Guiding learning on a learning progression

What is a learning progression?  Black, Wilson, & Yao (2011) describe it as a "road map" for students to follow on the way to achieving their learning goals.  Briggs & Peck (2015) and Popham (2007) describe it as a developmental sequence that increases in complexity. 

A learning progression is more than just a list of skills and concepts.  It represents a learning path students travel as they explore ideas.  Learning progressions can move from easy to difficult and simple to complex.  Teachers provide opportunities for students to practice skills, concepts, and procedures in more applied settings and with less and less scaffolding. 

Learning progressions are not isolated.  Although they can define the instructional sequence, links among the connected learning progressions can illuminate opportunities for clarification of misconceptions with struggling students and prospective occasions for enrichment when students have time to grapple with related content.

It is important to recognize that students may travel along the learning path at different rates and may enter at different points.  Therefore, targeted instruction requires teachers to understand students' preconceptions and learning habits.  Diagnostic and formative assessment can guide both students and teachers to understand where students are on their learning progression and what the next steps might be to help them move forward.  However, some students may make connections to other ideas beyond what educators have planned.  This extended abstract level of thinking is not to be discouraged, as students who can find and explain relationships are demonstrating their strong understanding of content and their independent learning habits.

Teachers need to understand the sequence of instruction as a learning progression so that they can help students to make connections between new ideas and prior knowledge.  Otherwise, both students and teachers are merely going through the motions of teaching and learning.  Students may be able to provide correct answers, but the knowledge may be fragile.  Deep learning involves understanding the relationships between concepts, skills, procedures, and contexts. Deep learning endures.  If the goal of education is to create independent learners who retain enduring understandings of content and learning habits, then learning progressions provide the framework for meeting that goal.