Understanding the Learning Continuum
The learning continuum is an articulation of a progression of skills and understandings inherent in learning goals. It helps us plan multiple aspects of our assessment, instruction, and intervention by anticipating stages of learning. Recognizing these stages allows us to make instructionally agile decisions, both during planning and instruction. We form learning continuums for our learning goals by using a backward planning process in which we unpack individual goals and anticipate what incremental progress should look like for each. We design learning events around the skills and knowledge we want students to develop as they work toward achieving the learning goals. This process provides numerous benefits for teachers and students and creates an experience for students that honors their individual learning needs.
Backward Planning and Unpacking
Clarifying the learning continuum requires that we deeply examine learning goals and imagine how learners may engage with them as they progress from building readiness through exploration and learning to reaching proficiency and beyond. This thinking is reflective of planning with the end in mind, which Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005) articulate in Understanding by Design, and unpacking standards that Larry Ainsworth (2003) describes. Their works state that truly effective and responsive teaching can only happen when we first explore the destination—the very reaches of where we imagine heading with our learners. Once we have visited that place through deep reflection and planning, we are poised to meet the needs of the learners and invite them into truly effective and engaging learning spaces. In this planning process, indicators of proficiency for the broad learning goals are considered in addition to the more short-term markers on the journey. This process can be done in conjunction with other unpacking processes (such as formulating “I can” statements for students, placing targets on a ladder in order of complexity, identifying key vocabulary, or determining knows, dos, and understands) and certainly isn’t the end of our planning. Rather, the process builds a solid foundation for designing authentic, accurate, and reliable assessments and robust and creative learning experiences.
When we clarify key criteria for a learning goal within the learning continuum, we are affording ourselves the time and space necessary for anticipating student needs. This allows learning to unfold in a wide variety of ways, and allows us to provide differentiation and activate targeted intervention—all to increase the chances students will engage in a way that advances their learning and supports their emotional safety. This kind of planning is necessary because, as Wiggins and McTighe (2005) note:
To put it in an odd way, too many teachers focus on the teaching and not on the learning. They spend most of their time thinking, first, about what they will do, what materials they will use, and what they will ask students to do rather than first considering what the learner will need in order to accomplish the learning goals. (p. 15)
By considering the learning continuum, we are thinking first about the depth and breadth of our learning goals and how we will travel alongside students in an attempt to have them demonstrate proficiency. Second, we are thinking deeply about our students, the knowledge they bring to the content, and the ways they may develop their understanding of the learning goals over time and through practice. In essence, we bring both the goals and the students to the planning process.
Learning Events With Clear Purpose
It is important to know that the learning continuum is neither subjective nor prescriptive. It is an articulation of what proficiency looks and sounds like in relation to learning goals and then what the journey looks like from readiness through exploration to proficiency and beyond. The learning continuum is about the knowledge and skills that lead to deeper understanding. Activities and assignments don’t drive the continuum. The activities and events emerge from clarity about how student understanding develops along a continuum. The continuum and the students drive classroom experiences. When we create learning activities or events and then try to fit them into the kinds of learning our systems expect or, even worse, we decide its purpose after the activity and assess that, we can place ourselves and our learners in a very precarious position. For example, if we decide to ask learners to engage in a book project or to create a poster without being crystal clear about the skills and knowledge we are attempting to develop, we may end up with products that completely miss the mark in allowing practice and demonstration of proficiency on any of the areas required by our learning goals. This can lead to a hard edge of a lack of efficacy for learners and stress for educators when asked to explain learning and growth in our classrooms.
Instead, one of the best ways to facilitate and later explain learning is to clarify the purpose behind the learning experience as it relates to the learning goals. To be clear, this learning experience can take a multitude of forms: inquiry, small-group work, independent composition and creation, problem-based learning, play-based learning—the list is endless. However, in order to help students imagine new ways of understanding, processing, and applying their learning, we have to be clear about these possibilities ourselves. This requires a significant amount of advanced consideration by the teacher, which translates into planning that focuses on both clarity and possibility.
Certainly, this is the premise behind all planning, but, traditionally, planning has often meant devoting a great deal of time to thinking about what students would be doing and not nearly enough time thinking about why they would be doing it and what they would be thinking and learning. I certainly recall sharing “teaching ideas” with colleagues and scanning educational periodicals for games and projects that would be engaging for learners. However, investigating the purpose of these activities or the learning that was going to be developed was secondary to engagement. I could not have clearly stated the criteria for success for students beyond participation. Further reinforcing this disconnect was the placement of the topic of assessment in university methods courses and within curricular documents themselves. Assessment always seemed to be relegated to the back of the book or the end of a course. As a result, it became the thing to think about after the learning was done.
If we want to reconnect with the learning goals, with assessment, and with achievement, then we have to begin with the goals themselves. Clarifying the learning continuum ensures that our planning, instruction, assessment, and reporting are all based on a solid understanding of the learning goals. This is a powerful shift that has tremendous implications for both teachers and students.
Student Experience
The learning continuum is important to both teachers and students. For teachers, it is instrumental in ensuring that our planning attends to both the learning goals and the learners who will interact with them through classroom experiences. It helps us plan and assess in ways that inform our practice and allow us to be prepared for multiple possibilities as learning unfolds for each student. The learning continuum serves a different purpose for the students. By being familiar with the continuum, students are able to monitor their own progress as they develop skills and understanding. The continuum reflects the individual experiences of each learner and this experience may be a little “messier” than the teacher-generated continuum suggests. For example, students may begin exploration of a learning goal quite confidently and then encounter a specific concept or target that gives them some difficulty. They may move back in the continuum in order to build readiness and then more forward again as they practice their newly acquired skill. Despite this back-and-forth expression of learning, recognizing where students are on their own learning continuums allows us to be responsive to student needs.
Teachers work through stages for clarifying