Appendix III Expeditionary Learning
The Core Practice Benchmarks describe Expeditionary Learning in practice: what teachers, students, school leaders, families, and other partners do in fully implemented Expeditionary Learning schools. The five core practices--learning expeditions, active pedagogy, school culture and character, leadership and school improvement, and structures--work in concert to promote high student achievement through active learning, character growth, and teamwork.
The Core Practices
I. LEARNING EXPEDITIONS: These benchmarks describe how project-based learning expedtions, the
primary units in Expeditionary Learning schools, are organized, planned, and carried out.
II. ACTIVE PEDAGOGY: The active pedagogy benchmarks address teaching across disciplines.
III. CULTURE AND CHARACTER: These benchmarks present Expeditionary Learning’s approach to
building and sustaining a strong school culture that fosters character growth, high expectations, and equity.
IV. LEADERSHIP AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: These benchmarks describe how effective leaders
support high achievement and continuous improvement.
V. STRUCTURES: The structure benchmarks address how school leaders organize time, faculties, and
students to support learning expeditions, active pedagogy, and an Expeditionary Learning school culture.
The Core Practice Benchmarks serve several purposes. They provide a comprehensive overview of the Expeditionary Learning practices, a planning guide for school leaders and teachers, a framework for designing professional development, and a tool for evaluating implementation.
Each of the five core practices is comprised of a series of benchmarks. Each benchmark describes a particular area of practice.
II. ACTIVE PEDAGOGY |
III. CULTURE AND CHARACTER |
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IV. LEADERSHIP AND |
V. STRUCTURES |
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Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound
Design Principles (http://www.elschools.org/aboutus/principles.html)
Overview:
Expeditionary Learning is built on ten design principles that reflect the educational values and beliefs of Outward Bound. These
principles also reflect the design’s connection to related thinking about teaching, learning, and the culture of schools.
1. The Primacy of Self-Discovery
Learning happens best with emotion, challenge and the requisite support. People discover their abilities, values, passions, and responsibilities in situations that offer adventure and the unexpected. In Expeditionary Learning schools, students undertake tasks that require perseverance, fitness, craftsmanship, imagination, self-discipline, and significant achievement. A teacher’s primary task is to help
students overcome their fears and discover they can do more than they think they can.
2. The Having of Wonderful Ideas
Teaching in Expeditionary Learning schools fosters curiosity about the world by creating learning situations that provide something important to think about, time to experiment, and time to make sense of what is observed.
3. The Responsibility for Learning
Learning is both a personal process of discovery and a social activity. Everyone learns both individually and as part of a group. Every aspect of an Expeditionary Learning school encourages both children and adults to become increasingly responsible for directing their own personal and collective learning.
4. Empathy and Caring
Learning is fostered best in communities where students’ and teachers’ ideas are respected and where there is mutual trust. Learning groups are small in Expeditionary Learning schools, with a caring adult looking after the progress and acting as an advocate for each child. Older students mentor younger ones, and students feel physically and emotionally safe.
5. Success and Failure
All students need to be successful if they are to build the confidence and capacity to take risks and meet increasingly difficult challenges. But it is also important for students to learn from their failures, to persevere when things are hard, and to learn to turn disabilities into opportunities.
6. Collaboration and Competition
Individual development and group development are integrated so that the value of friendship, trust, and group action is clear. Students are encouraged to compete not against each other but with their own personal best and with rigorous standards of excellence.
7. Diversity and Inclusion
Both diversity and inclusion increase the richness of ideas, creative power, problem-solving ability, and respect for others. In Expeditionary Learning schools, students investigate and value their different histories and talents as well as those of other communities and cultures. Schools and learning groups are heterogeneous.
8. The Natural World A direct and respectful relationship with the natural world refreshes the human spirit and teaches the important ideas of recurring cycles and cause and effect. Students learn to become stewards of the earth and of future generations.
9. Solitude and Reflection Students and teachers need time alone to explore their own thoughts, make their own connections, and create their own ideas. They also need time to exchange their reflections with others.
10. Service and Compassion We are crew, not passengers. Students and teachers are strengthened by acts of consequential service to others, and one of an Expeditionary Learning school’s primary functions is to prepare students with the attitudes and skills to learn from and be of service to others.
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