Put Learning in High Gear
07/12/2019
Coherence Accelerates Improvement in Literacy
In a recent article in The Learning Professional, Leading Educators CEO Chong-Hao Fu makes the case for why access to effective professional learning is critical to teachers being effective at creating excellent and equitable educational experiences for every young person.
Chong-Hao explains that just as doctors aren’t expected to invent a new procedure to do open heart surgery, teachers shouldn’t have to design lessons from scratch. Instead, they can apply professional judgment to differentiate instruction, drawing from evidence-based practices to meet students’ needs.
There isn’t a Platonic ideal lesson that exists outside of the relationship between teachers and students,” says Fu. “Teachers inevitably must make decisions to respond to their students. The question is, how do we help them do so skillfully?”
True equity—that is, the sum of intentional efforts to ensure students furthest from opportunity are given what they need to be successful—happens at the intersection of a coherent instructional approach and systemic supports for excellent teaching. A system that has the success of every young person in mind has strong academics at the center.
You can read the full article from Learning Forward here.