Our Journey

Over the past few years many FCPS leaders and educators have collaborated with the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL) and have engaged in professional learning experiences related to Mind, Brain and Education Science.  MBE, also referred to as the “Science of Learning” or the “learning sciences,” provides the bridge that fosters evidence-informed decision making about how we teach and how students learn.

As FCPS educators learned about the benefits of MBE as a lens through which to examine and refine practice, the district conducted a crosswalk of its three core initiatives tied to closing the achievement gap (equity, high quality instruction as outlined in the Framework for Teaching, and a process for collaboratively examining student growth referred to as the Accelerated Learning Process) and could easily see that the principles of MBE would be the ideal accelerant to the work already underway; in fact, MBE would actually be the means to move all of the system targets forward. 

Teacher Specialists were targeted as one of the best audiences to initially receive this training. WHY? Because Teacher Specialists (and their work) touch 100% of FCPS classrooms, teachers and leaders--thus impacting 43,000 students in countless ways. Between the spring of 2019 and the spring of 2020 FCPS Teacher Specialists participated in a specially designed academy to build their knowledge related to the science of learning. 

Since then, we have worked to incorporate these instructional strategies in our RISE Induction and MSDE coursework.  We have infused and modeled these research-informed strategies with teacher leaders, administrators, and teachers across the county.  

 Infusing Evidence-Informed Instruction with Multiple Audiences

Are you interested in MSDE coursework?

COURSE LISTINGS & Big Ideas

MBE:  The Environment and Student Wellbeing (1 credit offered in the summer): There is a link between emotion and cognition.

MBE:  Student Achievement and Lifelong Learning (1 credit offered in the spring): Metacognition can be taught.

MBE Informed Design of Curriculum and Pedagogy (1 credit offered in the fall):  Moving beyond the lecture with multiple modalities.

MBE Informed Design of Curriculum and Pedagogy (2 credits offered in the spring):  Formative assessment and descriptive feedback moves learning forward.

Recommended MBE Resources