Kent Sabo

Making Problem-Solvers in Every Classroom

Problems live in two worlds. Externally we see the task; internally we build a “problem space,” a mental map of the current state, the goal state, plus possible moves in-between. When the space is huge, random searching stalls. “We need not be concerned with how large the haystack is, if we can identify a small part of it in which we are quite sure to find a needle” (Newell & Simon).

Heuristics beat blind luck. Knowing where to start and what action to try next (e.g., “solve one layer of a Rubik’s Cube first”) shrinks the haystack. The classic heuristic here is means–end analysis. Continually comparing present state with goal state and choosing moves that reduce the gap.

Knowledge is jet fuel. Expert chess players don’t scan every legal move; they “progressively deepen” examining a narrow, promising branch, then resetting to the base position before exploring another (de Groot, 1965). Prior knowledge prunes the search tree.

Practice isn’t “drill-and-kill”; it’s drill-to-skill. “Nothing flies more in the face of the last 20 years of research than the assertion that practice is bad” (Anderson, Reder, & Simon). Deliberate, feedback-rich practice automates lower-level moves so students can think strategically.

Definitions

The Problem space is the mental playground where we keep track of where we are, where we’re going, and all the possible moves we might try. When a fifth-grader sketches “Start,” “Halfway,” and “Goal” boxes before writing a persuasive essay, she’s mapping her problem space.
An operator is a move that changes the current state like swapping two numbers while simplifying a fraction.
Means–end analysis is when a student repeatedly asks, “What’s the difference between now and the goal, and what step shrinks that gap?” During Lego robotics, students compare the current robot path with the desired route and adjust coding blocks that turn the wheels an exact number of degrees.

Why This Matters for Teaching

Model first, release second. Like a Rubik’s Cube solving guide, give novices worked examples before “productive struggle.”
Chunk the task. Break a multi-step problem into visible steps so students can return to a safe checkpoint if they hit a dead end.
Build background knowledge early. Automatic times-table recall lets students devote working memory to multi-step problem solving in later grades.

Concrete Moves You Can Make

Fourth-Grade Science
“Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.”
- Implementation: Before a lab on evaporation, project a flowchart missing key steps. Students use the text to fill in each step explicitly building the problem space then rehearse the procedure in pairs.
Fifth-Grade Information Literacy
“Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.”
- Implementation: Teams investigate coral bleaching via three different articles. They sort facts onto a board labeled Current State (ocean temps), Desired State (healthy reefs), and Operators (policy actions). Their final slide deck must show how each operator or action narrows the gap. This is a live example of means–end analysis.
Second-Grade Math Fluency
- After explicit demonstrations, students practice targeted fact families in daily two-minute sprints. Mastery frees cognitive resources so, come word-problem time, they’re not “counting on fingers” while also choosing the right operation.
Whole-Class Reflection Routine
- End problem-solving lessons with two prompts:
  1. Where did you start? (Identifying the first step.)
  2. Which move shrank the gap the most? (Surfacing effective actions.)
    Over time, students internalize this metacognitive script.

The Challenge

Choose one challenging task. Maybe a multi-paragraph writing assignment or a tricky lab. Explicitly draw the first two steps and one action/operator on the board. Then watch how much further (and faster) your students travel through the haystack.

APA References

Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Prentice-Hall.
Anderson, J. R., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1999). Applications and misapplications of cognitive psychology to mathematics education. Texas Education Review, 1, 29–49.
de Groot, A. D. (1965). Thought and choice in chess (2nd ed.). Mouton Publishers.

For more information on this concept, read How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice (https://a.co/d/a0tZSMR) This post is a summary of concepts from How Learning Happens.

Chasing Bloom’s Holy Grail: How We Get Closer to One-to-One Tutoring Effects in Real Classrooms

Benjamin Bloom found that tutoring and mastery learning were incredibly powerful ways to teach and learn. In the decades since, teachers and researchers alike have asked how those techniques can be used in a group setting. In fact, I conducted some research and wrote an article about it 13 years ago (Searching for the two sigma advantage: Evaluating algebra intelligent tutors). Here, we’ll review practical implications of the quest for what he called the “2 sigma problem.”

“The tutoring process demonstrates that most of the students do have the potential to reach this high level of learning…Can researchers and teachers devise teaching-learning conditions that will enable the majority of students under group instruction to attain levels of achievement that can at present be reached only under good tutoring conditions?”

The Big Ideas

One-to-One Tutoring: Bloom showed that an average tutored student outperformed 98 percent of peers in a standard classroom, an effect two standard deviations (“2 sigma”) above the mean.
Mastery Learning Matters: When students had to reach 90 percent on formative checks before moving on, the average gain was a full standard deviation. Bloom labeled the cycle of test/feedback/corrective work the “feedback-corrective process.”
Alterable vs. Static Variables: Bloom sorted influences we can change (quality of teaching, time on task, and formative assessment) away from factors we largely can’t, like socio-economic status. He urged the stacking of the changeable elements for the biggest bang for our effort .
Synergy Beats Silver Bullets: The magic isn’t one strategy; it’s combining high-leverage practices so that 1 + 1 > 2. Mastery learning plus strong cues, active participation, and immediate feedback begins to close the tutoring gap.

Key Terms

Standard Deviation (σ). A measure of spread; two σ means a result so big it leaves 95 percent of students behind.
Effect Size (d). How much a strategy moves learning; Bloom flagged d = 0.4 as the “hinge point” for worthwhile change.
Mastery Learning. Teach/quick check/relearn if under 90 percent/parallel reassessment. Think of it as academic weight-training: getting the reps in until the muscles fire smoothly.

What This Means for Everyday Teaching

Quick Checks, Quick Fixes. After modeling how to identify central ideas (like asking sixth grade students to “determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details” ) give a two-item exit slip. Anyone scoring below 90 percent meets in a five-minute mini-lesson while others start an application task.
Randomized Response. Bloom noticed teachers rely on the same hand-raisers; instead, use cold-call sticks so feedback reflects the whole class and every student has the expectation to think about every question.
Knowledge Organizers Up Front. Instead of passing out a summary sheet only for review, hand it out before the unit to prime schemata. This is exactly what Advance Organizers were meant to do .
Parental Pincer Move. Invite families to engage in “show-me-what-you-learned” conversations at home; Bloom’s research found this home-school double-team especially potent.

Standards Examples

4th Grade Reading: While tackling historical fiction, students must “describe in depth a character…drawing on specific details” . Use mastery quizzing: identify three character-trait quotes; reteach with sentence stems for any student scoring under 90 percent.
7th Grade Writing: During argument units, the standard asks for claims supported by “logical reasoning and relevant evidence” . Integrate peer feedback checklists that mirror the mastery criteria claim clarity, evidence relevance, counterclaim.
9th Grade Science: Students must “evaluate whether reasoning is valid and evidence sufficient” . Turn labs into mastery cycles: interpret data/formative quiz/immediate/corrective mini-lab for misconceptions.

Bloom’s Holy Grail still gleams on the horizon. We’re closer each time we tighten feedback loops and insist on true mastery before moving ahead.

The Challenge

This week, choose one upcoming lesson and add a single mastery-learning loop mini-assessment, immediate corrective, rapid retest. Track the results and share them with a colleague.

Bloom, B. S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Researcher, 13(6), 4-16.

Scaffolding Like a Pro

I recall watching a fourth-grader tackle long division for the first time. Her shoulders slumped under the weight of those mysterious little “houses” and remainders. A few well-timed hints from her teacher, “First decide what you know; then pick one next step” and she began carving a workable path through the problem. This scene captures the heart of David Wood, Jerome Bruner, and Gail Ross’s classic study on scaffolding.

What is Scaffolding?

Scaffolding = temporary, tailored support. The tutor “lures the child into actions that produce recognizable-for-him solutions” and then fades help until the learner can “fly on his own.”
Comprehension comes first. “Comprehension must precede production.”
Six functions keep the pyramid from toppling: recruitment, reducing degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, marking critical features, frustration control, and demonstrating idealized solutions.
Help must hit the Zone of Proximal Development (the gap between what students can do alone and what they can manage with guidance).
Fading is essential. Scaffolds become unnecessary over a period of time.

Unpacking the Key Ideas

Term	Meaning	Quick Classroom Example
Recruitment	Grabbing learners’ attention and showing why the task matters.	Launch a persuasive-writing unit by displaying a real letter that changed a local policy.
Degrees of freedom	The number of choices students face; fewer = easier.	Offer two graphic organizers rather than ten websites for research.
Marking critical features	Highlighting the “aha” moments.	Color-code transition words in a model essay.
Frustration control	Right help, right time not too much, not too little.	Step in with a hint after two stalled attempts, not after every pause.
Zone of Proximal Development	The sweet spot between independence and overload.	Text sets that sit just above students’ current independent reading level.

Why It Matters for Everyday Teaching

Differentiation with a purpose. The study showed that three-year-olds mainly needed redirection, four-year-olds benefited from corrective cues, and five-year-olds sought confirmation. Same idea applies when we shift from naming characters to analyzing point of view. Our prompts must mature as the standards do.
Model then mute your mic. Demonstrations are vital, but lingering drops success rates. Explicit think-alouds during a close reading (“Watch how I annotate the author’s claim…”) initial reading expectations, yet we quickly pivot to student practice so they can meet the standard that calls for independent comprehension.
Emotion counts. Frustration control isn’t coddling; it’s preserving cognitive bandwidth. A calm “Try anchoring-zero on the number line first” beats letting a student spin helplessly.
Two mental models, one brain. Great teachers juggle the deep structure of the task (what mastery looks like) alongside each learner’s current model. It’s chess, not checkers, and it explains why “instinctive” help doesn’t cut it for humans.

Concrete Ways to Scaffold Tomorrow

Stage	Teacher Move	Links to Content Standards
Before Task	Recruit interest with an authentic problem (e.g., design a playground budget).	Math: Reason abstractly & quantitatively; Writing: Introduce topic.
During Task	Reduce freedom by chunking (“First draft the claim, then gather two pieces of evidence”).	Writing: Provide support; Speaking & Listening: Ask & answer questions).
	Mark critical features with success criteria rubrics.	Language: Vocabulary precision.
	Control frustration via choice boards that include a “lifeline” mini-lesson video.	Reading: Integrate media.
After Task	Demonstrate an exemplar, then invite students to compare their work, highlighting growth to remove the scaffold.	Writing: Revise); Speaking and Listening: Adapt speech for context.

Imagine a fifth-grade science investigation tied to the an explanatory texts standard. First, students watch you dissect a sample lab report while narrating your thought process (that’s demonstration). Next, you hand them a partially completed report template, reducing degrees of freedom. As the days pass, the template is gone and students draft independently, occasionally tapping a peer “expert” station.

The Challenge

Pick one upcoming lesson and map your scaffolds:

Note where you’ll recruit interest.
Decide which degrees of freedom you’ll temporarily remove.
Plan explicit cues to mark critical features.
Schedule the fade-out when will students fly solo?

Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100.

Guiding Students Toward Goals That Stick

Why Goal Orientation Matters

When you first begin teaching, you notice two distinct motivational patterns in students. Some simply wanted to get better. Others were laser-focused on getting the best grade or on the class leaderboard. Both groups worked hard, yet their long-term growth looked may look very different. That everyday observation is exactly what Paul Pintrich spent years studying: students pursue learning either to master the task or to perform for an audience and each pathway leads to contrasting study habits, emotions, and achievement patterns.

Mastery vs. Performance, Approach vs. Avoidance

Term	Down-to-earth definition	Classroom snapshot
Mastery-Approach	“I want to understand this.”	A fifth-grader rereads feedback and revises a science explanation until the causal chain feels airtight.
Mastery-Avoidance	“I don’t want to miss anything important.”	A diligent reader triple-checks annotations because she fears a knowledge gap.
Performance-Approach	“I want to look the best.”	A student volunteers first partly to beat his neighbors to the answer.
Performance-Avoidance	“Whatever happens, don’t look dumb.”	A quiet learner copies notes mechanically, avoiding questions that might expose confusion.

“Mastery goals orient students to a focus on learning and mastery of the content or task… In contrast, performance goals orient students to a concern for their ability and performance relative to others.”

Those distinctions matter because they predict which strategies kids choose, how resilient they are when things get bumpy, and even the emotional climate of your room.

Mastery-approach pays dividends. Learners stay curious, persist when the cognitive load jumps, and transfer knowledge beyond the test date.
Performance-approach isn’t evil. When paired with mastery (“I want to learn and score well”), it can boost effort without sacrificing deep processing.
Avoidance mindsets corrode learning. Students fixate on error-free completion, dodge help, and often plateau.
Goal orientation is situational. A child may chase an A in Spanish vocab yet relish the puzzle of math for its own sake.

“Students pursue multiple goals at the same time.” Our job is not to outlaw performance goals but to stack them beneath a mastery canopy.

Classroom Implications

Routine	What I tweak	Why it nudges mastery
Learning targets	Phrase objectives as competencies (“compare two historical accounts and explain why they differ”) rather than grades.	Signals that understanding not points defines success.
Error analysis	After a quiz, teams earn bonus credit for rewriting why wrong answers were attractive.	Frames mistakes as information, reducing avoidance anxiety.
Choice boards	Offer varied formats (podcast, infographic, formal essay) aligned to the same rubric.	Lets students control the pathway, fostering intrinsic value.
Goal-setting conferences	Students state one learning goal (“explain photosynthesis in my own words”) and one performance goal (“raise my constructed-response score by 2 points”).	Encourages the healthy “dual-goal” pattern Pintrich found adaptive.

Planning With the Standards

Reading Informational Text Grade 4, Standard 3 asks learners to “explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why.” A mastery-approach framing might sound like: “Let’s become historians who can untangle cause-and-effect chains.”
Writing Grade 5, Standard 9 pushes students to draw evidence from texts. When presenting the task as evidence-hunting detective work, even performance-driven kids lean into the mastery vibe. They’re detectives, not point-collectors.

School-wide Moves

PLC meeting protocol – Label an upcoming learning task with the primary goal orientation it invites. Then brainstorm one tweak that would amplify mastery signals (e.g., adding reflection prompts).
Feedback audits – Sample ten graded papers. If 80% of comments are judgment-based (“Good job!” “3/5”), commitment to mastery is invisible. Swap in process-based feedback (“Your comparison is clear; next, link the evidence to the claim.”).
Parent messaging – During open house, share the research on performance-avoidance and invite families to praise strategy use (“I noticed you reread that paragraph”) rather than raw scores.

The Challenge

This week, choose one routine learning task students already know. Rewrite the directions so the first sentence spotlights what students will learn or get better at, not the grade they’ll earn. Learning thrives where mastery leads and performance follows.

Pintrich, P. R. (2000). Multiple goals, multiple pathways: The role of goal orientation in learning and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(3), 544–555. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.92.3.544

Pintrich, P. R. (2003). A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 667–686. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.95.4.667

Re‑Writing Students’ Failure Stories

Why Did I Bomb That Test?

I consistently performed poorly in math from elementary to high school. I thought, “I’m just not a math person.” We have plenty of students that think the same way. That thought and not their grade is the real barrier. Bernard Weiner’s attribution theory, reminds us that “the perceived cause is more significant than the actual cause.”  In other words, student explanations shape tomorrow’s effort more than yesterday’s performance.

Weiner boils every “why I failed” comment down to three sliding scales :

Slider	Two Ends	Student Talk	Motivational Impact
Locus	Internal ↔ External	“I skipped studying” vs. “That quiz was tricky.”	Internal sparks ownership.
Stability	Stable ↔ Unstable	“I’m bad at writing” vs. “I forgot the rubric.”	Unstable keeps hope alive.
Controllability	Controllable ↔ Uncontrollable	“I can revise” vs. “I’m short—can’t dunk.”	Controllable fuels action.

When all three lean toward external, stable, uncontrollable “I’m dumb” motivation flat‑lines.

Weiner suggests a quick reflective cycle to move students from helplessness to hope :

What happened?
How did you feel?
Was the cause inside or outside you?
Can it change over time?
What’s one thing you can control next?

These questions would work well in writing conferences where “students develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach (W.5.5).” They first may blame “no talent,” but after the questions they could realize an easy, controllable fix like not reviewing the rubric.

From Theory to Classroom Practice

Praise That Doesn’t “Cry Wolf”: Weiner warns that constant generic praise loses power “like the boy who cried wolf.”  Swap “Great job!” for “Your use of evidence hit RI.4.8 nice reasoning.”
Attribution Warm‑Ups: Show a wrong answer. Students rewrite the self‑talk: “I’m awful at fractions” → “I need to practice.”
Literature Tie‑in: While analyzing character reactions in, have students label whether the protagonist blames effort, luck, or talent. This hits reading standards and mindset work simultaneously. 
Effort–Outcome Graphs: Students graph study time against quiz scores. Visual evidence often shatters the “fixed ability” myth.

School‑Wide Moves

Level	Action	Payoff
Classroom	Mini-conferences using the Five Questions	Builds reflection habits
Grade Team	Share common language for controllable causes	Consistency for kids
Family Outreach	Parent newsletter: praise effort & strategy, not talent	Home echoes school

The Challenge

Pick one learning task this month and provide feedback to students. Commit that every piece of feedback names one controllable action a student can try. Track two students’ attributions before and after. Share the turnaround story in your next PLC. Let’s replace “I can’t” with “Here’s what I’ll do next.”

Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548

“If They Can Do It, So Can I”: Building Self-Efficacy

It’s likely not the task that stops most students. It’s the voice in their head whispering, “I can’t do this.” And that voice left unchecked can drown out even our best lessons, most careful scaffolds, and most passionate teaching. Building self-efficacy is a key element in turning that inner voice in a more positive direction.

Albert Bandura described self-efficacy as “judgments of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations.’ In plain English, it’s a student’s belief that they can handle the challenge at hand. It isn’t the same as blind confidence or that “you can do anything” cheerleading. It’s domain-specific. A student might feel like a rock star in reading but freeze when it’s time for math. That distinction is crucial, especially for instructional planning. And it’s why the same child who aces an oral presentation in class might underperform during state testing. It’s not ability but belief about their ability that changes.

The Four Pillars of Self-Efficacy

Bandura outlined four primary ways students build (or erode) their sense of self-efficacy. Let me break them down with some classroom connections:

1. Performance Accomplishments (a.k.a. Mastery Experiences)

The strongest way to boost self-efficacy is through real success. This means giving students tasks they can actually complete without making them so easy they feel meaningless.
For example, you could start your first writing unit with a low-floor, high-ceiling writing task. Each student could share a one-paragraph story about a personal experience. Most students could find a win, whether it was voice, detail, or structure.

2. Vicarious Experience

Seeing a peer succeed can be just as powerful as doing it yourself. When a struggling writer watches another student from the same table group read their improved draft aloud, that voice in their head goes from “I can’t” to “Maybe I could.” To encourage this potential, use peer models during a shared close-read. Display a student’s annotated response to a fiction passage and walk the class through how they found text evidence. Suddenly, success isn’t just possible, it’s visible.

3. Verbal Persuasion

Words are powerful, but only if they’re grounded in something real. “You’ve got this” doesn’t do much unless it’s backed by evidence. Instead, try, “You structured your opinion clearly in that second paragraph. Let’s keep that going in your conclusion.” The praise here is credible, specific, and tied to academic expectations.

4. Physiological and Emotional States

Nerves are real and they mess with performance. Bandura pointed out that anxiety can be worse than the actual task. We’ve all seen this before: a student who writes strong arguments in class crumbles during the writing portion of a high-stakes assessment. What may help is using short bursts of timed writing in a low-stakes setting. It wasn’t about the grade. It was about making the environment feel familiar.Over time, the anxiety will fade and confidence grows.

Why It All Matters

Students with high self-efficacy choose to engage, persist when it gets hard, and bounce back from mistakes. Students with low self-efficacy give up early and start protecting their ego instead of learning. Although growth mindset, as we discussed last week, is a legitimate psychological phenomenon, mindset interventions that are designed to support a growth mindset have mixed results. For now, try the examples form the four pillars of self-efficacy which all include challenge and support.

Practical Moves You Can Make Tomorrow

Here are three moves to infuse self-efficacy building into your instruction starting tomorrow:

Design Early Wins
Whether you’re teaching fractions or theme, start with an accessible task that aligns to your grade’s standard. If you’re teaching 3rd grade students to determine the central message of a story (RL.3.2), start with a clear, relatable story and scaffold the process. Once students feel what success looks like, they’re more likely to stick with harder tasks.
Model, Fade, Release
Use gradual release. In writing, this could look like modeling a strong introduction together (W.5.2), then co-constructing a body paragraph with students, and finally releasing them to draft a conclusion independently.
Build Feedback into the Flow
Don’t wait until the end. Use live feedback during small group or independent work. For example, during a speaking task (SL.4.4), stop and highlight effective use of evidence on the spot. That real-time reinforcement builds both skill and belief.

The Challenge

If we want kids to believe they can learn, we have to create learning experiences that prove it to them. Pick one student this week who’s struggling and track how you help them experience a performance accomplishment. Maybe it’s a math problem, a fluency check, or a written response. Watch how that one small success starts rewriting the story they tell themselves.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191

The Mindset Setup

Let’s start with a foundational question: Do you believe intelligence is fixed, or can it be developed? That might seem like a yes/no question, but it holds the key to a world of difference in the classroom. Carol Dweck and Ellen Leggett, in their 1988 article “A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality,” describe two core beliefs:

Entity Theory of Intelligence (often referred to as a “fixed mindset”): The belief that intelligence is a static trait, something you either have or don’t.
Incremental Theory of Intelligence (often referred to as a “growth mindset”): The belief that intelligence can be cultivated through effort, intentional practice, and persistence.

Students who view intelligence as static often worry about measuring up (or not) and may choose easier tasks just to show off or protect themselves from failure. Meanwhile, those who see intelligence as flexible welcome challenges. To them, a challenge is just more evidence of learning and growth ahead.

Here’s how mindset directly intersects with standards-based instruction:

Motivation and Goals: Dweck and Leggett argue that students with a fixed (entity) perspective often adopt performance goals. They’re primarily concerned with proving how “smart” they are on quizzes or standardized tests. By contrast, those with a growth (incremental) mindset set mastery goals, focusing on improving competence over time. In the context of, say, reading informational texts, a student with mastery goals is more likely to push through a challenging passage, glean new vocabulary, and refine comprehension skills even if it doesn’t go perfectly at first.
Responses to Failure: We’ve all met the student who, after one difficult test, announces, “I’m just not a math person” (me in 4th grade). A fixed mindset can fuel that unproductive conclusion. On the other hand, the student with a growth mindset might say, “This is tough, but if I keep trying the practice problems and reviewing the instructions, I’ll get it.”
Classroom Culture: When we emphasize that intelligence can grow, we reshape how students see challenges. “The extent to which an individual believes change is possible largely determines their ability to affect change.” By creating a culture that celebrates progress toward mastery (rather than simple proof of ability), we strengthen resilience. In line with standards’ emphasis on students’ ability to read closely, question evidence, and persist in comprehending complex texts, a growth mindset environment aligns beautifully with deeper, more critical engagement.

Common Misunderstandings About Growth Mindset

It’s easy to misunderstand growth mindset. Some oversimplify Dweck’s work into motivational phrases while ignoring that, yes, innate ability does matter. Believing intelligence is 100% malleable isn’t quite accurate; some of us have natural propensities (whether in reading fluency or computational thinking). But it’s also true that effort can yield meaningful, and sometimes surprisingly large, gains particularly over time.

Another popular misconception is that teaching growth mindset is an easy fix. Just a quick lesson on “Your brain grows when you work hard,” and poof! everything changes. Research by David S. Yeager, Elizabeth Tipton, and others suggests that mindset interventions may have varied results in large-scale classroom settings (I saw some positive effects when I implemented a growth mindset intervention at Harney Middle School). That doesn’t diminish their value; it just reminds us that a growth mindset works best when integrated into everyday teaching, daily routines, and genuine feedback rather than one-off “inspiration days.”

Practical Ways to Nurture a Growth Mindset

Set Mastery-Oriented Objectives: Rather than saying, “Let’s all try to get an A on the vocabulary test,” consider objectives like, “Let’s master the new words so we can discuss our next reading with confidence.” Tying lessons directly to standards “We need to identify and use domain-specific vocabulary to compare informational texts” reinforces the learning goal.
Model Targeted Feedback: In reading comprehension, for instance, if a student struggles to summarize main ideas, offer feedback like, “You used the subheadings well to find the big concepts, let’s explore how to connect them.” This encourages mastery instead of labeling the student “bad at summarizing.”
Celebrate Mistakes as Learning Moments: More experienced students could keep an “Aha Journal” in which students jotted down mistakes they made and how they improved from them. It could become a fun, proud log of progress. It also aligned with standards that require systematically improving reading and writing skills, acknowledging errors, refining the strategy, and trying again.
Collaborate and Reflect: Ask students reflective questions: “What was challenging about that problem, and how did you push through?” or “What strategies helped you dissect that primary source document?” By linking these reflections to formal standards like citing textual evidence or learning how to break down paragraphs, students see how their efforts directly fuel growth.
Encourage Growth Among Educators Too: Finally, it’s not only students who need a growth mindset. As principals, instructional coaches, or teachers, we should share best practices, stay informed on research, and keep tweaking our approach. Modeling that spirit ourselves is one of the most potent demonstrations we can offer our students.

The Challenge

Yes, certain attributes and talents are innate. Yet if you’ve ever seen a student go from “I hate reading” to finishing a novel just because they found themselves encouraged to grow, you realize mindset matters. The challenge for us is: How will we foster these beliefs in our classrooms every single day?

Pick one specific way to shift a class from performance to mastery goals. Maybe it’s a new reflection process, a revised feedback style, or a fresh way of introducing a lesson objective. Try it for a few weeks and observe any changes in how students respond to difficulty. Share your observations with colleagues, compare notes, and keep that growth cycle going for everyone in your building.

Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). “A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality.” Psychological Review, 95, 256–273.

From Internal Drive to a Classroom that Thrives

While self-regulation sounds like an innate trait, it’s actually a skill that we, as educators, can help students learn and refine.

Barry J. Zimmerman states that self-regulation isn’t just about an internal engine of motivation. It’s also about the external environment and how you set the stage for learning.

Self-Regulated Learning is “the degree to which students are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning processes.” Yeah, that’s a mouthful. In simpler terms, it’s students’ ability to:

Know the learning strategies they need,
Track their own progress,
Adjust their approach when things aren’t working, and
Do all of this while maintaining their motivation.

Students usually need explicit guidance, feedback, and modeling along the way especially in the beginning. That’s the part we can’t overlook.

Following Albert Bandura’s ideas, Zimmerman highlights that the three following elements influence each other in an ongoing loop. Let’s just call it a perpetual ping-pong match of sorts one side can’t help but bounce off the other. Self-regulation isn’t about sitting alone in a quiet room, repeating “I’ve got this.” It’s also about the context we adults provide.

Personal (Self): A student’s beliefs, self-efficacy, and prior knowledge.
Behavior: What the student actually does: study strategies, self-monitoring, and effort.
Environment: The teacher’s modeling, the classroom setup, and even peer interactions.

Self-Efficacy

Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy is a cornerstone in this conversation. Self-efficacy is “a personal judgment of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations.” Or, put simply: “Do I think I can actually pull this off?”

To illustrate, let’s say you have a math-phobic student (we’ll call her Sasha) who rarely practices her multiplication facts because she believes she’s terrible at it. She’s a bright student in history class, where she feels comfortable and confident, but math? Nope. Her low self-efficacy in math translates into minimal practice, avoidance, and probably fewer correct answers.

As Zimmerman explains, self-efficacy can grow when we provide:

Modeling – Show them the steps (including slip-ups). When they see a teacher or peer coping with errors and eventually succeeding, it feels attainable.
Specific Goals – “Do your best” is basically a free pass to do nothing. Instead, break tasks into tangible bits, like “Complete five long-division problems in 10 minutes.”
Verbal Persuasion – Encourage them through tough spots with real-time feedback and reassurance. (But try to refrain from plastering on a forced “You can do it!” grin they’ll see right through it.)

Why Independent Learning Isn’t Just Worksheets

Jerome Bruner once encouraged discovery learning, spare the lecture, let kids find it all out themselves. While the intention was good, Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark, point out that minimal guidance can be counterproductive for novices. This is particularly relevant when we’re trying to build self-regulatory skills. Don’t assume letting them flail will magically make them “resilient.” Students, novices by definition, need explicit instruction, practice, and feedback. That’s how they develop the skill of directing their own learning effectively.

Zimmerman’s 14 Self-Regulated Learning Strategies

Zimmerman’s research surfaces 14 strategies that high-achieving students often use.

Self-Evaluation
- What It Is: Checking your own work or progress against a standard.
- Example: After solving a set of math problems, a student reviews each answer with an answer key or a calculator to see which ones need revisiting.
Organizing and Transforming
- What It Is: Restructuring information in a way that helps you learn it better. This can be done overtly (writing or drawing) or mentally.
- Example: A student who’s assigned a chapter of reading might create a graphic organizer or mind map that summarizes main ideas and supporting details.
Goal-Setting and Planning
- What It Is: Breaking down larger objectives into smaller, actionable steps with a clear timeline.
- Example: If a project is due in two weeks, a student schedules checkpoints like finishing research by Day 3, drafting by Day 7, and editing by Day 12 so nothing’s left to the last minute.
Seeking Information
- What It Is: Actively looking for more data or resources beyond what you already have.
- Example: A student writing a paper might consult additional books at the library or watch a short documentary to gain deeper insight into the topic.
Keeping Records and Monitoring
- What It Is: Documenting key data about your performance or progress over time.
- Example: A student might maintain a reading log, noting down the pages read each day and jotting a quick summary of what they learned.
Structuring the Environment
- What It Is: Changing or arranging your physical or social setting to optimize concentration and learning.
- Example: Finding a quiet study corner in the library or silencing notifications on a device so you’re less tempted to check social media.
Self-Consequating
- What It Is: Setting up personal rewards or consequences linked to reaching (or not reaching) a goal.
- Example: Promising yourself a favorite snack break after completing 10 review questions no cheating allowed!
Rehearsing and Memorizing
- What It Is: Using techniques that help store information in memory, such as repetition or mnemonics.
- Example: Reciting vocabulary words out loud until they stick, or creating a catchy phrase to remember scientific classifications.
Seeking Help From Peers
- What It Is: Turning to classmates or friends for assistance when you’re stuck or need feedback.
  Example: Forming a study group where each member takes turns explaining concepts and clarifying doubts about a topic.
Seeking Help From Teachers
- What It Is: Reaching out to instructors for extra guidance, clarification, or resources.
- Example: A student visits the teacher during office hours to go over tricky math problems or to get pointers on structuring an essay.
Seeking Help From Adults or Experts

What It Is: Consulting a tutor, counselor, or another adult who can provide specialized knowledge or support.
Example: A high school student might email a local scientist for insights on a science fair project or meet with a writing coach for college essay feedback.

Reviewing Personal Notes

What It Is: Revisiting your own summaries or annotations to reinforce learning.
Example: Spending 10 minutes each evening flipping through the day’s lecture notes, highlighting key terms and concepts.

Reviewing Past Tests

What It Is: Examining previous quizzes or exams to pinpoint errors, trends, and areas needing more attention.
Example: A student looks over a returned math test, identifies the types of problems missed most frequently, and practices those problem types for mastery.

Reviewing Textbooks or Readings

What It Is: Going back to the original source material to clarify details or confirm understanding.
Example: After a confusing history lecture, rereading the relevant textbook section and taking additional notes on points that were unclear in class.

When you can help students to engage with concrete tools to try, their faces light up finally, something specific instead of vague commands like “focus more.”

The Challenge

Introduce one self-regulated learning strategy from Zimmerman’s list in your classroom this week. Pick something easy to implement, like having students set one very specific goal for a reading assignment: “By the end of today’s lesson, I will be able to identify the main argument in at least one paragraph and explain it to a friend.”

Once they do that, encourage them to evaluate whether they succeeded (self-monitoring!), and if not, what else can they try next time? Sure, they might roll their eyes initially, but you’ll be surprised how quickly they internalize the process when it’s explicit and meaningful.

Why Prior Knowledge Rules the Classroom

It’s no secret that our students come with all sorts of pre-loaded knowledge, misunderstandings, and the occasional random tidbit they picked up from YouTube. This knowledge they walk in with, what students already know (or don’t know), massively affects what they learn next.

The Power of Prior Knowledge

David Ausubel, famous for ideas on meaningful verbal learning said, “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.” Essentially, if my students show up to class thinking the Eiffel Tower is located on The Strip, we’ve got some preconceptions to fix before I dive into the related content.

Even if you are feeling behind in your curriculum, it’s not wise to plow into brand-new material without first anchoring it to familiar concepts. If the gap between old and new knowledge is too big, students will either check out mentally or get lost. Even three minutes spent discussing the previous day’s content can get those synapses firing.

Setting the Stage

Ausubel’s genius contribution to education was the concept of advance organizers. These are handy frameworks or big-picture overviews given before diving into new material. They could be a short text, a diagram, or even a simple story, anything that provides a conceptual scaffold. The job of an advance organizer is to say, “Hey, class, here’s what’s coming, here’s how it fits into what you already know.”

If you’re thinking, “But I already do that,” congratulations! See if what you do fits into these four main categories:

Expository Organizers – A descriptive, straightforward explanation tying new concepts to old.
Narrative Organizers – A story that warms up background knowledge in a more personal, captivating way.
Skimming Organizers – A simple “preview of coming attractions,” such as scanning headings and bolded text.
Graphic Organizers – Visual tools like concept maps, Venn diagrams, or flowcharts.

Before kicking off a lesson on different cultural celebrations, I’d first give a simple overview explaining that many people around the world enjoy festivals with special foods, songs, or traditions, just on different days or for different reasons. Then I’d add a quick story, like how my friend’s family in another country celebrates New Year’s by lighting candles and sharing wishes, so students can relate it to their own experiences of counting down at midnight. This way, they see the “big picture” (the expository approach) and also have a fun, personal anecdote (the narrative approach) that connects to what they already know.

How New Ideas Find a Home

Ausubel’s theory is sometimes called Subsumption Theory because new knowledge must be “subsumed” (nested) under what a student already knows. Four main subsumption processes keep popping up:

Derivative Subsumption: Adding brand-new items to an existing category (like learning that bats and whales are both mammals).
Correlative Subsumption: Adding new details about a familiar concept (discovering that certain mammals can fly or live in water).
Superordinate Subsumption: Introducing a broader category under which current knowledge can fit (a “vertebrate” concept that includes mammals, reptiles, and birds).
Combinatorial Subsumption: Merging higher-order concepts across domains (like applying principles from physics to understand how feathers help birds retain body heat).
Obliterative subsumption happens when the original specifics get absorbed into a bigger, more generalized concept until we can’t remember them separately like forgetting the exact wording of a definition but remembering its overall meaning.

Classroom Application

Activate Prior Knowledge: Begin each lesson by prompting students to recall what they learned before. Barak Rosenshine recommended a short “review session” that can be anything from a quick chat to a low-stakes pop quiz.
Test or Survey Before You Teach: Pre-tests reveal who’s got the background knowledge and who’s spinning tall tales about the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.
Use the Right Organizer: If students have some background already, you might just need a brisk overview. If they’re clueless, try an expository or narrative approach to create that vital scaffold.
Acknowledge Differences: Socioeconomic factors can affect students’ outside-of-school knowledge. Plan for those who already know the basics and for students who need the scaffolding.

The Challenge

Spend five minutes designing a simple advance organizer, maybe a short story, a concept map, or just a brief overview that ties your upcoming topic to something your students already know. Then watch how much more engaged (and less mystified) they become.

Teaching isn’t about throwing information at students and hoping for the best; it’s about connecting with the knowledge they already hold and guiding them to reshape it. That’s how we help them truly ‘get it.’

Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51(5), 267–272. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046669

Unlock the Power of Verbal-Visual Processing in Your Classroom

Our brains have two separate but related systems for processing information: a verbal system (words) and a non-verbal system (images, sensations, and the like). As James Clark and Allan Paivio originally put it, “non-verbal imagery and verbal symbolic processes are operationally distinguishable from each other and are differentially available to a learner as associative mediators.” If that made your brain power down, don’t worry it simply means your mind stores and retrieves words and pictures somewhat independently, but they work together to turbocharge memory.

Here’s the interesting part, when you simultaneously engage both the verbal and the non-verbal “channels,” your students can recall information more easily and more accurately. It’s basically the difference between hearing the word “cow” and also picturing a big ol’ black-and-white Holstein. One system triggers the other, forging stronger connections in memory. And no, nobody is purely a “visual learner” or a “verbal learner.” Research has shown that so-called learning styles are little more than urban legend. Clark and Paivio make it clear: Everyone uses both systems.

Concrete Examples Beat Pure Abstractions
“Freedom,” “justice,” and “mammal” are weighty concepts. Showing a statue of Lady Justice might help, but you still need words to explain her blindfold, her scales, and her sword. Combining images and verbal cues cements comprehension. Students remember information better if you activate both systems at the same time than if you use only one system.
It’s All About Pairing the Right Words with the Right Pictures
We’re all guilty of reading every single word from a busy slide. We might assume hearing it and seeing it is automatically good, but ironically it can overload students. It’s better to show a clear diagram while you explain it verbally. That way, the visuals and the words help each other without overloading the verbal channel.

Classroom Applications

Picture-Word Tag Teams
Challenge yourself to design slides that seamlessly pairs images with a short verbal explanations. Keep it short, sweet, and purposeful.
Student-Generated Visuals
Ask your students to draw or diagram concepts. They can add short, descriptive labels. This fosters what we might call “double-barrelled learning.”
Provoke Mental Imagery
Encourage learners to picture scenes from a text, or to visualize the lines and angles in shapes.

The bottom line is by combining verbal explanations with purposeful visuals, you tap into both memory systems. This synergy not only keeps your students more engaged, it also forges stronger, longer-lasting memory traces.

The Challenge

As you prepare your next lesson, find just one concept that screams for a good visual. Something as simple as a photo, a diagram, or even a stick-figure doodle will work. Pair it with your spoken explanation. To extend an important concept, ask your students to create their own image or concept map in response. If you’re feeling extra bold, swap stories with a colleague about which images clicked best for your students. You’ll see firsthand how pictures and words together can make learning more concrete, more memorable.

Clark, J. M., & Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. Educational Psychology Review, 3(3), 149–210. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01320076

Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations: A dual coding approach. Oxford University Press.
For more information on this concept, read How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice (https://a.co/d/a0tZSMR) This post is a summary of concepts from How Learning Happens.