We live in a time of unprecedented challenge and change. The world is filled with intransigent problems from climate change to pandemics to global conflict. We also live in a time of unprecedented possibility. We know more about the nature of the world’s problems, and we know more about how our minds and bodies work to support our best learning and performance. must take advantage of these affordances as we navigate the challenges ahead. We must make the most of K-12 education and must develop an empowered and effective workforce. We must enable people to grow as life-long learners so that they can meet a lifetime of challenges.
This series of articles introduces a new vision for learners and learning called Next Level Learning. At its center is a metaphor about how fish are able to swim as fast as they do by creating vortices on the water and pushing off of those vortices. It speaks to a kind of contextualized agency in which learners actively modify the environment to enhance learning and performance. This metaphor for the learner invites us to reconsider the role of the learner in learning. While there has been an increasing interest in learner agency over the past decade as seen in a focus on personalised learning (as in the Swedish approach of Kunskapsskolan) and deeper learning (as seen in approaches such as Project-Based Learning), the central focus of much of this work is on allowing agency to learners within the restrictions of broader societal structures. Next Level Learning goes beyond this.
In Next Level Learning, learners engage in a series of moves related to the affordances of what is known about the embodied human mind and how it interacts with the environment around it to do its best work. In so doing, it changes how we think about long-standing tenets in education—such as the teaching of thinking, self-regulated learning, who designs curriculum and so forth.
Next Level Learning also seeks to reposition earlier work on the teaching of learning and thinking skills towards greater gains for all. The teaching of thinking has been shown to have an impact on student performance. However, its broad benefits to society have not been realized. Historically, thinking skills programs were often taught to certain learners but not others. Further, learners were taught the moves that effective thinkers engaged in, but we now know more about the human, embodied mind that enables us to support effective moves. Earlier thinking skills were often generic such that they were short-lived in their usefulness. Next Level Learning leverages the rich resources of neuro- and cognitive science research to support a set of generative thinking and learning moves which learners adapt to their needs and contexts.
By understanding their own minds and bodies, learners come to learning with knowledge about what best serves them. This is so for both neuro-typical and neuro-diverse learners. Here are four brief examples. 1. From a neurotypical stance, we are able to hold a certain amount of information in short term memory to process it, but with shifts in perception and attention, we lose what is in short term memory. This suggests that working in a place without distractions in one’s sideview will support deeper learning. (Unfortunately, this does not describe most classroom environments.) 2.
A student on the Asperger’s continuum might realize that they hold strengths in exploring concepts deeply with great passion and then in looking for ways to transfer knowledge between other areas that they deeply understand. This is a different form of engagement that that of learners who are comfortable with broad coverage and seeking ways to apply these learnings to specific areas of interest. 3. A student with dyslexia would learn that their attentional patterns involve broader scanning and less spotlight like attention. This might lead them to gravitate towards certain kinds of careers and certain modes of learning and work performance. 4. Learners who have experienced past trauma might find that subconscious emotional memories lead to finding receiving feedback to be threatening. They would seek out ways to avoid this amygdala hijack.
Specifics about our embodied minds not only change the thinking and self-regulated learning strategies that serve us well, but also impact how stimuli from the environment interact with our learning. Next Level Learners think about their environment and how to change it, where possible, to perform at their best. For instance, learners who have experienced the amygdala hijack might ask their teachers and supervisors for written feedback that they can absorb and the set up a meeting to discuss. In order to avoid losing information in short-term memory by classroom distractions, learners might move some tables around or go off to a smaller space to work. Openness to contextual changes—cultural, social, emotional, cognitive, and physical—is essential to supporting Next Level Learners.
Just as we should be supporting Next Level Learners in navigating their own bodies, minds, and contexts to behave like fast fish, if we truly want them to be lifelong learners, we need to enable them to navigate their own learning and create supports for helping them learn the skills to do so. Living Curriculum is a pedagogical approach that puts learners in the center of their learning and supports them in navigating the curriculum choices that they make. It is discussed in a recent article by Tina Grotzer, David Vaughn, and Bill Wilmot.1
Schools that use a Living Curriculum approach often use it as part of a set of pedagogies that balance societally important understanding goals using a backward design or Teaching for Understanding approach and negotiated curriculum that includes particular content skills to be learned (math facts, spelling words, etc.), with Living Curriculum in which learners chart their learning goals and pathways.
The articles in this Knowledge Bank consider in depth what Next Level Learning is and how teachers might support it. It introduces the essential roles of powerful pedagogical concepts such as metacognition, feedback, and transfer as well as the importance of the epistemic emotions such as interest and awe in fueling learning. All of this is framed in a mastery approach—one in which intelligence is learnable2 and strategic effort can help us to do our best learning. We hope that you enjoy reading about Next Level Learning and that it shifts how you envision what is possible for the next generation!
- Grotzer, T.A., Vaughn, D., Wilmot, W. (2019). The seven principles of “Living Curriculum.” Independent School Magazine on Reimagining Schools. Spring 2019, National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Available: https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/spring-2019/the-seven-principles-of-living-curriculum/
- Perkins, D.N. (1995). Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence. Free Press.