Mastery Learning

It has been a while since I posted, but I was inspired by one of my teachers, Eric Hill (@NHScience) as I read the book, Mastery Learning in the Science Classroom. He shared this book with me last week and said, "you have to read this, you can read it in a day, and it changed the way I think about success for every student." The passion with which he spoke about completely changing his classroom, had me curious. Knowing that Eric is already a highly proficient teacher, I wondered what he learned from this book?

Mastery learning is not new. It has been around for a long time. The key to mastery learning is that students are required to show mastery of a concept before they are allowed to move on to the next concept. The teacher determines at what level the mastery must be accomplished. Mastery learning is a wonderful complement to standards-based education. Mastery learning is based on the concept of holding every student to a standard of performance rather than simply exposing every student to the minimum required content.

When you require students to master content you need to think carefully about which content to require they master. This is the first step. It was interesting to learning that in mastery learning classrooms, the language and use of the word "assignment" now turns to the word "learning opportunity". This simple change in name could change the emphasis from "this was assigned so I have to do it but I don't really see why other than I have to in order to take the summative" to "the reason I am doing this is to learn."


The result of a mastery learning classroom: kids take responsibility for their own learning. The best result is that students felt respected in the classroom. Those who could move more quickly and didn't need as much practice to gain a new skill appreciated the fact that the teacher respected their ability to move on when they were ready. Those who needed more time and would have been left behind had the teacher moved the class along together appreciated the respect the teacher showed them in staying with each of them until they were ready to move on.

If this type of learning environment is something you want to explore, start with Eric, as I am sure this connection and innovative brainstorming would help you, Eric, and most importantly all our students at Waukesha North High School (@WaukeshaNorth1).