Transformational Learning

Principles in Practice
What Are the Transformational Learning Principles?
The Transformational Learning Principles (TLPs) are a set of practices to ensure all students have access to
joyful and meaningful learning every time they come to school. They were developed by ISTE+ASCD to bring
focus and a common language to the work of improving student learning experiences. Grounded in learning
science and centered on connection, engagement, and agency, they highlight key instructional approaches
that schools and educators can use to elevate the experience of school for students—and ensure that
learning truly works for them.

8 Principles for Transformational Learning

Nurture Guide Empower

• Cultivate Belonging • Spark Curiosity • Prioritize Authentic
Educators prioritize relationship Educators connect content and Experiences
building in physical and virtual skills to students’ prior knowledge, Educators create
spaces. They strive to create experiences, and passions to spark opportunities for students
learning cultures that ensure curiosity and inspiration. Technology to apply and extend their
students’ safety and belonging is used to create new pathways for learning in meaningful,
and foster durable skills such student engagement and enable real-world contexts.
as empathy, creativity, and students to express knowledge, skills, They facilitate authentic
collaboration. and aspirations in a variety of ways. performance-based
• Connect Learning to • Develop Expertise projects and assessments
the Learner Educators use evidence-based that elevate students’
Educators hold high expectations practices to ensure students roles as designers,
for all students and tailor learn and develop essential creators, collaborators,
instruction to meet students’ skills and knowledge. They frame and problem solvers.
individual needs and interests. learning around key conceptual • Ignite Agency
They use differentiation strategies understandings, use multiple Educators use a mix of
and impactful technology tools modes of presentation and learner-led approaches
to embrace learner variability, inquiry, model skills, and prioritize and flexible learning
increase engagement, and intentional practice. formats to encourage
advance progress toward mastery. • Elevate Reflection student agency and
• Ensure Opportunity Educators use a variety of data and exploration. Students have
Educators are responsive tools to provide timely and specific opportunities to follow
to students’ cultural and feedback to students that helps their own intellectual
developmental contexts. them understand how to improve pursuits, take risks, make
They celebrate and build on and encourages critical thinking. discoveries, challenge
students’ unique experiences, Students are given time and support assumptions, and build
strengths, and voices. They to reflect on, learn from, and apply lifelong learning skills.
reduce barriers to meaningful feedback. They monitor their own

learning for all students. progress and set goals.

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 3 Domains of Impactful Learning
The TLPs are grouped into three domains that denote a continuum of instructional approaches
to support effective student learning experiences.

Establishing the foundations

and connections, both academic
and interpersonal, for engaged
student learning.
Nurture

Developing students’ knowledge and

competencies in ways that foster curiosity
and depth of understanding.
Guide

Supporting student-driven learning,

authentic problem solving and
discovery, and the development of
complex learning skills.
Empower

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 Exploring and Practicing the
Transformational Learning Principles

Cultivate Belonging

In Context
A growing body of research shows that to grow fully as learners, students must feel like
they belong and are valued in their classroom and school (ISTE+ASCD, 2025). “When we
focus on relationships, learning follows,” educator Pete Hall and mental health counselor
Kristin Van Marter Souers (2022, p. 58) remind us. With this in mind, educators can take
intentional steps to build authentic relationships with students and create thriving
learning communities in their classrooms. Students need to feel seen and known and
have genuine opportunities to contribute to and create their classroom experience,
whether online or in person. They also need opportunities to develop ideas and solutions
with their peers. These relational aspects of learning are foundational to student
engagement, and they help students develop skills like social awareness, collaboration,
and problem solving that are critical to in-depth learning.

Tips for Practice

• Greet students by name when • Use collaborative formats such

they enter the school, classroom, as think-pair-share, mixed
or virtual learning space, and let small groups, or shared digital
them know you are glad to see workspaces to enable students
them there. to work together and give one
• Create opportunities for students another feedback.
to help set behavioral norms, • Regularly talk with students
learning expectations, and about what it means to be a
classroom routines. good digital citizen and provide
• Periodically meet with students opportunities for them to
one-on-one or in small groups practice using these skills.
to learn about their interests and • Publicly showcase students’
what they value. work and contributions to
• Create routines such as circle the class using portfolios,
time, class meetings, or online publications, or presentations.
chats where students share • Use technology tools that
personal stories and discuss their facilitate communication with
learning as it relates to their lives. students and families about
• Facilitate opportunities for a student’s contributions,
students to resolve conflicts experiences, and individual
and understand one another’s learning progress.
viewpoints in a respectful way.

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 Connect Learning to the Learner

In Context
The best educators “do not force-fit learners into a standard mold; these teachers are
students of their students,” writes differentiated instruction expert Carol Ann Tomlinson
(2014, p. 4). This means they take time to develop a nuanced understanding of their
students’ strengths, needs, and interests, and they design learning experiences that are
flexible enough to respond to such differences. In these environments, students have
varied options and tailored support to pursue learning goals. The learning feels relevant
to them in that they can see how it connects to their progress and aspirations. They
experience both success and appropriate struggle, and they learn to take risks. Digital
tools can help adapt content to various levels and provide a variety of ways for students
to demonstrate learning.

Tips for Practice

• Create learner profiles, based on • Regularly meet with students

surveys, interviews, and available one-on-one or in small groups to
data, that document students’ provide customized support and
strengths, needs, interests, get their input on their work.
and preferences. • Provide a range of supplementary
• Regularly use formative materials such as manipulatives,
assessment (e.g., checks for visuals, graphic organizers, and
understanding, exit tickets, online digital resources to support
polls, and quizzes) to monitor students in processing
students’ needs and inform learning content.
instruction. • Modify lesson materials (e.g., by
• Establish flexible seating and using artificial intelligence [AI]
grouping systems based on tools) to reflect different levels of
learners’ needs and progress to complexity and understanding
facilitate greater support and while maintaining alignment to
participation. learning goals.
• Develop a menu of learning • Implement digital programs,
pathway options that allow including assistive technology
student choice while ensuring tools, to adapt assignments
alignment to learning goals and support varied learning
and standards. pathways.

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 Ensure Opportunity

In Context
Ensuring that students have genuine opportunities to learn at high levels and in ways
that speak to their experiences is an important and often complex element of effective
pedagogy. To paraphrase scholars Pedro Noguera and Joaquín Noguera, it requires a
conscious “commitment to serving all students, regardless of background or need” (2023,
p. 30). In practice, this means all students have access to rich and exciting lessons—
and the individualized support they need to get the most from them. It also means that
students feel included in learning materials, activities, and routines and that their unique
backgrounds, voices, abilities, and perspectives are honored and integral to the learning
process. A big challenge for educators is that students’ access to high-value learning
opportunities can be undermined, often unintentionally, by inherited assumptions,
practices, and structures in classrooms and schools. To create genuine opportunity,
educators must consistently monitor and address both obvious and subtle barriers to
meaningful learning, asking, “Who is flourishing here, who is being left out, and why?”

Tips for Practice

• Avoid remediation structures that keep some • Encourage students to

students working on low-level or passive use technology to explore
assignments or exercises. and share their identities,
• Where possible, use grade-level or advanced strengths, and voices.
texts and assignments, accompanied by • Provide opportunities for
scaffolding to enhance access. English learners to use their
• Design learning activities and facilitate native language to deepen
discussions that draw on and validate conceptual understanding
students’ interests, communities, and existing and develop projects.
background knowledge. • Understand and
• Incorporate culturally responsive content honor students’ IEPs
and examples throughout lessons and units, (individualized education
regularly auditing curriculum and addressing programs) to ensure all
gaps. students have the support
• Create systems—including through digital they need to participate
tools and video observations—for tracking fully in learning.
student engagement and participation • Ensure students have
patterns to ensure all students are included. access to and can
• Ensure students have ample opportunities effectively use technology
to share their own questions, perspectives, that is required for learning.
and ideas.

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 Spark Curiosity

In Context
Effective learning experiences can only happen when students feel a sense of intrigue
and interest in learning. With this in mind, educators should see themselves as
“orchestrating curiosity,” says instructional expert Zaretta Hammond (Rebora, 2021,
p. 15). Studies show that introducing content in novel ways and connecting it to students’
knowledge, experiences, and interests significantly boost engagement and
achievement (Goodwin & Rouleau, 2023; ISTE+ASCD, 2025). When students feel that
what they’re learning matters to them personally and is intellectually compelling,
it builds intrinsic motivation and connection. They are primed for problem solving
and deeper thinking. Technology tools can enhance this effect by giving students
opportunities to build on their knowledge, make connections, and pursue unique
learning paths. Used with intention, digital tools can also support relevance and
agency, further inspiring students’ curiosity.

Tips for Practice

• Begin units with questions, • Design hands-on activities

problems, or scenarios designed (including through digital
to stretch students’ thinking and experiences) that allow
create relevance. students to experience
• Incorporate demonstrations, lesson concepts firsthand
data, or contradictions that and play a role in
challenge students’ assumptions. demonstrations.
• Offer scenarios and ask students • Use storytelling to tap into
to make predictions about them the powers of emotion and
as a way to build their interest imagination.
and anticipation. • Integrate multimedia
• Create wonder walls or digital resources such as videos,
spaces where students can post images, and interactive
questions about what they are simulations into lesson
learning. design.
• Design entry activities, such as • Give students opportunities
writing prompts, that encourage to use digital tools to
students to connect new lesson explore new content and
content to their lived experiences ideas and imagine possible
and prior knowledge. applications.

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 Develop Expertise

In Context
To gain expertise and proficiency as learners, students must build and retain essential
disciplinary knowledge and skills. This happens when instructional strategies are
grounded in the science of how the brain learns. This means limiting passive learning
experiences and rapid-fire curriculum coverage approaches and instead exposing
students to new material in ways that help them contextualize it and work with it in
meaningful and substantive ways. Students should get the big picture of what they
are learning and have opportunities for guided practice that go beyond skimming
and cramming and take them deeper into expert habits and skills. Effective educators,
researcher Bryan Goodwin (2025) suggests, don’t just transmit knowledge and skills.
They provide opportunities for students to develop and refine their “mental schemas”
around new knowledge and skills, a process that is at the heart of expertise.

Tips for Practice

• Map the key concepts and • Give students opportunities

skills in your curriculum to actively process new
to identify essential content through writing,
understandings. inquiry-based discussions,
• Structure learning activities visualizations, and
to build conceptual technology-facilitated
understanding before research and analysis.
procedural fluency. • Use exemplar texts, models,
• Present new concepts and and work products to show
information in multiple expert practice.
modes (e.g., both verbally • Give students opportunities
and visually). to practice thinking
• Use explicit modeling processes and discrete
routines to demonstrate skills used by subject-area
skills and make your experts.
thinking visible. • Establish deliberate practice
structures that give students
regular opportunities to work
on and improve specific skills.

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 Elevate Reflection

In Context
Reflection is a critical though often underused component of academic growth. Students
need genuine opportunities to think critically about their work and what they’ve learned.
This helps them assimilate new information and skills and build greater awareness of
their progress and potential. High-quality feedback is essential to this process and has
been shown to significantly boost student performance (ISTE+ASCD, 2025). Feedback can
come in many forms (including from peers and technology tools), but to be effective, as
educator Grant Wiggins (2012) emphasized, it must be timely, specific, and actionable.
It should be tailored to encourage students to think directly about their learning or work,
what they need to do to improve, and what their next steps should be. Ultimately, a culture
of effective feedback can help students become more active and thoughtful participants
in their own learning.

Tips for Practice

• Give students opportunities to • Establish peer-to-peer

regularly reflect on what they’re feedback protocols for students
learning and how it connects to that focus on specific criteria
their lives or future ambitions for reviewing work.
(e.g., through quiet time, • As a basis for providing more
writing, discussion, drawing/ effective feedback, use digital
animation). tools to collect and analyze
• Design reflection routines student learning data trends.
that prompt metacognition • Give students access to digital
(e.g., journaling, think-alouds, tools that help them see their
revision periods). progress toward learning goals.
• Implement regular formative • Ask students, “What went well?
assessment checkpoints What would you do differently
throughout lessons. next time?” to help them
• Co-create rubrics with students sharpen their reflection skills.
that show clearly what high- • Schedule conferences with
quality work looks like. students to discuss progress
• Ensure that your feedback to and steps for improvement.
students is formative (not just • Teach older students to use AI
corrective), aligns to learning tools to get feedback on and
goals, and identifies what analysis of their work and ideas.
students need to do or think
about to improve.

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 Prioritize Authentic Experiences

In Context
To internalize and deepen their learning, students need to apply their knowledge and
skills to scenarios that are realistic and compelling to them. Hands-on or active-learning
projects that draw on real-world problems or issues can help students make sense of
and build on their learning, as well as deepen inspiration, discovery, and engagement.
As students engage in genuine inquiry and problem solving, they also develop complex
thinking, collaboration, and self-direction skills. Technology tools are integral to
authentic learning tasks and projects and can enhance students’ capacity as creators
and problem solvers. As researcher Liz Kolb writes, “When students are using technology
to create, analyze, evaluate, gather, and synthesize knowledge, there can be long-term
and positive cognitive growth” (2019, p. 24).

Tips for Practice

• Audit current units to • Bring experts from relevant

identify opportunities for fields into your classroom, either
real-world application. in person or virtually, to give
• Create performance-based students a better understanding
tasks and assessments that of how disciplinary knowledge is
mirror real-world scenarios used in real-life jobs and projects.
and tasks. • Teach students to use AI tools
• Develop connections with to research issues, synthesize
community partners who information, and create project
can provide authentic plans.
learning contexts. • Have students use technology
• Design project-based to create digital content (e.g.,
learning initiatives podcasts, videos, portfolios, data
(including interdisciplinary representations) to apply and
projects) that enable demonstrate their learning.
students to use their • Establish structures and
learning to create solutions opportunities for students
or products addressing to share their work with
community or global issues. real audiences, such as in
presentations, published works,
and digital portfolios.

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 Ignite Agency

In Context
To thrive and grow as learners, students need opportunities to take ownership of their
learning and not feel like school is something that is being “done to them.” Ownership
happens when students are given space to make decisions about their learning and
to pursue their own ideas and interests. To support this process, educators can create
contexts and assignments where students are empowered to drive their own learning—
to determine what they will learn, how they will learn, and how they will demonstrate
what they’ve learned. These experiences increase students’ sense of autonomy and
competence, which are central to agency and motivation. They create excitement
and relevance around learning. In addition, they can boost the development of digital
competencies and transferable skills like critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving,
and knowledge construction. As educational leader Tanji Reed Marshall writes, “Student
agency development increases to the degree to which an adult understands and
believes children should be partners in their education” (2022, p. 35).

Tips for Practice

• Establish regular protocols • Arrange opportunities for

within units for gradual release students to pursue personalized
of responsibility to students learning outside school through
(i.e., “I do,” “We do,” “You do community partnerships,
together,” and “You do alone”) externships, or independent
(Fisher & Frey, 2021). research.
• Give students structured • Have students use technology
opportunities to make choices to collaborate with peers and
on how they pursue and external learning partners
demonstrate their learning. or experts on independent
• Establish “genius hour” or learning projects.
passion project time where • Encourage students to use
students can engage in their technology, including AI, to
own initiatives and products plan and develop their learning
related to learning goals. paths, explore topics and ideas,
• Create projects that ask their own questions, and
encourage productive risk make refinements to projects.
taking and allow students to • Create processes for students
learn from mistakes. to set and monitor their own
learning goals.

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 Ideas for Instructional Leaders
Although the TLPs are focused on instructional interactions and approaches, their
implementation depends on the support and vision of school and district leaders.
Here are key steps for supporting the TLPs at the school or system level.

Building a Foundation Transforming Instructional

Practice
• Conduct a comprehensive school- or systemwide
practice assessment to identify strengths and • Structure regular, protected time

areas for growth. for teacher collaboration focused

on each principle (or principles
• Collaboratively refine your school or system’s
identified as priorities).
instructional vision to explicitly incorporate the
three TLP domains: Nurture, Guide, and Empower. • Implement lab classrooms where
exemplary practices can be
• Map existing practices to the eight principles,
observed and discussed.
recognizing what’s already working well.
• Focus classroom visits on
• Create a TLPs implementation team with
noticing and celebrating principle
representatives from different grade levels, content
implementation.
areas, and student support roles.
• Create visible representations
• Reach out to students, families and caregivers, and
of the principles throughout
community members to invite their participation in
buildings.
planning for transformational learning experiences.
• Align coaching conversations
• Audit current resource allocation (e.g., time, staff,
to specific principles based on
funding, technology, attention) to identify what
teacher needs.
supports and what hinders integration of the types
of practices reflected in the TLPs. • Provide targeted resources,
examples, and support for
• Ensure that technology infrastructure enables
teachers at different
connected learning experiences.
implementation stages.

Sustaining Implementation

• Use evidence of • Connect with community • Create opportunities for

student engagement, organizations that teachers to share their
achievement, and can provide learning growth journeys and those
well-being to guide contexts and support for of their students.
adjustments. integrating the principles. • Document and share
• Partner with families and • Establish formal transformation stories
caregivers to extend and informal ways within and beyond the
principle implementation to recognize school.
beyond school walls. innovative practice.

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 Questions for Reflection
As you begin looking for ways to integrate the TLPs into your practice, it’s important to think about
what they mean to you as an educator and how they might challenge or support routines or
structures in your classroom or school. Consider what kinds of changes, large or small, you could
make to give students a more active and engaged role in their own learning. Here are some
questions to spur your thinking.

In what ways do these

What does Which principle do
principles align with
transformational you feel most needs
your own experiences of
learning mean attention in your school,
transformational learning,
to you? classroom, or other
either as an educator
learning environment?
or as a learner?

What steps could you

take to better integrate How do you see AI
that principle into your and other emerging How might you involve
practice or that of technologies supporting students, families
the teachers you these principles? How and caregivers, and
support? Are there areas could use of these community members
within the TLPs that are technologies in teaching more directly in planning
strengths for you or your and learning be for transformational
school? What conditions transformative rather learning experiences?
or actions led to those than transactional?
“bright spots”?

Take the TLP Self-Assessment at [Link]/tlps-self-assessment.

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 References

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2021). Better learning through structured teaching: A framework for the gradual release of
responsibility (3rd ed.). ASCD.
Goodwin, B. (2025, Summer). Expert-ease: Making learning stick for students. Educational Leadership, 82(9),
26–29. [Link]
Goodwin, B., & Rouleau, K. (with Abla, C., Baptiste, K., Gibson, T., & Kimball, M.). (2023). The new classroom
instruction that works: The best research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. ASCD;
McREL International.
Hall, P., & Van Marter Souers, K. (2022, July). The right mindset for responding to student trauma. Educational
Leadership, 79(9), 55–58. [Link]
student-trauma
ISTE+ASCD. (2025). Transformational learning principles: Research annotation. [Link]
Kolb, L. (2019, February). Smart classroom-tech integration. Educational Leadership, 76(5), 20–26.
[Link]
Noguera, P., & Noguera, J. (2023, September). Creating clarity on equity in schools. Educational Leadership, 81(1),
28–34. [Link]
Rebora, A. (2021, December). Zaretta Hammond on equity and student engagement. Educational
Leadership, 79(4), 14–18. [Link]
engagement
Reed Marshall, T. (2022, November). The promise, power, and practice of student agency. Educational
Leadership, 80(3), 33–38. [Link]
student-agency
Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners (2nd ed.). ASCD.
Wiggins, G. (2012, September). Seven keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 10–16.
[Link]

Learn more about the Transformational Learning Principles at [Link]/tlps.

© 2025 ISTE+ASCD.

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