In 1927, Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg published the uncertainty principle that states that we can’t know both the speed and position of a particle. To rephrase this more simply, the surer you are of how fast something is moving, the less sure you are of where it is. This got me thinking about pedagogy and the parallels. The more accurately we can define what we do in the classroom, the less accurately we can anticipate its potential impact. A Pedagogical Uncertainty Principle.

Think about any classroom. It could be yours or one you visited as a coach or administrator. Do you envision 25 copies of the same exact student? More likely you’re envisioning a diverse group of learners. That diversity consists of a diversity in experiences, strengths, and challenges. We know that each of those students needs unique support from us as educators. We know the students that gravitate towards projects, and the ones that would prefer written assignments. The ones that like to hear us lecture about the minutiae of a topic, and the ones that are inclined to figure it out on their own. Intuitively, we provide the specific supports that are required. We ask leading or guiding questions for the students that need a nudge in the right direction. We pose extension questions about the more intricate details or applications of a topic for the students that exhibit a strong understanding of the concepts.

Nothing we do is cookie cutter. It is all unique to the individual students we have.

Why do we need to define what we do?

If you look on social media, you can’t help but notice that there are many educators who identify with a specific educational tool, whether it’s project-based learning, inquiry, direct instruction, or one of the many other approaches to teaching. When I’m asked if I do project-based learning, the answer is yes. If you ask me if I do inquiry, direct instruction, peer assessment, self-reflection, etc., the answer is yes. I do whatever is needed and educationally appropriate at that time. If we overdefine what we do, we lose flexibility.

When I started making revisions to my assessment and instructional practices, I was an inquiry-based teacher. I set up these scaffolded challenges that would lead students to discovering the relationships seen in the world around them. With these understandings, they would generate the equations that defined the physical world. It worked great!

For some students. Others hated it and didn’t progress.

Then I came across cognitive load theory (CLT). Direct instruction with clearly defined, sequenced targets helped students break down the information in a way that was accessible. Once again, there were students who thrived and students who didn’t progress. I’m not going to bore you with the history of everything I tried, but this was always the case.

There were a group of students for whom it resonated and even more for whom it didn’t. It was at this point that I recognized the need for flexibility.

How I adjusted

My own journey of going gradeless was an important step in allowing these changes to happen. My mindset prior to this shift didn’t allow me to see things the way I do now. This shift forced me to examine what I truly value as an educator and what I wanted students who took my course to get out of it. The path wasn’t easy, but my goal was simple: I want students to leave this course with more knowledge and skills than they entered with. The only people I want to compare my students to are their previous selves. Coming to that understanding helped me realize that I needed to do whatever it took to help students navigate the course. As I became more sure of the desired impact I wanted in the classroom, I became less sure of the pedagogy that would lead students there.

I read a lot. Not just about education and what other teachers were doing in their classrooms, but about executive functioning, emotions, neurobiology, and neuropsychology. I talked to people who were more knowledgeable than me in these fields.

What I learned

The research underpinning “best practices” is the result of studies that attempt to isolate the variable and control the experiment. The research is generated in conditions that don’t match that of a typical classroom setting. While there is value in this information, it needs to be adjusted for the context of a classroom. One of the variables that is often commonly overlooked in these studies is emotion.

You can’t separate emotion from cognition. I understand the need to control variables to quantify the effect something has on learning. However, we can’t take our brains out of our bodies and just look at how they think. In fact, emotions are essential in the process of learning (see Emotions, Learning and the Brain by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang).

Anyone who has been in a school can tell you, these emotions vary greatly and change quickly. No matter what technique you use, if a student isn’t in an emotionally comfortable place to receive it, they won’t retain it. This comfort level varies student to student, day to day, and sometimes period to period. With this ever-present variable, no classroom is ever going to be an experimentally controlled environment.

Social dynamics alone are enough to disrupt the emotional balance of a classroom. Now, factor in influences outside of school that are impacting students’ emotional well-being. With that in mind, our most basic requirement is to provide an environment of emotional safety.

Our pedagogical choices can inadvertently negatively affect this sense of safety. This is especially true for students that have executive functioning challenges or other learning difficulties. In many of their classes, they may feel like they are a problem that needs to be solved. Accommodations may be well intentioned but if they are not part of the course design it can alienate the student who receives them.

This got me thinking about my instructional approach and how the adherence to a particular method of delivering information was hindering my effectiveness. I started to cobble together what I saw as the good parts of these different pedagogical approaches, creating a flexible framework for learning.

Flexible frameworks

The foundation for a flexible framework is clearly defined and realistic targets. What is the minimum a student can leave the course with to receive credit? What is a reasonable expectation for a student to engage completely in the course? Understanding these two questions is a must in course design. My colleague, Elise Burns, and I spent a significant amount of time breaking down our curriculum to identify the answers to those questions and how to apply them in the various courses that we teach.

With these understandings in place, we rearranged our sequence and selected approaches and activities that gave us the highest probability for success with the greatest number of students. What a typical class looks like is a 5-10 minute class dialogue that includes a review of previous day’s material, introduction to new concepts, and a description of the available activities for the day. While there are required assignments, students still have the space to select activities that will benefit them most. There are video guides available to all students on every concept and skill we explore. They have the opportunity for peer collaboration, independent practice, or mini lessons in small groups. And at any time, if a common misconception or challenge arises, we regroup and have a brief whole-class, direct instruction segment.

This frees us up to work on the margins. The students that like teacher interaction get more individualized attention. The students that need additional support and review have the time within our class period to get that. Students that want to test the boundaries of what they know receive additional project time where we coach them beyond what we’re targeting for the class. The concepts don’t change but the pedagogy does.

A helpful analogy

Let’s say we are all going to a concert in the park by my house. You’re all invited, and I look forward to seeing you all. There’s just one catch. You can only ride your bike here. By making this the only means of transport, I’ve already excluded people from the event. I’ve excluded people geographically who don’t want to ride that far, people who don’t own or can’t afford a bike, people who don’t know how to ride a bike, and people that have physical challenges that preclude them from riding.

If I am certain of the means you must use to get to the destination, I will be uncertain how many of you will show up. If I am certain that I want you there, I will be uncertain about the means you use to arrive.

The Pedagogical Uncertainty Principle is no different: If we are certain that students receive education in one particular way, we will be uncertain of how many students will learn. But, if we know we want to be certain about learning, we must be uncertain about the means students will need to get there.

I really want you all at this concert, so I’ve reconsidered my stipulation. I don’t care how you get here. Feel free to use whatever means of transportation is comfortable for you. In my vision, you all made it here. Some of you walked, some needed a ride from a friend, some took trains, some drove, some even biked here and we all enjoyed a wonderful night.

David Frangiosa is a high school science teacher from Northern NJ and the co-author of Going Gradeless: Shifting the Focus to Student Learning, Corwin Press. Over the past six years, he has been performing action research on grade reform and the impact of various instructional approaches. He is a contributor to SchoolRubric.com and TeachBetter.com. This piece originally appeared on his website at www.reimaginedschools.com.