Learning Alignment Model

In this post, I want to introduce you to a Learning Alignment Model that I have developed with some of my partner schools over the last few years.

It is not a step by step process to design learning, but more of a high-level thinking model to engage with that uncovers some interesting potential tensions in our classroom work.

As you will see the model also helps explain a little about the line of sight from whole school strategy through to the actual process of learning.

Starting Points

There have been a few sources of inspiration for this Learning Alignment Model.

First would be the work of Dylan Wiliam and his simple, yet a powerful, statement that “children do not learn what we teach.” In explaining this Wiliam refers to the work of Denvir and Brown (1986) who explored the developmental path of learning number concepts with 7-9-year-olds.

Wiliam explains that despite targeted instruction children do not learn what we teach. You can access a webinar here in which Dylan Wiliam explains this in more detail, have a look from the 01:48 mark.

This discrepancy and unpredictability remain a powerful provocation. It is something that I experienced throughout my teaching, but I never stopped to question or reflect why. This model helps to surface that provocation.

The second instigation is the various definitions of curriculum. When you explore the work of curriculum development, various sub-sets of the curriculum emerge. For example these eight ideas:

The recommended curriculum derives from experts in the field. Almost every discipline-based professional group has promulgated curriculum standards for its field.

The written curriculum is found in the documents produced by the state, the school system, the school, and the classroom teacher, specifying what is to be taught.

The supported curriculum is the one for which there are complimentary instructional materials available, such as textbooks, software, and multimedia resources.

The tested curriculum is the one embodied in tests developed by the state, school system, and teachers. The term “test” is used broadly here to include standardized tests, competency tests, and performance assessments.

The taught curriculum is the one that teachers actually deliver. Researchers have pointed out that there is enormous variation in the nature of what is actually taught, despite the superficial appearance of uniformity (Gehrke, Knapp, & Sirotnik, 1992).

The learned curriculum is the bottom-line curriculum—what students learn. Clearly, it is the most important of all.

In addition, there is often reference to the hidden curriculum (a term coined by Jackson, 1968) is the unintended curriculum-what students learn from the school’s culture and climate. And the excluded curriculum is what has been left out, either intentionally or unintentionally.

These definitions are taken from Planning And Organizing For Curriculum Renewal by Allan A. Glatthorn, Judy F. Carr and Douglas E. Harris.

This model of curriculum design and development is at the core of my own model.

A final core provocation for me was the concept of Constructive Alignment from John Biggs the author of the SOLO taxonomy. He explains:

In constructive alignment, we start with the outcomes we intend students to learn and align teaching and assessment to those outcomes.

The idea of alignment provides an accelerant for how these parts work together. I wanted to create something that combined the three concepts and focused more on the learning experience than just the curriculum.

I share it as an ongoing work in progress and I would be grateful for your comments and critique.

ABHS Melbourne Learning Tour 2018 1

When you review the model I want you to take into account a few ideas about how it might be used and thought about.

Supporting Notes and Explanations

  • It deliberately emphasises learning over assessment or curriculum.
  • Instead of saying planning I have used “Designed Learning” as I think this is richer articulation of what needs to occur. Start with the learner.
  • I felt I needed to add the word “Experience” in to the upper levels to distinguish from the core level of “Learning” at the base.
  • There is a connection between a broader whole school vision statement (Conceptual) and the designed learning. How each classrooms aligns itself to those core values and how that flows down to the learning that occurs.
  • As you move down the model there is less control. We can write visions statements down and collaborate on learning design, but as soon as those ideas are enacted there are more variables.
  • There can be a big difference between what we design, what we teach and what the actual student experience ends up being. This was highlighted to me recently when a young teacher reviewed some video of her lesson introduction and realised how much she was talking. Her perception of that was very different than the actual experience students had.
  • The base level Learning was added later as the model developed as I wanted to include the cognitive process we do not see. How do we know that learning has happened? In order to be able to better understand this we need better proxies for learning. This leads to discussions about assessment design which is a bridge between instruction and learning.
  • Write these out on cards and consider how they pair together and influence each other. Explore how they are sometimes aligned and sometimes very much disconnected.
  • There is a major assumption inherent in the model that better alignment = better learning. I am not sure this is always true. Sometimes great learning happens when we least expect it and often when we do not plan or design for it. Does all learning have to be designed?
  • This alignment could be different for every child. When we move the model from curriculum and design to learning, we have to consider the actual experience and change in long term memory will be different for every student.

Here is the model in plain text format.

Conceptual Learning ExperienceVision statement / teaching and learning principles or frameworks
Designed Learning ExperiencePlanning and programming / Curriculum documentation
Enacted Learning ExperienceTeaching and facilitation
Actual Learning ExperienceThe student’s direct experience of teaching and learning
LearningChanges in long term memory

To finish, I want to share some summary questions that you can use when exploring the model and that act as further provocations for thinking about the design of learning.

Accompanying Questions and Provocations

  • How do you know that learning has occurred?
  • What can you do to better understand the student experience?
  • What is the difference between planning and designing?
  • What proxies for learning do we use?
  • How does the student experience of learning align with what our community values the most?
  • How is every learning experience an expression of what we are striving to achieve as a whole school?
  • How can we make the best use of unexpected teachable moments with the same rigour as those that we design?
  • How might we use formative assessment to bridge between teaching and learning?
  • How can we improve our skills in assessment design?

I still have plenty of areas I want to explore with this model and I would be delighted to hear your reaction and response.

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Second Score – use this meta-feedback strategy

In our work and learning, the quality of creative culture can be directly linked to the quality of the feedback culture.

We might also call this a Culture of Critique with its associated processes and dispositions.

It is no real surprise that we should invest time, energy and effort in getting good at feedback. What follows is an outline of a a handy technique, I will coin Second Score, which can aid the way we receive feedback from others.

I first came across it in “Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well,” co-authored by Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone. Worthy of your time and standard reading for anyone interested in feedback.

It is pretty straightforward, basically we give ourselves a (you guessed it dear reader) Second Score. But importantly the assessment is about the way we received the feedback.

Let’s imagine the scenario where you have created a diagram to visualise a key concept. It will form part of larger written report you are collaborating on with your team. You pitch in the version you have drafted over the last few hours and have asked for some critique or feedback from others. That feedback arrives from a few of your team and overall it seems heavy handed and too general in detail to be useful. [PAUSE]

So at this moment just as you complete the reading of the feedback comments, you have a choice. We all have a choice in these moments. How we choose to receive the feedback. It is this reception that we can rate or assess. By explicitly thinking about your Second Score (how we receive the feedback) we increase our self awareness at this critical moment, increasing the likelihood of openness and more favourable conditions for it to be received well.

[PLAY] In this scenario we might: (a) throw up our hands and agree never to contribute a visual element to future reports (b) write down some questions in response to help clarify what needs your attention first (c) Nod our heads, retreat to our happy place, change nothing (d) delete the original files and say “I thought that is what you meant, oh fine, I can’t win!” (e) corner one of the feedback providers and ask them what their problem is.

You can hopefully see the choice that might score more favourably using our Second Score.[1] Although we might judge the quality of the feedback to have been low, we can happily give ourselves a higher Second Score in terms of how we received it. Well done you.

For us and for younger learners this type of technique will potentially develop a strong reflective habit. In many ways this falls into the meta-cognitive bucket insomuch that the act of reflecting on how we receive feedback. I am not sure if you can put the word meta in front of feedback but it feels like this is a meta-feedback technique.

So the next time you are providing feedback, and especially when we are on the receiving end consider your Second Score.

Photo by Adam Jang


  1. (a) good luck with that (b) yes definitely this one (c) no (d) see “a” (e) no that is just wrong  ↩

How To Generate More Ideas With The Deliberate Debate Technique

Conflict, controversy and debate might improve your idea generation

According to research by Charlan Nemeth, and her team, a degree of conflict can increase the number of ideas we generate.

This research is fascinating as it runs counter to commonly held beliefs about the best conditions for generating ideas. These beliefs centre on withholding criticism and feedback.

In this post we explore why more criticism might lead to more ideas; when to explore this in your design process; the importance of your team relationships; practical strategies and protocols you can use to implement this approach.

Permission to Criticise

In my facilitation experience, I present the importance of not judging ideas too soon; I still think this is important. It is not a lack of critique, it is more about the timing of feedback.

Importantly this study explored the impact of providing permission to criticise and judge ideas. In this way, critique is explicitly playing a role in the process.

Here is a little detail about the studies taken from the abstract:

In this experimental study, traditional brainstorming instructions, including the advice of not criticizing, were compared with instructions encouraging people to debate—even criticize. A third condition served as a control. This study was conducted both in the United States and in France. Results show the value of both types of instruction, but, in general, debate instructions were superior to traditional brainstorming instructions. Further, these findings hold across both cultures.[1]

Nemeth, Charlan & Personnaz, Bernard & Personnaz, Marie & Goncalo, Jack. (2004). The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries. European Journal of Social Psychology – EUR J SOC PSYCHOL. 34. 365-374. 10.1002/ejsp.210.

I have often found that when criticism is not expected, it is counterproductive to the process. I suppose setting clear expectations such as: “critique is allowed” provides clear boundaries for everyone.

My effort to “Not judge ideas too soon” could be reframed around clear expectations, or “not judging ideas unexpectedly”. With clear boundaries, feedback and filtering are welcome and not a surprise.

Why does conflict, controversy and debate generate more ideas?

Nemeth et al describe a 25% increase in ideas generated from the debate and critique approach compared to straightforward brainstorming tasks.

Also, participants developed more ideas after the activity as those taking part in the debate mulled over potential solutions.

Even though they may have generated new ideas, I still think this task falls into the idea exploration category, the second in the three steps of creativity.

The authors posit that an environment where debate is normal creates freedom.

framing criticism in terms of its potential for group creativity would both liberate individuals to be relatively free of evaluation apprehension and stimulate them to express ideas more freely.

This connects with my understanding of self-critic and how we need to filter less when we are generating ideas. If criticism and feedback are normal we can say what we want, without fear or angst.

Nemeth et al go on to explain how this freedom improves the conditions for idea generation on two different levels.

One is at the level of permitting discourse that would otherwise be monitored. A second is at the level of stimulating additional thought via the expression of competing views. If what brainstorming attempts to achieve is quantity of ideas without regard for their quality (Osborn, 1957), the freedom to express thoughts without worrying whether they constitute a criticism of another’s ideas may be well suited to idea generation.

By opening up unmonitored discourse we encourage more criticism, as well as, more sharing of ideas. We circumvent the filters and the second-guessing that limit our contributions.

How to generate more ideas through the debate and critique approach

A couple of things spring to mind about how this research and the deliberate debate and critique approach, runs counter to commonly held beliefs.

Team Trust Improves Idea Generation

The first is about the necessary team environment for this type of approach to thrive. In a friendly team, where co-construction is high, and competition is relatively low, I would imagine it would work well.

A team with lots of shared creative experiences and plenty of successful reference points can explore higher levels of conflict with more confidence.

The levels of trust are high between the team. They can enter into the deliberate debate space trusting in the relationships around the table. Relationships are crucial to team idea generation.

We can summarise these elements as follows:

  • Co-construction – we make stuff together (HIGH)
  • Shared experiences – we have been through a lot together (HIGH)
  • Trust – I have got your back (HIGH)
  • Competition – we are not trying to beat each other (LOW)
  • Successful creative reference points – we have developed ideas together before (HIGH)

When the opposite is true, criticism can often be a downward spiral of assumed personal attacks.

Mindset Matters

That leads me to my second thought about the makeup of the idea generation experience. If the critique is commonplace the disposition and mindset of participants become even more critical.

By sharing expectations, you signal that a specific type of thinking is needed. By debating ideas and testing them through dialogue, you are exploring them.

A deliberate debate and critique approach to idea generation require an emergent or exploratory thinking mindset. We explore possibilities and potential. We respond to critique and debate the options.

In the team environment, we want everyone to be on board with this approach and to tune into this disposition and expectation. Any misalignment or misinterpretation can slide into the downward spiral of assumed personal attacks.

In the next section, we look at how to set expectations for this type of work.

How to Use Protocols to Generate More Ideas With The Deliberate Debate Technique

I use protocols for thinking and critique all of the time with my clients. These are simple rules of engagement in a meeting or workshop. Protocols are the most direct way to share expectations.

Talk about the Talking

Rather than launching straight into the workshop outcomes, or the first thing on the agenda, I spend up to 10 minutes talking about how we are going to work together.

The sort of language I use to describe this phase is to talk about the talking. We establish some agreed expectations about how we will engage with the dialogue and the session’s work. The 10 minutes invariably pays off.

Hard on Content; Soft on People

For the debate and critique approach to idea generation, or Deliberate Idea Debate (DID)[2], the “Hard on content; Soft on people” protocol would be critical to any success.

A team should be debating the ideas or content, not the people who share them. The distinction needs to be facilitated watchfully.

This protocol is broken in the way we least expect. It is often because we are too soft on content, and not hard enough. You may recall times when your team didn’t quite get below the surface of the issue; identified the root cause; shied away from asking the hard questions, or were simply too nice.

The debate and critique approach to idea generation offer an invitation to change this dynamic.

“Hard on content; Soft on people” is an effective protocol to create clear expectations, which become the foundations for better debate.

Ringfenced Debate

Another useful facilitation technique is to ringfence the deliberate debate and critique time. Setup the activity to have time limits.

Time-limited activities enable the team to introduce new expectations or reinforce the protocols for collaboration.

When I am running new routines, like this debate approach, I set a limit on the time we spend in this mode. By using this approach I can make a clear distinction between workshop behaviours before and afterwards.

You might ringfence the activity like this:

  • 5 minutes to establish the protocols and expectations for the activity.
  • 30 minutes of debate and critique to generate more ideas.
  • 10 minutes capturing insights and reflections.
  • 5 minutes reflecting on the experience.

Use a timer to structure each part.

With more experience, you can extend the time for different elements of the process.

When to Generate More Ideas With The Deliberate Debate Technique?

Overall I was reflecting on:

  • When would I potentially use the D.I.D (Deliberate Idea Debate) activity in a longer design process?
  • When is it most helpful to slow down and explore a set of ideas through discussion and debate?

I think it would work well in the idea exploration phase, as mentioned earlier. Once you have generated a stack of ideas, the more, the merrier, the exploration and debate could help with both broadening and maturing those potential ideas.

You might start by producing the first filter, a shortlist from your collective top picks and then allow each team member the chance to present and defend a potential idea.

Your Talking Points and Next Steps

  • Evaluate the idea generation methods you have used.
  • Identify future opportunities to use the debate and critique approach.
  • Reflect on the trust and relationships in your team.
  • Outline the protocols to support this approach.

If you get a chance to use deliberate debate or dialogue, it would be great to hear how you get on.


  1. Nemeth, C. J., Personnaz, B., Personnaz, M. and Goncalo, J. A. (2004), The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 34: 365–374. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.210  ↩
  2. Maybe that could be the name of the tool or activity Deliberate Idea Debate or D.I.D!  ↩

How To Make The Most Of The 30% Feedback Strategy

Feedback strategy is often focused on Giving feedback, but this is only part of the process. We have lots of assessment tactics for providing, offering and giving feedback, but little on receiving it.

This post outlines a feedback strategy to help you or your students receive feedback successfully.

The Feedback Dynamic

“It takes two to tango”, as the song goes, and the dynamic of feedback depends on a relationship between two (or more) people.

  1. The feedback giver
  2. The receiver of feedback

It is common for us to have feedback strategies for giving feedback, but we can also develop feedback strategies to receive critique effectively.

Receiving feedback has a unique set of skills, strategies, and dispositions. We overlook these too often and then wonder why feedback is not effective.

The 30 Percent Feedback Strategy

30% feedback is a feedback strategy for the receiver. It signals to the feedback giver your overall progress. Is it 30% complete or 90% complete?

You are referring to the progress of whatever you are making or creating. You might be writing an article or essay or creating a piece of artwork. Whatever the subject of the feedback is, signal the progress you believe you have made.

Consider these two statements: “This is 95% complete” and “I just started, it is about 10% done”. Imagine the mindset of these two people or students. Do you notice the difference? The different attitudes are essential to the effective receiving of feedback.

Don’t Polish Anything

I first came across this technique from Jason Freedman’s blog post and realised how useful it would be for students seeking feedback from others. Jason explains that he learned it from a colleague at 42Floors:

It’s a trick I learned from our investor, Seth Lieberman.  It came about because I once asked him for feedback on a product mockup, and he asked if I felt like I was ninety percent done or thirty percent done. If I was ninety percent done, he would try to correct me on every little detail possible because otherwise a typo might make it into production. But if I had told him I was only thirty percent done, he would gloss over the tiny mistakes, knowing that I would correct them later.  He would engage in broader conversations about what the product should be.

In this particular case, I was indeed ninety percent done and so we debated a few details, I got my pat on the back, and I moved on.

As he was leaving, he said:

“Next time come to me when you’re only thirty percent done and I’ll give you thirty percent feedback.”

So a few months later on a different project, I came to him with some questions on a project that was still in its early stages and we wrestled with the direction together.  I didn’t polish anything and he made sure not to critique things he knew I would fix later.  It was really freeing. I knew I wasn’t putting my best foot forward and he didn’t care.  He was able to help me shift course without the sunk cost of throwing away a ton of work.  Really awesome.

Jason Freedman

Imagine the time and energy you save if the feedback you offer is more targeted and you respond to these precise progress signals.

Your Progress Bar

For students, it could be as simple as a progress bar with their work.

  • What percentage do you think you have completed?
  • How much more do you think there is to do?

Before you receive feedback, signal to the other person your progress, talk about the features of early feedback and how later feedback is different.

Progress bar feedback strategy

The progress bar could even have markers for when to seek feedback to help structure those opportunities.

A Mindset Ready for Feedback

We need to help our students be open to feedback much earlier on in the making process.

Whether writing, drawing or building, being open to early feedback takes a specific, deliberate mindset switched to ‘open’ and ‘growth’.

This strategy’s key to success is a shared understanding of 30% or 90% feedback. We can develop our understanding of these levels and increase our readiness to offer the most appropriate support.

This responsibility also falls on the receiver. The additional signals they can offer to help us improve what they are doing.

Just remember feedback is a two-way street. We may refine our protocols for giving feedback, but there are many strategies we can implement to help us and our students receive feedback successfully.

7 Things To Remember About Feedback

I came across this originally via David Truss on Twitter and Google+ and thought it would complement my previous post about the science and art of receiving feedback – 3 Variables That Profoundly Affect the Way We Respond to Feedback 

feedback

Or why not explore this piece I did a few years back about how video games provide feedback in a formative manner – What Can We Learn About Assessment From Video Games?