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CHAPTER 1

ESTABLISHING A CULTURE OF LEARNING

Research in both learning and motivation supports the idea that classroom assessment is not solely the end point. Rather, it is a powerful agent for influencing learning and motivation.

—James H. McMillan

Maintaining a classroom culture that is conducive to learning is paramount to every teacher’s instructional efforts and ultimate success. Culture, a group’s generally unspoken but commonly shared attitudes, beliefs, values, goals, behaviors, rituals, and social norms, can act as a lever or a roadblock to change. In other words, a teacher who intends to apply powerful strategies with instruction and assessment but does not attend to the classroom culture will most likely fail despite those strategies. If, for example, the students in a school have adopted the attitude that learning is not cool, and that culture is pervasive, then a teacher’s effort to employ the best instructional strategy will have minimal impact. On the other hand, a teacher who strives to create the desired culture and then aligns instructional efforts to those shared beliefs will experience rapid change. Culture is that powerful.

When educators develop a school culture focused on learning, they have constant conversations amongst themselves and with their students about what learning looks like. They embrace mistakes and use them to better understand productive failure; they celebrate success when deep learning occurs. When a learning culture focuses on achieving mastery, teachers manage assessment processes differently by doing the following.

■ Offering penalty-free practice opportunities

■ Allowing mistake making and productive failure by offering feedback instead of evaluation

■ Supporting growth over time by repeatedly revisiting key concepts and skills and monitoring later samples of work

■ Providing culminating results that celebrate the most consistent level of achievement at the end of the learning cycle

While the proclamation that school is about learning sounds obvious, educators, parents, and students have not always kept a laser-like focus on the purpose of school. Traditional school culture is centered on accumulating points, climbing the (grade point average) ladder, or simply getting it done (to name just a few contradictory mindsets), all of which contribute to an opaque view of school’s purpose. While most people believe that school is about learning in theory, their actions don’t always match that intention. In some places, the contrast between the intent of school and how school operates sends a mixed message about what truly matters as students arrive at school each day.

Clearly, achievement has many definitions. While academic achievement is the most obvious outcome of the school experience, there is an implicit curriculum that influences the classroom experience, and schools benefit when they pay attention to this reality (Fisher, Frey, & Pumpian, 2012). This implicit curriculum is not the focus of this chapter (or the book), but it is, nonetheless, important to acknowledge that school is not just a clinical exercise in learning. We must also attend to socialization, personal development, and many other nonlearning attributes. Most educators know the school experience is about the whole child, which means assessment is most productive if it is planned and executed through the lens of both the cognitive and affective influences that round out every student’s experience.

The Main Idea

The growth in educators’ collective understanding of the power of assessment—especially formative assessment—has brought learning back to the forefront. Teachers have transformed their practice to establish classroom environments that value students’ full achievement of criteria against established standards, regardless of how low or slow they are when they begin. This shift is not yet ubiquitous; however, the pace is accelerating as more and more teachers establish new classroom routines, habits, and practices. Establishing (or returning to) a culture focused on learning is the biggest idea that sound assessment practices bring to the table, and nothing embodies that culture more than when teachers use assessment information to be instructionally agile. And although both students and teachers can influence a culture of learning, the relationship between them is significant in establishing that culture.

Relationships Help Establish Culture

None of the assessment practices, processes, and strategies we provide in this book mean or accomplish much of anything unless teachers connect with students in meaningful, authentic ways. The adage, students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care has stood the test of time for a reason. Students can spot a fake from miles away—they know when teachers’ efforts to connect are authentic or not. Taking the time and making the effort to connect are non-negotiable. While it might not be possible for teachers to get to know every student on a personal level, it is essential that teachers know students as students. Understanding how students learn, and relentlessly persisting and insisting they do learn, go a long way toward maximizing the impact of instruction, assessment, and feedback.

Relationships put assessment in its proper context and perspective. Who teachers are teaching matters more than what they are teaching, since teachers can’t authentically get to what until they attend to who. By developing a connection to each student, teachers can begin the process of solidifying those relationships essential to maximizing learning. The truth is that assessment is relationship building. Assessment lies at the core of the learning experience for students. So, while initial efforts to establish a connection are important, the connections with students become stronger throughout the assessment process.

How teachers handle the various results of assessment speaks to the authenticity of the student-teacher relationship. The extent of the relationship is revealed during moments when students need extra time, support, or instruction. We cannot separate learning from its social context, which means assessment (and all that goes along with it) will either contribute to or take away from the established relationships between the teacher and each student.

Culture Creates Learning

The question of which comes first—culture or learning—is worth considering. Does culture drive learning, or does the approach to learning drive culture? The short answer is both because teachers and students must all actively contribute. Learning is a social activity and requires social interaction, which means effective teachers respond to the intellectual and emotional needs of students in real time. Since time is always limited, being instructionally agile allows for both efficiency (streamlining efforts to gather sufficient and accurate information) and effectiveness (using the gathered information in productive and meaningful ways that promote continued learning) throughout any instructional sequence.

Though both students and teachers contribute, teachers primarily drive culture because how they design and execute instruction, and respond throughout instruction, says the most about what they value in their classrooms. Both the overt and subtle messages teachers send through their choices create the social context in which students learn. And while being cordial and friendly is desirable, how teachers handle assessment is at the core of what students experience; collegiality on the edges won’t compensate for an assessment process built on completion and compliance. The integrity of classrooms (where actions match words) depends on assessment processes and practices that elevate learning to an unrivaled priority; otherwise, students won’t believe their teachers when they say, “We’re all about the learning.”

The good news is that most teachers understand that sound assessment practices seamlessly feed a culture of learning. Clarifying learning goals, establishing transparent learning progressions, assessing for learning, giving effective feedback, and making corresponding instructional adjustments all make learning the clear priority. As teachers establish or reinforce these learning-centered routines, the message to students couldn’t be louder or clearer—you’re here to learn! Even the slightest adjustments, such as beginning each lesson by defining what students will learn rather than what they’ll do, can have a significant effect in defining activities and tasks by the ends rather than the means.

Being or becoming instructionally agile is essential to establishing a new kind of learning culture. Nothing sends a stronger message than when the teacher is prepared to respond—often in real time—to assessment results that reveal where the student is compared to where he or she is going. Teachers can match their words to their actions by giving classroom assessments that result in student-responsive instructional adjustments. By planning for these potential adjustments, teachers establish a new normal in which their verbal and nonverbal responses communicate that learning is fluid, ongoing, and even non-negotiable.

Learning Creates Culture

At the same time, students themselves can and do contribute greatly to the culture of any classroom, so they solidify the classroom culture through their learning. Students aren’t widgets, so seeking a singularly prescribed culture of learning is nearly impossible, even though some principles and practices are associated with the most favorable courses of action. Teachers can set up opportunities to learn, but it’s up to the students to follow through, since culture emerges from the sum of their collective experiences. When students do not follow through, an instructionally agile teacher makes another move to influence them. Teachers must set up these opportunities to learn and continually try new instructional maneuvers to impact learning and confidence.

Every learning theory includes some form of regulation by the student (Brookhart, 2013a). The true test of a positive classroom culture is students’ ability to become instructionally agile and regulate their own learning. When students believe they can control the outcome of the learning process, they are more likely to learn. This might seem obvious, but students can—and do—often attribute their success to that which is external, unstable, and uncontrollable (Weiner, 1979).

For example, students who believe an assessment was easy are attributing their success to something beyond their control both in the moment and going forward. They think they are only successful if and when the teacher randomly adjusts the assessment experience. When students realize that they owe their success to internal, stable, and controlled factors (that they had everything to do with succeeding), teachers create an environment in which students expect to succeed. When they expect to succeed—when they expect to learn—a culture of learning begins to override other perspectives (for example, they got lucky or the teacher is easy) that too often dominate the classroom experience.

A culture of learning focuses on the process of learning, not just the final summative assessment score. A culture of learning, therefore, is also a culture of thinking. Teachers have the power to implement various forces to shape that kind of culture.

Forces That Shape a Culture of Thinking

In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart (2015) outlines the eight cultural forces that impact how teachers create environments of thinking. According to Ritchhart (2015), each of these forces can, if teachers intentionally implement them, shape a classroom culture that encourages thinking and deeper levels of engagement. Eliciting evidence of thinking is assessment at its best. A culture of thinking is an environment in which assessment maximizes the process of learning by allowing teachers to be agile in developing the opportunities for students to think more deeply.

Table 1.1 outlines Ritchhart’s eight cultural forces that imbue every classroom with a culture of thinking (Ritchhart, 2015).

Table 1.1: Eight Cultural Forces

Force	Brief Explanation
Time	Allocate time for thinking by providing chances to explore topics in more depth as well as to formulate thoughtful responses.
Opportunities	Provide purposeful activities that require students to engage in thinking and developing understanding as part of their ongoing classroom experience.
Routines and Structures	Scaffold students’ thinking in the moment as well as provide tools and teach patterns of thinking students can use independently.
Language	Use a language of thinking that provides students with the vocabulary for describing and reflecting on thinking.
Modeling	Model who you are as thinkers and students so you discuss, share, and make visible the process of thinking.
Interactions and Relationships	Show respect for and value one another’s contributions of ideas and thinking in a spirit of ongoing collaborative inquiry.
Physical Environment	Make thinking visible by displaying the process of thinking and development of ideas. Arrange the space to facilitate thoughtful interactions.
Expectations	Set an agenda of understanding and convey clear expectations. Focus on the value of thinking and learning as outcomes as opposed to mere completion of work.

Each of these forces has very real assessment implications that can impact how instructionally agile teachers can be as they respond to the emerging evidence of students’ thinking. Creating a culture of learning by examining assessment through the lens of these eight forces fosters an environment in which students can potentially come to see themselves as partners in the learning process. Table 1.2 outlines the same eight cultural forces in the classroom with their implications for assessment.

Table 1.2: Assessment Implications of the Eight Cultural Forces

Force	Assessment Implications
Time	Assessment is more about quality than quantity, so while speed and ease are always desirable, effectiveness must be the primary goal. Students need ample time to think, process, and rethink throughout instruction.
Opportunities	Teachers must have student thinking in mind when designing quality assessments that consistently provide opportunities for students to display—and even track—their thinking. This means assessment design moves beyond just a single test to more organic, engaging, and authentic performance tasks.
Routines and Structures	Assessment routines and structures anchored on clear learning intentions, success criteria, and learning progressions create predictable instructional decisions that allow for scaffolding toward proficiency.
Language	The language of assessment can lead students toward a deeper level of thinking. Assessing why (and the interconnectedness of standards) instead of simply what allows for an integrated assessment approach.
Modeling	Through instruction and assessment, teachers can make their thinking visible by modeling the potential approaches students can take to grow in their learning and the struggle that often comes with thinking deeply. Modeling this struggle helps students better understand the experience they may have as they think deeply.
Interactions and Relationships	Assessment is relationship building. How teachers create assessments and respond to their results reveals the true nature of the student-teacher relationship. Teachers do not accept students’ failure to do the work and persistently provide feedback and scaffolded support to promote student achievement.
Physical Environment	Using exemplars gives students potential opportunities to demonstrate their thinking. Teachers guide them to examine the qualities of thinking within the exemplars and advise them to avoid mimicking what they’re seeing, hearing, or touching.
Expectations	Setting learning intentions, success criteria, and the progression to proficiency solidifies expectations for success. When teachers put in place these clear expectations for performance at a greater depth of knowledge, they make it clear to students that memorization and recall fall short of the ultimate goal.

These forces are integral to every teachers’ efforts to be precise yet flexible in all assessment efforts. The eight cultural forces must be considered as teachers implement any instructionally agile maneuver described in the following chapters. Any maneuver may work or not work to create a culture of learning, and it is often these forces that may prevent the maneuver from working well. Chapter 2 discusses how to engineer dialogue and engage in conversations to gather and respond to evidence of learning. Chapter 3 focuses on eliciting evidence through questioning. Observation is key to instructional agility, so chapter 4 explores this means of gathering evidence. Chapter 5 discusses mobilizing students to be instructionally agile on their own. Practicing is central to instructional agility, so chapter 6 illustrates various ways that practice provides opportunities for teachers to be instructionally agile. This includes shaping the role homework plays in instructional agility. Educators often debate the value of homework in supporting learning, so it’s necessary to tackle this important dilemma. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the broader context and how jurisdictions, districts, schools, and teams can be instructionally agile. The elements of these forces are front and center as teachers maximize the opportunity to be agile in response to every student, developing a rich culture of learning.

A Culture of Learning in Action

Instructional agility doesn’t just happen. Teachers must intentionally strive to be agile in response to the evidence of learning that they uncover during the assessment process. Planning for flexibility creates an assessment dichotomy with which teachers must become comfortable; the notion of planning for flexible responses seems odd and yet, it is the essence of instructional agility.

While it may seem like a paradox, instructional agility is anchored in the process of planning with precision, which leads to a response with maximum flexibility. Certainly, teachers cannot know how each student is going to respond to assessment opportunities, but they can anticipate the most typical understandings and misunderstandings students will demonstrate. Most teachers have a clear picture of the most likely results. The greater the precision in planning, the greater the opportunity in responding to meet each student’s needs. It is a front-back relationship—if teachers invest in front-end planning there is a back-end payoff of more effective and intentional instructional responses with higher achievement.

To create an instructionally agile learning environment, teachers can do a lot with design, interpretation, and response. While the remaining chapters in this book examine specific strategies teachers can use to intentionally elicit evidence and allow for maximum response agility, we explore the prerequisites in design, interpretation, and response in the following sections. We do not intend to explore each of the strategies in depth; rather, we explore strategies and prerequisites within the context of creating a culture of learning. It is one thing to have a friendly, engaging environment, but it’s quite another to go a step further to create a real culture that puts learning at the center of the student experience. From an assessment perspective, the following strategies and constructs make the words learning-centered culture a reality in the classroom: assessment design, accurate interpretation, and assessment response.

Assessment Design

Developing a culture of learning is an intentional process that begins with planning assessment outcomes. A true culture of learning makes learning the centerpiece of what students experience every day. This is the basis of the assessment architecture tenet. The following four criteria are crucial to developing a culture of learning.

1. Clear learning intentions

2. Clear success criteria

3. Learning progressions

4. Quality, learning-centered tasks

Clear Learning Intentions

A culture of learning begins by clarifying what students are supposed to learn through instruction. This is different than simply advising students on what they are going to do, since the activities they participate in are more the means than the end. Whether teachers post, communicate orally, or demonstrate learning intentions, it is vital that students are clear on the intended learning so they understand why the teacher is asking them to do particular activities or tasks.

Students often ask their teachers why they have to do, know, or show things, which can be a sign that the learning intentions are not explicit. The question is not whether teachers teach with clear learning intentions in mind; they do. But they often do not clearly articulate those learning intentions to students. Once students are clear on the intended results of the learning experience—skills, concepts, or even dispositions—they will see that there is a learning purpose behind the activities and assignments.

Clear Success Criteria

Success criteria describe the qualities of what exemplary work, performances, or tangible demonstrations look like. Here is where teachers describe—in sufficient detail—what students will do to meet the intended learning outcomes; the two go hand in hand. Learning intentions describe what they will learn, while success criteria describe how they will show what they’ve learned. Teachers can communicate success criteria orally or through examples, demonstrations, simulations, rubrics, and checklists. The advantages to each method depend on the learning goals. Performance assessments lend themselves nicely to rubrics and demonstrations, while a written composition might use a rubric along with a handful of exemplars.

The critical aspect of establishing and communicating success criteria is that they be substantive rather than trivial (Brookhart, 2007). Establishing success criteria with students must be part of a larger process with the goal of student engagement throughout the assessment experience (Andrade, 2013). Co-constructing success criteria, goal setting for individual demonstrations of learning, self-assessment, and peer assessment are all examples of how to engage students directly through assessment. (We will explore this concept in depth in chapter 5, page 99.) To establish a culture of learning, teachers must provide a clear description of what that learning will look like by articulating clear, specific success criteria. Nothing screams learning like directly communicating this is what your learning will look like.

Learning Progressions

A learning progression is an intentional sequence of learning goals and success criteria that teachers form into a model to lead students from the simplest to the most sophisticated understandings. The truth is that most teachers teach with some kind of learning progression in mind, but it’s less common to articulate that progression to the students. It is equally rare for a teacher to use the students’ assessment evidence, which illustrates where each student is in understanding the planned instructional responses. Transparency at all stages leads to understanding and engagement. Also known as learning trajectories or construct maps, progressions of learning provide the necessary model of cognition that so many assessment systems and processes seem to lack by outlining typical development over time (Brown & Wilson, 2011). Whether teachers develop the progressions through a top-down or bottom-up process (Heritage, 2013), they are essential for showing students that there is a path to reach advanced or exemplary levels of understanding.

Teachers develop top-down progressions (starting with the end in mind and then backward-mapping the steps it would take for a learner to get to the standard) from what they know about learning within any discipline and from their background and a research base, which does not always exist in every subject. Teachers develop bottom-up progressions (observing learning as it happens and noting what comes first, second, third, and so on) more organically based on their collective experience in how students typically progress toward the most sophisticated level of understanding.

According to Margaret Heritage (2013), a “by-product of teacher-developed progressions is an associated deepening of teacher knowledge about learning in a domain, which can have considerable payoff for evidence gathering and use” (p. 189). This assessment payoff is why teachers should be hands-on when it comes to assessment design. The truth is that teachers likely use a hybrid approach to develop learning progressions, which considers what available research says about learning within a discipline and pairing it with teacher experience to formulate the most efficient and effective approach to instruction and assessment.

Quality, Learning-Centered Tasks

Establishing a culture of learning means teachers must elicit evidence through quality, learning-centered tasks. When teachers ask students to engage in activities that directly relate to the learning intentions, success criteria, and learning progressions, students feel respected and see the school experience as purposeful and coherent. Respectful tasks and activities meet students where they are, meaning that no matter their level readiness, they have a clear path to achieving the grade-level standard and beyond. Teachers have—or can at least envision—what it means to assign students busywork that is only loosely connected to the intended learning and progression. Activities should focus on essential understandings and create opportunities for each student to engage in his or her learning at a high level.

Accurate Interpretation

Teachers can establish a culture of learning through the interpretation phase of assessment as well. Interpreting assessment results—and the subsequent action—can spur the potential maneuvers necessary for students’ continued improvement. To keep learning at the center, teachers use strategies, practices, and processes that trigger a learning-focused response from students. The following components are essential in creating a culture of learning through accurate assessment interpretation: feedback, time to act, and expectations for feedback.

Feedback

The epicenter of a culture focused on learning is the practice of providing students with feedback that describes how their learning can continue. That said, feedback does not always create a culture of learning because not all feedback puts continual growth at the heart of its purpose. Grades, as an example, are technically a kind of feedback, but a letter grade does not include information about what comes next in the learning progression. Despite their current necessity for reporting achievement, grades (in whatever form or format they might be) are generally not effective feedback to improve learning. Also, confirmation or compliance feedback (in other words, did the student complete the task?) is typically void of any meaningful description of quality and how students might improve that quality. Providing these types of feedback is simply not enough.

Teachers who use assessment to create a culture of learning purposefully describe what students need to do to continue their learning trajectory. The research on feedback is relatively clear that symbols, such as grades, scores, or levels, have the potential to interfere with student willingness to keep learning (Butler, 1988; Wiliam, 2011). High-performing learners often check their grades; if these do not meet their expectations, sometimes they want to do more activities or find alternate ways to acquire more points to get a better grade. They miss the idea that improving quality or revising current work using the teacher’s comments is what will improve the grade. Some high-performing learners just settle for what they have, ignoring the feedback because the initial score indicates a level of satisfactory achievement. Struggling learners often give up and likewise ignore feedback because the initial score indicates a level of unsatisfactory achievement. This means the most favorable course of action, especially when building a culture of learning, is to provide feedback in lieu of a grade, score, or level; this allows both the teacher and student the optimal conditions under which to be instructionally agile while moving toward proficiency.

Time to Act

A culture focused on learning allows time to act on feedback. Providing effective feedback is essential. However, if students don’t get time to act on the feedback, the feedback is effectively useless and the message they receive is that growth is not a priority. This is easier said than done given the volume and nature of the standards and curriculum. This is something to understand but should not act as an excuse. The standards or the curriculum cannot interfere with learning, which means teachers must allot time, regardless of how scarce it may be, for students to absorb, reflect, and act on the feedback they receive. Intentionally prioritizing the learning goals that are the focus of this targeted feedback is the solution to this persistent dilemma.

Expectations for Feedback

In a culture of learning, students expect feedback and know its sole purpose is to guide their continual growth. Students don’t see feedback as criticism; rather, they recognize it as an opportunity to move to the next level. As well, teachers who actively work to create a culture of learning consistently expect that students use the feedback they receive. Teachers often complain that students don’t use their feedback. When we ask students if there is a specific routine that instructs them how to act on feedback, their answer is often no. Creating a habit of learning is about creating an expectation of learning, and the most effective learning-centered cultures don’t allow students to opt out.

Assessment Response

Conducting assessments is good, but responding to assessment results is even better. How teachers respond to assessment results goes a long way toward establishing and maintaining a culture of learning in which students, again, see assessment as an opportunity rather than an event. The response should include both differentiation and grading.

Differentiation

Like feedback, differentiation is a mainstay in a culture of learning because it makes both the student and the learning priorities. Being a student-responsive teacher sends a clear signal that learning—not coverage—matters most. Differentiation is, in essence, an instructionally agile model that teachers maximize when their response to assessment evidence meets the needs of each student, whether that need is extension, further instruction, or acute intervention. According to Carol Ann Tomlinson and Tonya R. Moon (2013), differentiating assessment means that “the learning outcomes remain the same … while the format of assessment, time allowance, and scaffolding may vary” (p. 417). A culture of learning grows when teachers use assessment to seek understanding of student background, readiness, interest, and approach to learning.

Readiness gives teachers the potential to be instructionally agile. Knowing what new learning a student is ready for maximizes the efficiency and effectiveness of postassessment maneuvers. Whether through preassessment or ongoing formative assessment, teachers can be more agile in responding to student needs and can accelerate the establishment of a culture of learning. Throughout the remaining chapters, we offer strategies, practices, and processes teachers can use to elicit evidence of student readiness, making instructional agility more possible.

Grading

How teachers grade—how they verify that learning has occurred and report that information to others—will either contribute to or take away from a culture of learning. Common sense dictates that a culture of learning produces grades that reflect that learning—nothing more and nothing less. It may seem obvious that a culture of learning and grades that encompass nonlearning or behavioral factors do not align, but there is still considerable debate about the modernization of grading practices, since the research on standards-based grading is in its infancy (Brookhart, 2013b).

There is not enough space in this book to thoroughly explore the move to learning-centered grades (or grades based on achieving standards), but should you have questions, you can refer to the countless professional resources available for details on how to create a learning-centered grading system (Guskey, 2015; O’Connor, 2011; Reeves, 2016; Schimmer, 2016; Schimmer, Hillman, & Stalets, in press). Visit go.SolutionTree.com/assessment for links to these resources. Despite the pockets of debate, we strongly believe a culture of learning is a culture in which student grades exclusively reflect their levels of achievement.

Strategies and Tools

The focus of this book is about making instructional maneuvers yet teachers cannot maximize those maneuvers without firmly establishing a culture of learning. This section offers a few practical ways in which teachers can begin or maintain a culture that values who they teach more than what they teach.

Strategy 1: Design Assessments

Designing assessments is not just a procedural exercise; there is a human side to assessment that teachers must always be mindful of. Assessments will either add to or take away from the student-teacher relationship. Assessments that are sensitive to student readiness are the ones that help build strong, trusting relationships. As well, paralanguage—elements that accompany spoken words—is critical, since not all learning demonstrations emerge in written form, which means how students communicate their learning provides additional insight. Listening to the tone of a response or watching student body language while solving a difficult problem can be influential on how teachers respond in real time. And finally, knowing why an assessment is occurring and how the teacher intends to use the results gives the necessary transparency that allows students to invest in the assessment experience.

Build Strong Relationships

It may seem odd that building relationships falls under assessment design, but as we have already established, we cannot separate learning from its social context, which means the relationships teachers have with students undoubtedly impact the culture of learning. Teachers can begin by making a personal connection with their students. This doesn’t mean teachers become best friends with every student, but it does mean getting to know each student on a somewhat personal level. They can ask students questions about themselves, their families, hobbies, the way they learn, and the way they do not learn.

Teachers can also reveal a personal side of themselves that humanizes the classroom experience. They may model moments of frustration, perseverance, and success, showing students their own intimate understanding of the learning process. In a culture of learning that maximizes the opportunity for teachers to be instructionally agile (and for students to engage in carrying out the subsequent actions), teachers and students invest in one another and trust that the relationship is strong enough to withstand—even prevent—any potentially aversive situations or circumstances.

Be Mindful of Paralanguage

Certainly, what teachers say goes a long way toward communicating priorities, but of equal influence on a culture of learning is their paralanguage—all the things that accompany words, like body language, pitch, and tone. Whether it’s tone of voice, certain gestures, facial expressions, or other nonverbal forms of communication, teachers who are mindful of aligning language and paralanguage help solidify a culture of learning. The messages to students about the importance of learning ring hollow if nonverbal cues say the opposite. For example, a teacher who offers further opportunities to deepen understanding, but does so with a tone of frustration, may send a mixed message: Is it okay to take longer to learn or isn’t it? Students who struggle or simply take longer to complete their work can be quite sensitive to paralanguage, so just being aware of the alignment between verbal and nonverbal messages increases the likelihood of creating an optimal learning environment.

Stay Focused on the Why

So much of the frustration students experience in school centers on the lack of clarity they have about why they are doing what they do. Too often, we expect students to complete tasks, assignments, and other activities without understanding why they’re doing them and what it will eventually lead to. Teachers who build cultures of learning do so by making the learning intentions and success criteria transparent, as well as continually explaining how today meshes with the overarching goals of tomorrow (the learning progression).

By articulating clear learning intentions, specific targets, and success criteria, teachers keep learning at the forefront. They can also frame any other skill-based or attribute-based learning in terms of why when they, for example, organize students into groups to produce tangible evidence of learning (such as a project) as well as learn how to function within an effective collaborative team. In this case, teachers don’t leave students wondering why they are doing group work to produce evidence of learning; they know that the process of learning effective collaboration is a parallel learning goal.

Strategy 2: Interpret Assessments

Assessment’s power comes from using the results to advance student learning, but for results to be used productively, teachers must communicate results with a learning-centered focus (and the necessary finesse) to ensure students keep learning. After interpreting assessments, teachers can engineer opportunities for students to actively advance their own proficiency. Providing feedback that focuses on what’s next causes thinking and balances both strengths and that which needs strengthening. Teachers can feel more confident that students will see assessment interpretation as simply the next opportunity to expand their skills and understandings.

Emphasize What’s Next

Instructional agility is all about what’s next, so assessing through that lens is essential. Feedback and subsequent actions are more effective when they describe rather than evaluate, especially when teachers intend to use assessments formatively. For example, teachers can begin feedback with the phrase, “Now let’s work on …” instead of “You should have …” Though it may seem subtle, this level of awareness not only addresses the what’s next view of feedback, but its paralanguage also aligns. For example, consider the following: “Now let’s work on isolating the variable before dividing both sides by four.” This sounds more learning centered than, “You should have isolated the variable before dividing both sides by four.” One is descriptive, and the other is judgmental.

Promote Thinking Opportunities

As we discussed earlier, one of the cultural forces that shape classrooms is the opportunity students have to think (Ritchhart, 2015). Teachers provide consistent opportunities for students to think by stimulating them with feedback. Feedback that takes the form of a cue, question, or prompt directs student attention to the appropriate place but asks students to determine why. For example, a teacher may ask a student why he or she has highlighted a particular passage in a writing sample. Asking questions instead of providing answers forces students to be active participants in the feedback process because they find the details of the feedback in the answers. Even more, actively involving students in the process of self- and peer assessment requires them to think throughout the entire assessment process. Learning is thinking, so by using strategies that force students to think, teachers instill in them the primary concern that more learning should emerge from any initial demonstration.

Balance Strengths and Areas Needing Improvement

Taking a balanced approach to feedback sends the message that everyone is somewhere on the path to proficiency. For students who are more confident and more proficient, a deficiency focus may not be problematic, but for others, the deficiency focus may inadvertently embed an I can’t mindset. It’s not hard to imagine how much it affects a student’s psyche to only hear what’s wrong. This would negatively impact the confidence and motivation of many adults, let alone students. By balancing both strengths and areas needing improvement (and by ensuring that all students experience a similar process), teachers send the message that everyone is a student and that addressing areas needing improvement is what students do.

Strategy 3: Respond to Assessments

Assessment result use doesn’t just happen. After interpreting and communicating, teachers can create or embed routines of correction within their classrooms. By creating an expectation of correction, teachers will proactively send the message that learning is continual, regardless of what an assessment reveals, and that correcting errors is a natural part of learning. Even still, creating collaborative correction habits undercuts any competitive aspects of assessment by overtly supporting the notion that everyone can and will contribute to all learning.

Create the Routine of Correction

Teachers who create routines and habits of responding to feedback and correcting errors can instill a learning mindset in their students. When teachers build instructional correctives into typical routines, they make it clear that they anticipate some error and there will be more to do postassessment. Using feedback is where the real power of formative assessment lies, and when students come to know how to go about making improvements, they can maximize opportunities going forward. Planning to be instructionally agile includes creating routines of correction after eliciting evidence. Through self-assessment, students can also discover what needs improvement. (We explore self-assessment in more depth in chapter 5, page 99.) For now, know that establishing a culture of learning includes planning for more learning through corrective action on the students’ part.

Use Collaborative Corrections

Students don’t have to go at it alone; corrections and responses can be a collective effort. The benefit for all students is exposure to the wide range of perspectives available within any given classroom. This can be part of the peer assessment process, or it can be a stand-alone process of collective response to teacher-based assessment. Again, the message of anticipated error can put all students at ease since the teacher will require a postassessment response from them. In addition, the collaborative correction process can create an everyone helps everyone culture that can counter the inherent competitive environment in some classrooms. Collaboration can occur in a reciprocal partnership or within an entire group in which all students collectively respond to assessment evidence. Either way, having access to others’ thoughts on how to improve only adds to a culture squarely focused on learning for all.

Conclusion

Being instructionally agile is contingent on a culture of learning. Learning creates culture, and culture influences learning, so intentionality is key to evolving a classroom culture away from a task completion mindset. Completing tasks is important, of course, but implicit in the task completion mindset is the idea that completing the task is the end, not the means. Real-time instructional maneuvers lean heavily on a norm of correction and growth. When students believe learning is eventually possible, they are more likely to invest at all points (design, interpretation, and response) along the way.

Both teachers and students nurture and develop cultures of learning, and while it might seem obvious that a culture of learning focuses on learning, without the habitual processes connected to learning goals, success criteria, learning progressions, feedback, correctives, and expected growth, a culture of learning is unlikely to emerge. A culture truly anchored in learning means viewing evidence of learning (and the corresponding instructional maneuvers) as an opportunity rather than an onerous event.

Pause and Ponder

Take a few moments to reflect on the following questions.

■ In your classroom or school, does learning create culture or does culture influence learning? Explain.

■ Of the eight forces that transform classrooms (see table 1.1, page 15), which ones represent areas of strength in your classroom or school? Which ones do you think need more attention in your classroom or school?

■ When was the last time you used assessment evidence to make realtime instructional maneuvers? Describe what you did, why you did it, and the impact it had on students.

■ How consistently do you communicate learning intentions, success criteria, and learning progressions? Is there more you could do to embed these aspects into your assessment routines?

■ Is the time to act on feedback proportional to the amount of feedback you provide to students?