A Framework for School Reform and Redesign

Learner-centered

Include: Learners in decisions about how and what they learn and how that learning is assessed

Value: Each learner's unique perspectives

Respect and Accommodate: Individual differences in learners' backgrounds, interests, abilities, and experiences

Treat: Learners as co-creators and partners in the teaching and learning process.

Cognitive and Metacognitive Factors

Principle 1

The learning of complex subject matter is most effective when it is an intentional process of constructing meaning from information and experience.

Learning in schools emphasizes the use of intentional processes that students can use to construct meaning from information, experiences, and their own thoughts and beliefs.

Successful learners are active, goal-directed, self-regulating, and assume personal responsibility for contributing to their own learning.

Principle 2

The successful learner, over time and with support and instructional guidance, can create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge.

Educators can assist learners in creating meaningful learning goals that are consistent with both personal and educational aspirations and interests.

To construct useful representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and learning strategies necessary for continued learning success across the life span, students must generate and pursue personally relevant goals.

Principle 3

The successful learner can link new information with existing knowledge in meaningful ways.

​Educators can assist learners in acquiring and integrating knowledge by a number of strategies that have been shown to be effective with learners of varying abilities, such as concept mapping and thematic organization or categorizing.

Knowledge widens and deepens as students continue to build links between new information and experiences and their existing knowledge base.

Principle 4

The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and reasoning strategies to achieve complex learning goals.

Successful learners use strategic thinking in their approach to learning, reasoning, problem solving, and concept learning. ​Learning outcomes can be enhanced if educators assist learners in developing, applying, and assessing their strategic learning skills.

They understand and can use a variety of strategies to help them reach learning and performance goals, and to apply their knowledge in novel situations.

Principle 5

Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring mental operations facilitate creative and critical thinking.

Successful learners can reflect on how they think and learn, set reasonable learning or performance goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies or methods, and monitor their progress toward these goals.

Instructional methods that focus on helping learners develop these higher order (metacognitive) strategies can enhance student learning and personal responsibility for learning.

Principle 6

Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture, technology, and instructional practices.

Teachers play a major interactive role with both the learner and the learning environment. ​Cultural or group influences on students can impact many educationally relevant variables, such as motivation, orientation toward learning, and ways of thinking.

Motivational & Affective Factors

Principle 7

What and how much is learned is influenced by the motivation. Motivation to learn, in turn, is influenced by the individual's emotional states, beliefs, interests and goals, and habits of thinking.

Students' beliefs about themselves as learners and the nature of learning have a marked influence on motivation. Motivational and emotional factors also influence both the quality of thinking and information processing as well as an individual's motivation to learn.

Principle 8

The learner's creativity, higher order thinking, and natural curiosity all contribute to motivation to learn. Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty and difficulty, relevant to personal interests, and providing for personal choice and control.

Intrinsic motivation is facilitated on tasks that learners perceive as interesting and personally relevant and meaningful, appropriate in complexity and difficulty to the learners' abilities, and on which they believe they can succeed.

Intrinsic motivation is also facilitated on tasks that are comparable to real-world situations.​ Educators can encourage and support learners' natural curiosity and motivation to learn by attending to individual differences in learners' perceptions of optimal novelty and difficulty, relevance, and personal choice and control.

Principle 9

Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner effort and guided practice. Without learners' motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is unlikely without coercion.

The acquisition of complex knowledge and skills demands the investment of considerable learner energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over time.

Educators need to be concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies that enhance learner effort and commitment to learning and to achieving high standards of comprehension and understanding.

Developmental and Social Factors

Principle 10

As individuals develop, there are different opportunities and constraints for learning. Learning is most effective when differential development within and across physical, intellectual, emotional, and social domains is taken into account.

Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level and is presented in an enjoyable and interesting way. The cognitive, emotional, and social development of individual learners and how they interpret life experiences are affected by prior schooling, home, culture, and community factors.

Early and continuing parental involvement in schooling, and the quality of language interactions and two-way communications between adults and children can influence these developmental areas.

Principle 11

Learning is influenced by social interactions, interpersonal relations, and communication with others.

Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an opportunity to interact and to collaborate with others on instructional tasks.

Quality personal relationships that provide stability, trust, and caring can increase learners' sense of belonging, self-respect and self-acceptance, and provide a positive climate for learning.

Individual Differences Factors

Principle 12

Learners have different strategies, approaches, and capabilities for learning that are a function of prior experience and heredity.

Individuals are born with and develop their own capabilities and talents. ​In addition, through learning and social acculturation, they have acquired their own preferences for how they like to learn and the pace at which they learn.

Educators need to help students examine their learning preferences and expand or modify them, if necessary. They also need to attend to learner perceptions of the degree to which these differences are accepted and adapted to by varying instructional methods and materials.

Principle 13

Learning is most effective when differences in learners' linguistic, cultural, and social backgrounds are taken into account.

Careful attention to these factors in the instructional setting enhances the possibilities for designing and implementing appropriate learning environments.

When learners perceive that their individual differences in abilities, backgrounds, cultures, and experiences are valued, respected, and accommodated in learning tasks and contexts, levels of motivation and achievement are enhanced.

Principle 14

Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner as well as learning progress -- including diagnostic, process, and outcome assessment -- are integral parts of the learning process.

Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at all stages of the learning process. ​Effective learning takes place when learners feel challenged to work towards appropriately high goals.

Ongoing assessment of the learner's understanding of the curricular material can provide valuable feedback to both learners and teachers about progress toward the

learning goals.