Small Shifts, Meaningful Impact

As the new year begins, we’ve been thinking about how meaningful impact often grows out of small, intentional shifts in practice.

Recently, Secondary Helping Teacher Ash Singh from the Abbotsford School District shared how TC² ideas are informing their work with colleagues. After professional learning focused on how to design questions that nurture quality thinking, Ash and their team redesigned reading comprehension prompts to more effectively encourage students to use criteria and evidence. Teachers noted increased student engagement, and this thinking is now being extended across other subject areas.

Ash also described how the line-of-inquiry framework supports department heads in leading low-threat, curiosity-driven conversations that build collective engagement and teacher agency:

“The way the framework is set up really facilitates low-threat conversations, collective engagement, and teacher agency.”
— Ash Singh, Secondary Helping Teacher, Abbotsford School District

As you enter the new year, we invite you to consider how using a critical inquiry question like the one below might guide your learning and practice.

A critical inquiry question to frame the work

Where might a small shift in how questions are framed most deepen the quality of thinking in your practice?

How to design questions that encourage quality thinking

A question or task encourages quality thinking when it:

•  asks learners to make a decision or judgment;
•  can be answered in more than one reasonable way; and
•  requires learners to apply relevant criteria and support their judgment with reasons and evidence.

A small shift in practice

One place this shows up is in the small design decisions we make. Here’s an example.

A starting point:
What were the effects of the event?

A small shift in framing:
What were the most significant effects of the event?

While the content remains the same, the second question raises the thinking demand by inviting learners to use criteria and evidence to judge significance. Shifts like this deepen the quality of thinking and support learners in using that thinking to inform meaningful action.

Interested in professional learning?

Learn more here or connect with Victoria Campoli, Director of Professional Learning.