• Home
• Login
• Blog
• Contact

What We Know

Two fundamental principles from cognitive psychology and other learning sciences drive the IFL's work with individual educators, schools, and school districts:

1. Effort creates ability.
2. Discipline-specific content knowledge and pedagogy is important for high student achievement.

We know that every year high achieving students:

• Engage with cognitively demanding discipline-specific content that provides them opportunities to develop core knowledge and conceptual understanding in each field of learning.
• Work on high quality, cognitively demanding tasks and projects. They produce original work and revise to standards.
• Learn to think, work, talk, and write like a practitioner of each of the core content disciplines.
• Work towards meeting clear, high standards.
• Synthesize several sources of knowledge.
• Are challenged to interpret texts, construct explanations and test understanding of concepts by applying and discussing them.

We know that effective teachers:

• Believe that all students can learn and act on that belief.
• Have deep content knowledge.
• Have strong teaching skills.
• Assess student learning and adjust teaching for learning as part of everyday teaching.
• Consistently give students opportunities to learn deep core knowledge and conceptual understanding of their field of learning.
• Consistently give students the opportunity to work on high quality, cognitively demanding tasks and projects. They allow students to wrestle with challenging problems. They scaffold students' work on challenging problems but resist watering them down when students struggle.
• Learn, work, and plan in professional learning communities.

We know that effective school and district leaders:

• Believe that all students can learn and act on that belief.
• Know what high quality teaching and learning looks like in each of the core content areas.
• Assess teaching and adjust professional learning opportunities accordingly as part of everyday leading.
• Make sure teachers have the resources they need to do a good job including curricula, professional development, and tools for teachers and students.
• Support professional learning communities to improve teaching and learning school-wide.

We know that effective professional learning communities:

• Meet regularly.
• Work on issues that will impact teaching and learning in the near future.
• Work from the curriculum.
• Provide teachers opportunities to learn both content knowledge and teaching skills.
• Are conducted in a respectful way.
• Promote collaboration and collegiality.