Ladder of Student Involvement – A Starting Point for A Student or Learning-Centric Classroom

There are many components to educational reform but one of the main areas of change is moving from a teacher-centric to a student-centric classroom.  In the book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change The Way The World Learns (see the Books To Read section of this blog for info on Disrupting Class), Holt and Christensen explain a student or learning-centric classrooms as one in which ”the teachers roam around as mentors and individual learning coaches; learning is tailored to each student’s differences; partake in interactive learning with computers and other technology devices; students are engaged and motivated.  The teacher is not the sage on the stage but the guide on the side. In the student centered classroom, the teacher is a coach and mentor, a support person who troubleshoots and problem solves when students need such help.  The teacher floats amidst a classroom that is entirely individualized. Not only is each student exposed to a unique curriculum, the pacing of that curriculum is also unique.”

Conversations about this change have been occuring for many years but we continue to make changes that simply cram new ideas, programs, approaches, and technologies into the existing operating model.  This approach can be viewed as nothing more than sustainable innovation that continues to produces the same results.  As educators and administrators we must think about what this means, have deep reflective conversations about are teaching and instructional practices, understand the difference between sustainable innovation and disruptive innovation and really start to make some “disruptive” changes. 

Reading the book Disruptive Change as a district would be a great starting point.  A district-wide webinar for reflection and discussion would be an avenue for working with large groups of people that need to learn, think and relfect together.  Another tool to encourage and create a student or learning-centric classroom is the Ladder of Student Involvement (Adapted by Adam Fletcher from the work of Roger Hart) pictured below.  Although disruptive change is much deeper, a more systemic change, and needs to encompass much more than this thought, the ladder may be a starting point.

I would venture to say most of what goes on in classrooms today is represented by the bottom 4, maybe 5, rungs of the ladder.  What do you plan to do to move your students up to the top rungs of the ladder and begin to develop a truly student or learning-centric classroom?