In the modern classroom, the goal isn’t just to cover content, (although as educators we often feel the pressure to cover it all) it’s to cultivate the habits of mind that allow students to navigate the world with confidence. At the Center for Excellence, we believe that student agency is built through specific, intentional routines called Dispositional Strategies.
We’ve all seen beautiful Portraits of a Graduate posters in school/district hallways. But why does the daily classroom experience often look exactly the same as it did a decade ago?
These strategies do more than build skills; they foster the deeper capacity of student agency, allowing learners to take true ownership of their journey. Here is how we help educators and districts implement the four key pillars of agency.
Strengthening Metacognition
When we help students become more aware of their learning process, we strengthen their metacognition. This involves routines that prompt them to reflect on their thinking, assess what they know, and identify what they still need to learn.
Strategies in Action: Using protocols like Green and Red and KWL, we prompt students to assess their current understanding and track how it evolves over time.
The Impact: These protocols give students a roadmap for their learning, allowing them to track progress and adjust their approach with clarity and purpose. By embedding reflection into daily practice, students develop the skills to self-monitor and set meaningful goals.
Navigating Challenges with Curiosity
Learning is inherently filled with obstacles. To build resilience, students need structured opportunities to examine complex problems, weigh different perspectives, and refine their thinking rather than giving up.
Strategies in Action: The Consultancy Dilemma provides a safe space for students to seek peer input on difficult challenges and articulate their struggles. Meanwhile, Known, Nuance, and Novel encourages them to distinguish between familiar ideas and completely new concepts.
The Impact: These routines help students break through learning plateaus and deepen their understanding. They teach students to approach difficulty with curiosity rather than frustration, building the resilience needed for long-term success.
Collaborating Effectively with Peers
Learning is a social process. Working with others enhances both comprehension and communication skills, turning a classroom into a community of shared thinking.
Strategies in Action: The Shadow Protocol allows students to observe and analyze peer thinking, uncovering different approaches to problem-solving. Talk Detectives trains students to listen actively, ask meaningful questions, and advocate for their ideas with clarity.
The Impact: When teachers embed these protocols, students develop the skills to engage in thoughtful academic discourse. They learn to contribute meaningfully to group work and refine their ideas through the power of collaboration.
Consolidating Learning Through Practice and Feedback
Mastery is built through deliberate, structured practice. By shifting the focus from “getting it right” to “understanding the process,” we help students develop a growth mindset.
Strategies in Action: Self- and Small Group Quizzing engages students in active retrieval, reinforcing key knowledge and minimizing forgetting. Error Analysis is perhaps the most transformative, shifting the focus from correctness to understanding by helping students learn from their mistakes.
The Impact: These strategies ensure that setbacks become opportunities for improvement. This strengthens both conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills, ensuring that learning is “sticky” and long-lasting.
Developing Learners for an Ever-Changing World
Students who make regular use of these dispositional strategies do not just absorb content; they actively shape their learning experience. By embedding reflection, problem-solving, and structured practice into the curriculum, educators provide students with the self-awareness, adaptability, and resilience needed to succeed in an ever-changing world.
At the Center for Excellence, we are dedicated to helping districts implement these pillars at scale. Whether through teacher coaching or system-wide training, we provide the tools to make student agency a reality in every classroom.
Which of these four pillars is currently the biggest challenge in your district?
Resources and routines from the latest book in the three part series, A Visual, Step-By-Step Guide for Re-Envisoning Rigor- Powerful Routines for Promoting Student Agency. Written by Director Aaron Eisberg. We are proud to support the building capacity of schools and district around the world.
