thinking it through, and making sure that is your intention. In our LWM model, we offer students two ways to earn credit: by demonstrating mastery, or by demonstrating growth. For us, this is as much about student motivation as it is about fairness and pragmatism. Check it out:
Crediting by Growth Chart
A ninth grader, for example, who completes the portfolio of work required at an overall performance level of 8.5 or higher has shown mastery at the 9th grade level. Great! But what about the student who showed up at school performing at a 4th grade level in reading and math?

There is no evidence basis out there to suggest that five years of growth in a single year is feasible. So let me turn the question: if this student were to demonstrate 1.5 or 2 years of growth within a year's time for ELAcompetencies, would you withhold credit? Remember the stakes, here. What, in your model, is credit attainment really all about?

We think this is an amazing opportunity to personalize learning and to personalize the graduation pathway. What if upon entry, each student's baseline performance were determined, and a target timeframe were established for the total number of years the student plans to be in high school (ranging from 3-5)? And then what if we calculated a personalized, year-to-year growth goal necessary for achieving the graduation target - and then made that goal the threshold for earning credit? Food for thought.

3. Apply the 80/20 rule.

Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It's called the Pareto principle and states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I like to think of it this way: focus your greatest effort on the 20% of the work that is going to generate 80% of the results. I'm going to show you a graphic created by reDesign, and then explain why this matters.

The graphic above organizes each of the key elements of a Mastery Learning System around the five tenets of competency-based learning. In other words, how do you bring these five tenets of competency-based learning to life in an actualized model? These are the must-have pieces, and a recommendation for the sequence in which to develop them. For example, before you start building rubrics or creating assessments, you need to have your competencies in place, as they define the learning aims and goals to be evaluated.

See that Designer's Tip up in the left-hand corner? That designer's tip should be in 200-size font and bright red letters across the page. It states: "The Shaded boxes indicate where approximately 75% of time and effort should be focused." So guess where our design team spent about 80% of our time during our design year?

Right. Not those boxes. In fact, exactly all of the other ones.

OK, here's the lesson learned: when designing your Mastery Learning System - or competency model, as we like to call it - do not repeat our mistake and spend all of your time designing competencies, rubrics, and grading and assessment policies! Don't do it. We did this because we felt we had to - we struggled to find the open source resources from the field that we believed were essential to the model. The field is in a different place now, and we hope our work has contributed to that in some way, as everything we've developed is and will remain 100% open source.

The graphic above comes right from reDesign's open-source Design Lab, and when this time-effort recommendation was first pointed out to me, I about fell out of my chair.

Let me tell you why this was such a big pain point: because our teachers began the year without high-quality, competency-aligned learning resources, like units of study with engaging and relevant learning activities, formative assessments, leveled text selections, competency-aligned performance tasks, and so forth. You just can't get anywhere without great curriculum - but very little out there was aligned to our competencies. Put another way, very little out there stood up to the rigor called for by the national, college-ready standard sets on which we based our academic competencies.

Curriculum design and development is probably the most time-consuming teacher responsibility. This is why I love Educurious. They've built stellar student-facing (this is key) units of study that are problem-based (read: highly engaging!) and that culminate in fun and truly rigorous performance tasks. Not all of our teachers went for it. Candidly, some felt they could do better. But then, they didn't, because of course once the year kicks off, who really has time for this kind of intensive design work?

The take-away: adopt whatever you can in the way of your competency model, and during your design year, focus heavily on building, or sourcing and adapting, stellar student-facing, competency-based units of study, and the performance tasks they build toward. If nothing else, do this.

Right now, go download this free Roadmap that will guide you through each step of the way in building your competency model. You can also check out reDesign's content-agnostic college-ready performance tasks. They are teacher-facing, not student-facing unfortunately, but they offer a highly structured, step-by-step guide to implementing high-quality tasks. Stanford's Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity also has done very deep thinking and work in the arena of performance-based assessment, and they are certainly worth checking out.

4. Stage the work; nail instruction and stakeholder communication.

You cannot do it all. Trust me on this, because we tried. And we learned. You cannot do it all.
If you can accomplish only three design-related objectives in your months preceding school opening apart from unit development, let it be, in this order:

Pedagogical model

Stakeholder communication plan (including reporting templates, conferencing protocols, and communication infrastructure)

Three-year roadmap to full implementation.

I use the term pedagogical model, rather than instructional model, because pedagogy combines both theory and practice, and I don't think we should define practice without being transparent about the theory on which our practice is based. It's always based on something.

Just because you have competencies and rubrics does not mean you have a pedagogical model. Just because you have a competency-based grading and assessment policy does not mean you have a pedagogical model. Just because you are 1:1 and have decided on your LMS does not mean that you have a pedagogical model.

You need a pedagogical model, people.

Why prioritize the pedagogical model? Because it's essential to be clear with stakeholders - particularly your teaching team - about how this is all supposed to work. As Steve Jobs put it, "Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works." In each of our three new school startups in Philadelphia, I believe that each new school leader would say something along the lines of, "this wasn't clear enough for my team when we started, and everyone struggled greatly as a result." Derived from my observations and reflections on our startup year, here is a proposed set of key components for a pedagogical model, followed by several essential questions to explore around each of the eight key components (feel free to poke holes in this construct):
Eight Elements of an Instructional Model

What's your (research-based) theory of learning? Consider breaking this out into a flow chart, and make sure everyone on your team gets it and is on board with it. What do you believe must happen in order for students to successfully achieve proficiency/mastery for a newly introduced set of skills, knowledge, and/or dispositions? Here is a strong research-based example: Framework for Effective Instruction.

What are the learning goals all students are working toward? These are the skill sets (competencies), knowledge sets, and habits of work that you envision all students achieving. They need to be clear, measurable, and accessible to your stakeholders. Check out our LWM competency sets as an example.

What competency-aligned curricula will you use to achieve the aforementioned learning goals, and in what format will they be made available to students? By curricula, I mean the student-facing, (preferably) problem-based units of study that purposefully sequence student-facing learning assets, learning activities and processes, formative and summative assessments. I mentioned Educurious's project-based courses - the strongest curricular exemplars I've seen in the field. Note that our LWM competencies are about skillsets, and do not explicitly include content knowledge (e.g., the water cycle, the War of 1812), so these content standards need to be clearly defined for teachers based on the subject areas they teach. One way to think about this is that the content serves as the context in which competencies are developed and demonstrated. Example: as I study the effect of light exposure on the process of photosynthesis in plants, I have the opportunity to practice and show evidence of my ability to Lead a Scientific Investigation (the competency).

What is your school's primary learning facilitation model, and the norms and expectations that guide it?This will tie directly into your theory of learning. In short, you are defining the scope of teacher activities that must take place in order to ensure students have access to high-impact learning experiences on a daily basis. For example, what research-based learning strategies will teachers be expected to integrate into daily activities? What different classroom configurations are necessary to implement the delivery model? The more specific, the better. Consider defining possible furniture arrangements; optimal modes of teacher-student interactions (1:1 conferencing, mini-lessons, whole-group lessons, independent work, small group, etc); approximations of optimal time allocations within each learning period for each of these modes; desired roles and applications of technology (these will likely vary depending on the subject and/or learning space); recommendations for uses of wall space, and so forth. Want to experience first-hand the range of details that should go into this? Shadow a student for one day in school. Take note of everything you see, hear, and do within each class period or learning block. The rationale for this level of detail is not to be prescriptive; it's to be clear about the vision for learning. Of course, always be open and flexible and ready to improve upon the model, but when in the startup phase, error on the side of clarity for your team. You're providing very helpful structures in what is usually a highly unstructured period at a critical time in your school. People appreciate structure.

What is your assessment strategy? At the school, department, and classroom levels, how are you evaluating learning, and what role do different types of assessments play? This should be documented within your teacher handbook, as well as made available in a student-friendly version. Kids deserve a solid rationale for time dedicated to evaluation, and with it, they are likely to be more invested in the process. This also includes school policies and expectations for providing students with multiple opportunities for completing tasks, engaging in revision cycles, getting feedback, and dealing with late work. This Grading and Assessment Policy Design Guide is a super helpful resource (created as part of the aforementioned Design Lab) for developing a Tiered Assessment Strategy.

What instructional planning tools, templates, protocols, and expectations are in place to support your teaching team? Standardizing your team's approach to instructional design and planning, file sharing and storage, formatting student versions of documents, and so forth, will be hugely helpful in building out your bank of teaching resources in the future and validating the quality of the work. Minimally, team up to develop a few simple templates and protocols that everyone agrees upon, and build in checkpoints for future review and revision cycles to make sure things are working well and meeting needs. This component is about the processes behind teacher preparation for facilitating learning and organizing content.

What is the school leader's approach to adult development? In other words, how is the school leader supporting continuous improvement among the teaching team? This should involve a transparent plan that describes everything from key activities, action plans, work artifacts and document review protocols, schedule and calendar of key events - all clarifying the roles of the school leader and each team member in collectively working toward the continuous improvement of the instructional model and its implementation.

How will you continuously improve upon the instructional model itself? Create feedback loops. Dedicate time to quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Consider a user-centered design process in which you, in regular intervals throughout the year, use a simple set of instruments to collect student, family, and teacher insights and pain points, and then with your leadership or design team, walk through a design process to solve the most pressing problems at hand. This involves a hefty dose of discipline, because in the middle of the school year, it's difficult not to get caught up in the weeds, putting out fires. Consider setting up a team of outside advisors or critical friends to help you with accountability and fidelity to the continuous improvement process.

Next, stakeholder communication. How will you be sure you have up-to-date contact information for all parents/guardians? What communication channels are best suited for your parents/guardians and students? What templates and protocols do you need in place? How can you use technology to make these processes efficient? Tip: discover autoCrat for mass communication, digital record-keeping, and documentation. It's up there with sliced bread. Who will oversee communication? How will you know you are reaching your stakeholders? How will you communicate your model? What language, visuals, tools will you use? Do you have an FAQ document ready in multiple languages? You catch my drift. Each of our three new schools in Philadelphia made strengthening communication a priority in year two, after realizing that prior efforts simply weren't sufficient. We made lots of communication tools, but our roll-out was often weak, and sometimes follow-through didn't happen. Which takes me back to point number one: make sure every single staff member is fluent in speaking about your model, explaining the rationale behind it, and understanding the most anticipated questions from students and families. Not sure what that might be? Talk with your stakeholders. Ask for their big questions or concerns. Remember the first step in user-centered design is always to discover the needs of the user. Start with empathy and active listening. These will never fail you.

Finally, your three-year roadmap. Where do you need to be by the end of the year, and what do you need to do now to get there? And how will you know you're successful? Repeat for year two and three. In the business and nonprofit sectors, this is a variation on strategic planning. Define your goals and strategic initiatives, then build action plans (actions, owner/s, deadlines, resources needed) for each initiative, and define structures for accountable implementation. It is a critical skill and process for effective leaders. If you can manage to put together a working three-year implementation roadmap, it will be tremendously helpful as you navigate one of startup's greatest challenges: prioritizing allocation of resources. Remember the 80/20 rule!

5. Hire with care, and for a specific set of skills and dispositions.

It's always, always about your people. A model is just a model without a team to make it, to bring it to life, to deliver on its promise. If there is a most important lesson learned among these I've shared, it's that ultimately, you've got to have the right people on your team from the start. You've got to fight for this - for the autonomy to hire exactly who you need.

You may have read Jim Collins book, Good to Great, and you may be familiar with the commonly quoted phrase, "Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus." Well, who are the right people for mastery-based school startups? What dispositions and skills do they possess? Is it about smarts? Work ethic? Political consciousness? Design capabilities? A love for children?

At the top of my list of critical dispositions, there are two.

Hire teachers who are entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurs rate high on optimism, creativity, problem-solving, and risk-taking. They are solutions-oriented. And typically, you don't call someone an entrepreneur until they've started a few things in their lives that have had some kind of impact in the world. They've got a track record of doing, achieving, building, and likely of failing and learning. Look for strong evidence of an entrepreneur in your candidates, in their background experiences, in their personal lives, in how they spend their free time. Ask for work products, projects, experiences that will help you assess their measure of these critical traits, because creativity, problem-solving, and risk-taking are all fundamental to individual and organizational development and progress - and negativity just sucks.

Hire teachers with a growth mindset. The second disposition seems obvious, right? A growth mindset is in some ways synonymous with a "mastery orientation," or with Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder "Learner" theme. I want to emphasize two points: the first is that you want to hire teachers who are themselves dedicated learners; and second, you want to hire teachers who truly believe human intelligence can be developed.

Dedicated learners possess a strong desire to increase their own capacities; they have an abiding love for learning and a profound appreciation for opportunities to grow. The posture of a dedicated learner is one of humility. Read: coachable, open-minded, excited about feedback. I'm not talking about someone who is willing to accept feedback. I'm talking about someone who proactively seeks feedback in order to ensure she continuously improves. Look for evidence in your candidates that they take on new challenges with confidence, and that they are highly reflective and can speak with fluency about the learning they've gleaned from different life experiences, hardships, and mistakes. Look for evidence that they actually READ deeply and broadly, and pursue learning opportunities across multiple domains within their lives. Look for evidence that they actually enjoy the process of learning, that they ask great questions, and that they can easily identify moments in their lives when they were wrong, and made mistakes, and grew because of them.

Additionally, you're looking for individuals who believe most deeply that through hard work and dedication, human capacities can be expanded, regardless of one's color or tribe or socioeconomic status in the world, or whatever. This matters so profoundly that it will shape every action taken, every decision made, every behavior observed each day that your teachers interact with students. And as we know very well, what teachers believe about their students is fundamentally an issue of justice and equity. Why? Because all learning is mediated, and kids don't learn very well from people whom they perceive don't believe in them, or care about their well-being. This is why I love, and hold in the highest regard, the principle of Positive Youth Development among Carnegie's ten school design principles for high performing schools.

And finally, what about skillsets?

At the top of my list of critical skillsets are: instructional delivery skills (learning facilitation) and communication skills. I wouldn't prioritize hiring great curriculum designers, for example. You can outsource this, and teach it over time. What you need are people who can deliver engaging, high-quality learning experiences on day one. Day one. That's when the clock starts ticking. You need folks who act like every moment counts. Because nothing is more true.

This means strong classroom management skills (systems, procedures, routines, time management), effective and consistent use of learning strategies, anticipation of and responsiveness to student skill gaps and misconceptions, and the ability to facilitate a learning arch that is coherent and that culminates in high levels of understanding (i.e., Bloom's Taxonomy) on learning objectives that are directly connected to your academic competencies. In short, classroom management, learning strategies, and a real commitment to rigor for all students.

As for communication skills, these are critical for reasons previously stated. In the context of a mastery startup environment, it's all-hands-on-deck to bridge the conceptual gaps for students and families (Remember: the key shifts of CBE touch everyone!). Also, central to mastery-based learning is the opportunity for students to receive regular feedback on their learning and their progress. Do your teachers know how to speak with students about their work in ways that foster receptivity, reflection, and motivation? Are they positive and professional, and do they present well? Can your teachers explain the model clearly to a range of stakeholders? How do they interact with family members? Ask your candidates to model how they would handle particular situations. Go visit their current workplace and see them in action. Ask their colleagues and supervisors questions with this lens in mind. Communication matters. It is the bridge to shared understanding, it is fundamental to the learning process, and it is critical to getting ahead of major roadblocks.

Let me close by leaving you with a few helpful links, and a way to be in touch. And on behalf of our LWM design team, we welcome your feedback, input, and suggestions. Godspeed!

Links for further learning:
The LWM Competency Model: www.competencytoolkit.org
Mastery Learning Resources: http://www.redesignu.org/design-lab/mastery-learning
Great Schools Partnership's Proficiency-based Pathways: http://www.greatschoolspartnership.org/proficiency/
Asia Society Rubrics: Educating for Global Competence
Matchbook GPS Learning Cycle: http://nextgenlearning.org/matchbook-learning-virtual-video-tour-merit-prep

LWM Competency Model Designers Contact:
Sydney Schaef: sydney@redesignu.org
Sandra Moumoutjis: sandra@b-21.org
Tom Gaffey: Tom@b-21.org

See also:

About the Author

Sydney Schaef, M.BA., M.Ed., is an educator, entrepreneur, and school design consultant. She currently works as a Mastery Learning Designer at reDesign and a design consultant for Building 21. She served at the School District of Philadelphia from 2013-2015 in the Office of New School Models, and prior to that, served as Founder and Executive Director of a 501c3 nonprofit organization that led innovative education and youth development programs in East Africa. Follow Sydney on Twitter at @sydneyschaef.

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Five Key Lessons for Mastery Learning Startup

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As I see it, the biggest challenge we face in American public schools today is this: we've got an antiquated factory-based school model, and a workforce that has proven particularly effective in implementation. Let's face it: most of us were taught this way as students, and most of us were trained this way as teachers.

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October 2010 | Volume 68 | Number 2
Interventions That Work Pages 52-57

Thomas R. Guskey

Most current applications of mastery learning stem from the work of Benjamin S. Bloom (1971, 1976, 1984), who considered how teachers might adapt the most powerful aspects of tutoring and individualized instruction to improve student learning in general education classrooms. Bloom suggested that although students vary widely in their learning rates and modalities, if teachers could provide the necessary time and appropriate learning conditions, nearly all students could reach a high level of achievement.

Bloom observed that teachers' traditional practice was to organize curriculum content into units and then check on students' progress at the end of each unit. These checks on learning progress, he reasoned, would be much more valuable if they were used as part of the teaching and learning process to provide feedback on students' individual learning difficulties and then to prescribe specific remediation activities.

Bloom outlined a strategy to incorporate these feedback and corrective procedures, which he labeled mastery learning (Bloom, 1971). In using this strategy, teachers organize the important concepts and skills they want students to acquire into learning units, each requiring about a week or two of instructional time. Following high-quality initial instruction, teachers administer a formative assessment (Bloom, Hastings, & Madaus, 1971) that identifies precisely what students have learned well and where they still need additional work. The formative assessment includes explicit, targeted suggestions-termed correctives -about what students must do to correct their learning difficulties and to master the desired learning outcomes.

When students complete their corrective activities (after a class period or two), they take a second, parallel formative assessment that addresses the same learning goals of the unit but includes somewhat different problems, questions, or prompts. The second formative assessment verifies whether the correctives were successful in helping students remedy their individual learning difficulties. It also serves as a powerful motivational tool by offering students a second chance to succeed.

Along with the corrective activities, Bloom recommended that teachers plan enrichment or extension activities for students who demonstrate their proficiency on the first formative assessment. Enrichment activities give these students exciting opportunities to broaden and expand their learning.

Bloom believed that nearly all students, when provided with the more favorable learning conditions of mastery learning, could truly master academic content (Bloom, 1976; Guskey, 1997a). A large body of research has borne him out: When compared with students in traditionally taught classes, students in well-implemented mastery learning classes consistently reach higher levels of achievement and develop greater confidence in their ability to learn and in themselves as learners (Anderson, 1994; Guskey & Pigott, 1988; Kulik, Kulik, & Bangert-Drowns, 1990).

Elements Mastery Learning and Other Interventions Share

The following core elements of mastery learning are evident in many more recently developed instructional models and interventions. Research has consistently linked these elements to highly effective instruction and student learning success (Guskey, 2009; Marzano, 2009; Rosenshine, 2009).

Diagnostic Pre-Assessment with Preteaching

Most mastery learning models stress the importance of administering a quick and targeted pre-assessment to all students before beginning instruction to determine whether they have the prerequisite knowledge and skills for success in the upcoming learning sequence. Some teachers pre-assess students orally by asking them about previous learning experiences or understandings; others use short surveys or quizzes. For students whose preassessment results suggest deficiencies, mastery learning teachers take time to directly teach them the needed concepts and skills. In other words, teachers ensure the conditions for success before instruction begins.

Leyton (1983), a student of Bloom, studied the effects of teaching identified prerequisite skills to entering students. He began by administering a short pre-assessment to all students to measure the knowledge and skills that teachers considered essential for learning success in their high school classes. In half of the classes, teachers used the pre-assessment results to help students identify and then review the prerequisite concepts and skills they did not possess. In the other classes, students began learning new material immediately, but at a slower pace.

After nine weeks of instruction, students in the classes that had reviewed the missing prerequisite concepts and skills were far more likely to have achieved mastery, measured by 80 percent or more correct on a cumulative, summative examination. Because Leyton's study was conducted in only a few subject areas (mathematics and foreign language) and under tightly controlled conditions, these results must be cautiously interpreted. Still, when viewed in light of similar research (Deshler & Schumaker, 1993; Vockell, 1993), the results demonstrate the potential benefit of relatively brief preteaching for students whose prerequisite knowledge and skills are weak or deficient.

Mastery learning's diagnostic assessment is similar to the idea of universal screening in Response to Intervention (RTI) models (Mellard & Johnson, 2008). Most descriptions of RTI stress the importance of initiating the instructional process with a targeted assessment of all students that is quick, inexpensive, and focused on crucial knowledge, skills, and behaviors. This universal screening helps teachers identify students who are at risk of learning difficulties and are likely to require especially close monitoring during the instructional process.

High-Quality, Group-Based Initial Instruction

Every description of mastery learning, as well as other interventions such as Understanding by Design (UbD) and RTI, emphasizes the importance of engaging all students in high-quality, developmentally appropriate, research-based instruction in the general education classroom. UbD (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) includes a toolbox of instructional approaches for obtaining the desired results from initial instruction. In many RTI models, this is considered the first level of intervention, also called Tier 1 or primary prevention (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006). Such instruction should be multifaceted; adapted to the context; tied to students' interests and experiences; and differentiated according to the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and background characteristics of students (Astleitner, 2005; Conroy, Sutherland, Snyder, & Marsh, 2008).

Progress Monitoring Through Regular Formative Assessments

Another element of mastery learning that many other interventions share is the use of regular formative assessments to systematically monitor student progress and give students prescriptive feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). These brief classroom assessments measure the most important learning goals from an instructional unit and typically are administered after a week or two of instruction. They reinforce precisely what students were expected to learn, identify what they learned well, and describe what they need to learn better.

Formative assessments vary in form depending on the subject area, the grade level, and the learning outcomes involved. They may be short quizzes, written assignments, oral presentations, skill demonstrations, or performances. In essence, formative assessments are any device teachers use to gather evidence of student learning.

Formative assessments provide the basis of all programs that emphasize assessment "for" learning, as opposed to assessment "of" learning (Stiggins, 2009). Most RTI models refer to this component as progress monitoring. In many RTI classrooms, progress-monitoring assessments are administered weekly, although they may be more frequent, depending on the subject area and nature of the class.

High-Quality Corrective Instruction

It would be foolish to charge ahead knowing that students have not learned key concepts or skills well. Following formative assessments, therefore, mastery learning teachers provide high-quality corrective instruction designed to remedy whatever learning problems the assessments identified.

High-quality corrective instruction is not the same as "reteaching," which often consists simply of restating the original explanations louder and more slowly. Instead, mastery learning teachers use corrective instruction approaches that accommodate differences in students' learning styles, learning modalities, or types of intelligence (Sternberg, 1994). Some teachers engage students in peer tutoring or cooperative learning groups. Others use paraprofessional instructional aides.

In mastery learning classes, corrective activities typically add about 10-20 percent more time to initial learning units (Block, Efthim, & Burns, 1989). For a unit of a week or two in length, for example, corrective instruction might last one or two days. Bloom (1974) argued, however, that intense, individualized assistance offered early in an instructional sequence would drastically reduce the time needed for remediation in later units. Because corrective instruction guarantees that students have the learning prerequisites for subsequent units, initial instruction in later units can proceed more rapidly, allowing teachers to cover just as much material as they would using more traditional methods (Guskey, 2008).

Providing instructional alternatives based on differences in students' learning styles or modalities is the basis of differentiated instruction (Tomlinson, Brimijoin, & Narvaez, 2008). In the RTI model, mastery learning's corrective instruction may be referred to as Tier 2 intervention or secondary prevention (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006). Like corrective instruction, this intervention usually takes place in the general education classroom but may be directed by another teacher or instructional aide.

Both corrective instruction and Tier 2 intervention emphasize the use of small-group instruction with individualized assistance organized according to the needs and skill level of the students involved. Both also stress that instruction at this level must be qualitatively different from the initial instruction, offering students an alternative approach and additional time to learn.

Second, Parallel Formative Assessments

In mastery learning, assessments are not a one-shot, do-or-die experience; instead, they are part of an ongoing effort to help students learn. So after corrective activities, mastery learning teachers give students a second, parallel formative assessment that helps determine the effectiveness of the corrective instruction and offers students a second chance to demonstrate mastery and experience success. RTI similarly requires frequent assessment of student learning progress to check on the effectiveness of intervention strategies.

Mastery learning teachers make a point of recognizing those students who do well on the initial formative assessments. But they also acknowledge that students who do well on the second formative assessment have learned just as much and deserve the same grades as those who scored well on their first try.

The driver's license examination offers a comparable example. Many individuals do not pass their driver's test on the first attempt. On the second or third try, however, they may reach the same high level of performance as others did on their first. Would it be appropriate to restrict these drivers, for instance, to driving in fair weather only? In inclement weather, should they be required to pull over and park until the weather clears? That would be ridiculous. Because they eventually met the same high performance standards as those who passed on their initial attempt, they receive the same privileges. The same should hold true for students who engage in corrective activities and eventually show that they, too, have learned well.

Enrichment or Extension Activities

Mastery learning teachers also offer effective enrichment activities that provide valuable, challenging, and rewarding learning experiences for learners who have mastered the material and do not need corrective instruction. These activities should enable successful learners to explore in greater depth a range of related topics that keenly interest them but lie beyond the established curriculum. Many teachers draw from activities developed for gifted and talented students when planning enrichment activities, including challenging academic games and exercises, various multimedia projects, and peer tutoring (Whiting, Van Burgh, & Render, 1995). They are also a part of classrooms implementing differentiated instruction (Tomlinson, 2006).

Students engaged in enrichment activities gain valuable learning experiences without necessarily moving ahead in the instructional sequence. This makes it easier for other students who have been doing corrective work (or Tier 2 intervention in an RTI model) to resume their place in the regular instructional sequence when they are done. Otherwise, they would be placed in the impossible situation of having to remedy problems from the past while trying to keep up with the new concepts and skills presented in subsequent units.

The challenge for teachers in implementing enrichment or extension activities is to ensure that these activities engage students in truly valuable learning experiences. Having successful learners simply bide their time, doing more, harder problems or completing busywork while others are engaged in corrective instruction would be highly inappropriate. Enrichment activities must provide these students with opportunities to pursue their interests, extend their understanding, and broaden their learning experiences.

Sustaining and Extending Success

Researchers today generally recognize the value of the core elements of mastery learning. As a result, fewer studies are being conducted on the mastery learning process itself. Instead, researchers are looking for ways to attain even more impressive gains by improving students' learning processes, curriculum and instructional materials, and the home learning environment and support and providing a focus on higher level thinking skills. Work on integrating mastery learning with other innovative strategies appears especially promising (Guskey, 1997b).

As we strive to improve achievement even further, we can continue to learn from the core elements of mastery learning. Attention to these elements will enable educators to make great strides in their efforts to close achievement gaps and help all students achieve excellence.

References

Anderson, S. A. (1994). Synthesis of research on mastery learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 382 567).

Astleitner, H. (2005). Principles of effective instruction: General standards for teachers and instructional designers. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 32(1), 3-8.

Block, J. H., Efthim, H. E., & Burns, R. B. (1989). Building effective mastery learning schools. New York: Longman.

Bloom, B. S. (1971). Mastery learning. In J. H. Block (Ed.), Mastery learning: Theory and practice (pp. 47-63). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Bloom, B. S. (1974). Time and learning. American Psychologist, 29(9), 682-688.

Bloom, B. S. (1976). Human characteristics and school learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Bloom, B. S. (1984). The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Leadership, 41(8), 4-17.

Bloom, B. S., Hastings, J. T., & Madaus, G. (1971). Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Conroy, M. A., Sutherland, K. S., Snyder, A. L., & Marsh, S. (2008). Classwide interventions: Effective instruction makes a difference. Teaching Exceptional Children, 40(6), 24-30.

Deshler, D. D., & Schumaker, J. B. (1993). Strategy mastery by at-risk students: Not a simple matter. Elementary School Journal, 94(2), 153-167.

Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. S. (2006). Introduction to Response to Intervention: What, why, and how valid is it? Reading Research Quarterly, 41(1), 93-99.

Guskey, T. R. (1997a). Implementing Mastery Learning (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Guskey, T. R. (1997b). Putting it all together: Integrating educational innovations. In S. J. Caldwell (Ed.), Professional development in learning-centered schools (pp. 130-149). Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council.

Guskey, T. R. (2008). The rest of the story. Educational Leadership, 65(4), 28-35.

Guskey, T. R. (2009). Mastery learning. In T. L. Good (Ed.), 21st century education: A reference handbook (Vol. I, pp. 194-202). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Guskey, T. R., & Pigott, T. D. (1988). Research on group-based mastery learning programs: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Research, 81, 197-216.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.

Kulik, C. C., Kulik, J. A., & Bangert-Drowns, R. L. (1990). Effectiveness of mastery learning programs: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 60, 265-299.

Leyton, F. S. (1983). The extent to which group instruction supplemented by mastery of initial cognitive prerequisites approximates the learning effectiveness of one-to-one tutorial methods. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Chicago.

Marzano, R. J. (2009). Setting the record straight on "high yield" strategies. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(1), 30-37.

Mellard, D. F., & Johnson, E. (2008). RTI: A practitioner's guide to implementing Response to Intervention. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Rosenshine, B. (2009). Systematic instruction. In T. L. Good (Ed.), 21st century education: A reference handbook (Vol. I, pp. 235-243). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sternberg, R. J. (1994). Allowing for thinking styles. Educational Leadership, 52(3), 36-40.

Stiggins, R. (2009). Assessment "for" learning in upper elementary grades. Phi Delta Kappan, 90(6), 419-421.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2006). An alternative to ability grouping. Principal Leadership, 6(8), 31-32.

Tomlinson, C. A., Brimijoin, K., & Narvaez, L. (2008). The differentiated school: Making revolutionary changes in teaching and learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Vockell, E. L. (1993). Why schools fail and what we can do about it. Clearing House, 66(4), 200-205.

Whiting, B., Van Burgh, J. W., & Render, G. F. (1995, April). Mastery learning in the classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Thomas R. Guskey is professor, Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology, College of Education, University of Kentucky, Lexington; Guskey@uky.edu.

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October 2010 | Volume 68 | Number 2 Interventions That Work Pages 52-57 Thomas R. Guskey Most current applications of mastery learning stem from the work of Benjamin S.