Regardless of the setting or environment, learning is a process that develops with experience and time, it is not a discrete phenomenon (even though learning Kung Fu like Neo would be awesome). No matter who is learning or what is being learned, the process occurs in non-linear stages at variable rates. Take any learning goal, such as learning to play the guitar, learning how to use polar coordinates, or playing on a floor hockey team in gym class, and consider that it is not really a single goal at all, but a complex of many building blocks, and each building block is its own complex of subunits—and that this regression is infinite. Well these building blocks are the skills required to achieve the learning goals and each level of regression is a refinement of a skill at some level of precision. If we use the analogy of building a house, we can think of the general characteristics (foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, etc.) as the skill sets that need to come together and coordinate to become the final product as something that provides shelter and a place to call home. As we regress lower in the analogy, the general characteristics—lets choose electrical—are comprised of many subskills that need to be learned in order to do electrical work (have and know how to use the proper equipment, knowledge around electricity, building code regulations, etc.). We can carry this regression indefinitely—in order to attend electrician school, you need to have completed a Grade 12 education to show you have a foundation in math and literacy…to get that you needed to be socialized to attend school throughout and so on—but the right answer to how far one should take this regression is as far as is needed to achieve the goal. The most important point of this analogy is that none of the building block used to achieve the learning goal are independent of one another or linear and are all predicated on developed skills.

With that analogy in mind, learning progressions are a format of education that takes into account this process of learning as a developmental progression where there are blocks of skills that students must master to achieve a curricular outcome. As an educator, learning progressions are the development stages of a learner’s journey that can be refined at particular points of need, from a place outside of, what Vygotsky would call, the Zone of Proximal Development to a high level of competency where the learning can excel. Students are usually not curricular experts upon entering the education system; however, they are full of individual strengths and curiosities that, if allowed to flourish and amplify, can potentiate confidence in that student that will perpetuate their learning in the next skill “block” in the curricular set and contribute positively to the collective. The very act of promoting strong skill sets in students should be the clarifying clue of why learning cannot be a linear process, because the building blocks are not independent nor necessarily hierarchically linear.

Today in groups, during our Theory in Context class in the B.Ed program at UNBC, we were asked to quickly explore ideas of how learning progressions would be considered if developing curricula based on some subject of our choosing. My group decided to model floor hockey through the developmental span between Kindergarten and Grade 9. We decided that during Kindergarten to Grade 1, the curricular focus should be on developing skills relating to working in groups, spatial awareness, and safety, and learning to enjoy the participating. At this stage, competition is not so much the goal as participation because the skills needed to compete safely and effectively have not been developed in most students. Next, over the span of Grade 2 and 3, students would focus more on developing game-related skills, such as developing proper stick grip, ball/puck handling, passing (awareness of self and others), and game rules to higher degree. In Grades 4 to 5, students would play more as teams within their class and/or school and team competition would be introduced. At this level, students should be competent in using the many skills developed over the previous years (coordination, spatial awareness, muscle memory, teamwork, etc.) and able to perform in a competitive setting among peers. In Grades 6 and 7, the level of competition expands to playing against other school and the concepts of comradery and responsibility are elevated. Finally, during Grades 8 and 9, the competition level expands higher to competing in competitions and tournaments across the province and this is where the teamwork, leadership, game knowledge, and technical skills are in highest demand. Now I know what you may be thinking: this seems quite linear, but it is not and here’s why. During this learning progression, the curricular requirements are stages or skills that need to be mastered throughout the learning process. But as we have all experience, students come to class with an extensively diverse set of skills and strengths, so rather than force the bored student in grade 2, who had been attending and playing in a minor league hockey since he or she was 4 years old, to work on stick handling, the student could use their strength to teach and help other students at a lower skill level. This way, the advanced student is developing new skills in leadership because they have the confidence to step up and display their strength for the good of others and themselves. The same could be said for a student far who is in the zone of proximal development for some skill. Vygotsky often referred to the process of facilitating learning, when the learner is at the point where he or she is ready to learn but not yet component, as scaffolding. If the class is averaged around the intended point in the curriculum, the number of scaffolding opportunities for the lower student increases along with the opportunity to learn from multiple perspectives, and thus, so does the rate of learning. Through treating the building blocks of the learning goal—the learning progressions—as a continuous and interconnected process, the students, who are also interconnected and have strengths across multiple domains, have the opportunity to build confidence towards new skills through the momentum given by providing their strengths opportunity to accentuate.