To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned.
Aligning Instruction for Mastery
using the Science of Learning
Emotional Well Being
How are students’ emotions and cognition interrelated? Further, how can positive relationships that foster belonging, decrease the effects of stress, and increase wellbeing?
Information Processing
How do students’ attention, processing speed, and working memory function in order to make sense of new information and translate it into actionable next steps? How can educators effectively address these cognitive differences when teaching?
Memory
What evidence-based techniques and strategies can students use to encode new information, store it, and retrieve it reliably? How can these be embedded to lesson plans?
Metacognition
What practices support students’ executive function skills and develop their ability to reflect on and monitor their own learning?
Engagement
How can educators support intrinsic motivation and foster behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement?
Feedback
How do effective feedback, formative assessments and deliberate practice create a positive cycle that improves learning for mastery?
Transfer
Why is transfer a key component of mastery learning? What is the expert blind spot? What strategies explicitly scaffold the process of transfer?
Mastery requires developing our students' ability to learn, our educators' ability to teach based on scientific research, and leaders' to support the adoption of a mastery based curriculum