slow down this process so we can dissect every aspect of assessing information and learn how to do it better. It is a fluency built for maximizing the usefulness and credibility of all forms of research.
6. Process-oriented learning: Use other essential fluencies as the learning process to challenge learners to solve real-world problems that matter, dive deep into inquiry, or create something amazing. The microshifts in this chapter feature uses for solution fluency, media fluency, and collaboration fluency.
7. Learning intentions and success criteria: Whether working in one subject or across multiple key learning areas, the impact of being transparent with curricula is amazing. No matter if it’s curriculum lists, learning intentions, standards, or objectives, putting them out front for the benefit of your learners is an essential shift in future-focused learning.
8. Learner-created knowledge: Learner creation means learners are creating new knowledge as part of a learning task, a new product, or a new solution. It’s also about developing the evidence of learning as well as the criteria.
9. Mindful assessment: Mindful assessment is fair, clear, transparent, deliberate, and purposeful. It enhances learning by focusing on formative assessment as well as reflecting on the learning process. We must rethink the bond between teaching and learning by assessing the crucial skills our learners need to thrive in life beyond school, as embodied by the essential fluencies. We do this through the practice of mindfulness with both assessment and feedback for improvement.
10. Self- and peer assessment: Reflection on learning is a skill we can internalize and grow with by practicing it during our school years. That’s why encouraging learner reflection through self- and peer assessment adds such a powerful dimension to learning. Self- and peer assessment stress and reinforce the importance of collaboration, reduce workload, and increase engagement and understanding. In addition, learners’ insights and observations become highly valued since they help them reflect on and understand the processes of their own learning.
Within each chapter, you will find three specific microshifts that detail specific activities you can engage your students in along with reflective questions for you to consider after trying them. I call them microshifts because each is a single activity that can help nudge your practice toward a permanent transformation in relation to the broader shift of practice. Each chapter concludes with a series of guiding questions for further reflection or for a book study with your colleagues or learning community.
Finally, the book’s appendix also presents additional microshift ideas for you to consider, seven small shifts of practice you can implement to further each core shift in this book. All in all, this book contains one hundred microshifts that you can immediately use in your classroom.
As you work through this book, or after you complete it, I recommend starting with the low-hanging fruit by considering only one of these shifts. Reflect on the microshifts and additional microshift ideas and either choose one or develop your own microshift to trial. You might choose whichever shift is easiest to implement or the one you are most excited about. When you do this, consider what you hope to see happen before-hand and afterward, and reflect on whether this occurred or if a different outcome occurred, be it favorable or unfavorable. You may then choose to adjust your approach and attempt it again. Eventually, through a process of application, debriefing, and adjustments, you will find that the shift becomes more entrenched in your practice and improves learning outcomes. When this happens, move to whichever shift you want to explore next.
Although I do focus this text on communicating to you as an individual, it’s important to understand that I developed these shifts of practice as a way to assist entire faculties to transform their learning. As such, these shifts are particularly well suited to teams. As a group, you can identify a shift, collectively implement it using multiple microshifts, and reflect on its outcome by working together to quickly identify what elements and processes lead to success with your unique learners and learning environments. When using these shifts as a group, note that because they overlap and interrelate heavily, not everyone has to work on the same shift. Having each member work on a different shift of practice as an alternative to everyone working on the same shift also leads to rich professional conversations.
For example, with my clients, I work the shifts through a continual action-research cycle. We assign a learning conversation facilitator to a group of teachers. These facilitators may be administrators, heads of faculties, learning coaches, or any other authority figure who makes sense in your organization. What is most important is a structured process with accountability.
The facilitator meets with each teacher to identify the following: Which shift will you undertake? How will you trial it with your learners? What key indicators of success are you looking for? By when will you accomplish these indicators? The final step before adjourning is to set the follow-up meeting based on the timeline the teachers have set for themselves.
Each teacher then works to implement the shift and collect evidence of success. At the follow-up meeting, teachers reflect on the evidence they collect based on the key indicators for success they identified in the initial meeting. After discussion, the facilitator works with the teacher group to determine the next steps, and the cycle repeats until both the teachers and the learning conversation facilitator agree to move to a different shift.
To help facilitate this kind of work, my organization developed a new application platform (Wabisabi, https://wabisabizen.com). If you opt to try it out, I recommend that you access the Professional Growth section, which documents this process. The valuable content in this section is a direct result of the effort and outcomes of transforming teaching practices using these shifts.
It doesn’t matter which shift you implement first, only that eventually you work through them all. By focusing on these shifts, you will transform education from explicit teaching to future-focused learning for your learners, one microshift at a time.
chapter 1
Essential and Herding Questions
The first shift I present in this book involves deeply engaging students with their learning. You can do this by forming an essential question that tasks them with examining a learning topic beyond the surface level. You can then use their initial, free-form responses to that question to form a series of herding questions—questions that help drive them toward the specific learning goal you have in mind. Let’s explore what makes a question essential by looking at the concept from a different angle and then how you can follow that with herding questions.
When presenting new learning, consider this: If this learning is the answer, what was the question? Often, educators present learning as the next thing students need to know or be able to do. As educators, we may understand the scope and sequence that makes the learning essential, but students may have no idea. I believe the presence of an essential question might actually be essential to learning.
I have found that deep questioning leads to exceptional thinking when answers prompt more questions and more in-depth inquiry. Key learning areas arise when students face a flurry of essential questions that drive them to investigate; the fruits of that investigation result in knowledge, understanding, and insight. Would biology exist had someone not asked, “What are the fundamental elements of living systems? What structures exist within, and what purpose do these structures serve?”
I find that learning usually springs from a need or from curiosity about a personal connection. Learning has a reason; it is an answer. Without a question, learning lacks both purpose and meaning and is lost. All learning should start with an essential question, and the relatively brief time it takes to discuss an essential question
