The Standards for Effective Pedagogy Framework

The Standards for Effective Pedagogy were established through CREDE research and through an extensive analysis of the research and development literature in education and diversity. The standards represent recommendations on which the literature is in agreement across all cultural, racial, and linguistic groups in the United States, all ages levels, and all subject matters. Thus, they express the principles of effective pedagogy for all students. Even for mainstream students, the standards describe the ideal conditions for instructional; but for students at-risk of educational failure, effective classroom implementation of the standards is vital.

Joint Productive Activity (JPA)

Teacher and Students Producing Together

Indicators of Joint Productive Activity

The Teacher:

• designs instructional activities requiring student collaboration to accomplish a joint product.
• matches the demands of the joint productive activity to the time available for accomplishing them.
• arranges classroom seating to accommodate students’ individual and group needs to communicate and work jointly.
• participates with students in joint productive activity.
• organizes students in a variety of groupings, such as by friendship, mixed academic ability, language, project, or interests, to promote interaction.
• plans with students how to work in groups and move from one activity to another, such as from large group introduction to small group activity, for clean-up, dismissal, and the like.
• manages student and teacher access to materials and technology to facilitate joint productive activity.
• monitors and supports student collaboration in positive ways.

Language and Literacy Development (LLD)

Developing Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum

Indicators of Language and Literacy Development

The Teacher:

• listens to students talk about familiar topics such as home and community.
• responds to students’ talk and questions, making “in-flight” changes during conversation that directly relate to students’ comments.
• assists written and oral language development through modeling, eliciting, probing, restating, clarifying, questioning, praising, etc., in purposeful conversation and writing.
• interacts with students in ways that respect students’ preferences for speaking that may be different from the teacher’s, such as wait-time, eye contact, turn-taking, or spotlighting.
• connects student language with literacy and content area knowledge through speaking, listening, reading, and writing activities.
• encourages students to use content vocabulary to express their understanding.
• provides frequent opportunity for students to interact with each other and the teacher during instructional activities.
• encourages students’ use of first and second languages in instructional activities.

Contextualization (CTX)

Making Meaning: Connecting School to Students’ Lives

Indicators of Contextualization

The Teacher:

• begins activities with what students already know from home, community, and school.
• designs instructional activities that are meaningful to students in terms of local community norms and knowledge.
• acquires knowledge of local norms and knowledge by talking to students, parents or family members, community members, and by reading pertinent documents.
• assists students to connect and apply their learning to home and community.
• plans jointly with students to design community-based learning activities.
• provides opportunities for parents or families to participate in classroom instructional activities. 
• varies activities to include students’ preferences, from collective and cooperative to individual and competitive.
• varies styles of conversation and participation to include students’ cultural preferences, such as co- narration, call-and-response, and choral, among others.

Challenging Activities (CA)

Teaching Complex Thinking

Indicators of Challenging Activities

The Teacher:

• assures that students—for each instructional topic—see the whole picture as a basis for understanding the parts.
• presents challenging standards for student performance.
• designs instructional tasks that advance student understanding to more complex levels.
• assists students to accomplish more complex understanding by building from their previous success.
• gives clear, direct feedback about how student performance compares with the challenging standards.

Instructional Conversation (IC)

Teaching through Conversation

Indicators of Instructional Conversation

The Teacher:

• arranges the classroom to accommodate conversation between the teacher and a small group of students on a regular and frequent basis.
• has a clear academic goal that guides conversation with students.
• ensures that student talk occurs at higher rates than teacher talk.
• guides conversation to include students’ views, judgments, and rationales using text evidence and other substantive support.
• ensures that all students are included in the conversation according to their preferences.
• listens carefully to assess levels of students’ understanding.
• assists students’ learning throughout the conversation by questioning, restating, praising, encouraging, etc.
• guides the students to prepare a product that indicates the Instructional Conversation’s goal was achieved.

Source

Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE). Reprinted with permission. 

Adapted with permission from:                                                                                             

Teemant, A. & Pinnegar, S. (2007). Understanding Langauge Acquisition Instructional Guide. Brigham Young University-Public School Partnership.