Curiosity. We’ve been talking a lot lately about how Cary Academy fuels the natural curiosity of students through personalized learning experiences that are rich in opportunities for discovery, collaboration, and innovation. What you may not know, however, is that we seek to kindle the curiosity of our faculty in much the same way, through personalized professional development experiences that allow teachers to explore, connect and invent. One example of this inquiry-based, learner-driven approach to the professional growth of our faculty is the school’s Mastery Learning Team.
The Mastery Learning Team was launched in August 2017 with an invitation to faculty to consider joining a group of colleagues to investigate alternatives to our current assessment, feedback, grading, and reporting systems. The reference to “mastery learning” certainly piqued our teachers’ curiosity, particularly given the current focus in the education world upon the potential for competency-based learning models and gradeless learning environments to help reduce stress and empower students to own their learning. Twenty-one teachers from both Middle and Upper School volunteered for the team, which meets approximately one afternoon per month.
Curiously (pun intended), team members decided almost immediately that it would be a mistake to dive right into the mastery learning approach as a possible solution for our students without first more fully exploring and defining the learner needs we were hoping to address. This, of course, is a hallmark of open, inquiry-based learning—instead of starting with the answer, we start with a really good question. Or, in the case of the Mastery Learning Team, two really good questions, crafted within a design thinking process:
- How might we reshape our practice to make individual learning progress more visible (transparent) to the teacher and the student?
- How might we reshape our practice to strengthen student agency and self-efficacy?
So what happened next? After a session of ideation around these two questions, team members divided themselves into three smaller study groups, each with a different action plan. One group decided to conduct more research into student perceptions of choice within and across courses at CA and how this impacts their sense of agency and self-efficacy. Another group chose to investigate and test mastery-oriented software applications that allow teachers to more effectively track and communicate student progress toward specific learning goals without the use of letter grades. The third group went into a prototyping mode, deciding to try to articulate a set of mission-based meta-skills for 6th graders and then to start work on a series of interdisciplinary learning experiences through which students could develop those skills without the pressure of traditional grades.
In the year since the launch of the Mastery Learning Team, each study group has made valuable headway toward its chosen objective, but also, in keeping with another hallmark of open, inquiry-based learning, has found itself uncovering new questions and looking to connect with others to seek answers. This is where the school has stepped back in to support the team, providing time and funding for one cohort to engage in an online course on mastery learning strategies offered by the Global Online Academy, while another cohort will be attending the OESIS fall conference focused on the design and implementation of mastery models. Team members involved in the work of the Mastery Transcript Consortium and the Collaborative for Innovative Education are also enthusiastically sharing their learning around mastery models with the larger group.
The key feature of the Mastery Learning Team is that it was intentionally designed without a prescribed target or result that team members were expected to achieve. Instead, motivation and direction for the team were allowed to emerge from the participants’ natural curiosity, setting the stage for deeper engagement and more durable learning. It is in this way that the professional learning taking place within the Mastery Learning Team mirrors the learning we’re aiming for in our classrooms.
Curiosity. It’s not just for students!