The Transformative Teaching Model

The Pedagogy Standards and Classroom Implementation Indicators

The five pedagogy standards express a consensus about common learning needs across all student populations. Because the five pedagogy standards are deeply rooted in human psychological and social processes, they can be applied in any classroom or learning situation to strengthen teaching and its effects on students' achievement. When the standards are enacted systematically by different teachers in different schools and different communities, their implementation may appear quite different on the surface. The similarities among the different systems are located in the standards' foundation in capacities that are known to underlie learning. The five pedagogy standards and their indicators can guide teachers to increase the power of their teaching to facilitate students' learning by implementing a system based on them.

The pedagogy standards are implemented through their indicators, which are based on effective practice. The indicators are valuable as benchmarks for enacting each standard. It is not, however, the presence or absence of specific indicators that defines quality pedagogy, but how the indicators are implemented to achieve an outcome. Specific pedagogy strategies and activities vary from one content area and particular situation to another, but all indicator implementations share the goal of aligning teaching practices with the broad statements of the standards.

In the following chapters, the pedagogy standards are discussed in numerical order, which reflects the logic of their sequential application. Although this order—especially beginning with the foundational guidance of the first pedagogy standard—is strongly recommended, the power of the individual standards does not require any particular sequence of implementation. However, the effects on student achievement are produced by fully adopting and systematically implementing the pedagogy standards in the context of daily teaching. A complete list of the standards and their indicators, in the recommended order, is presented in Appendix 1A.