Learning Principles
Google worked with Teachers College at Columbia University to articulate four key learning principles to guide its work and the types of learning its tools can help enable.
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Each learning principle includes research, example school models, and teaching strategies.
Unsure which learning principle to explore? Use these questions to guide you:
- Which principle(s) most aligns with, or provides a starting point for, our vision for teaching and learning?
- Which principle(s) are we already working towards, that we might build on?
- How might technology support our efforts to deepen learning or solve existing challenges?
- What does success in this area look like for us? How will we know we’ve achieved it?
Adapts for each unique learner to meet them where they are.
Each learner is unique. Every learning experience should therefore be tailored to best serve that uniqueness. This includes ensuring:
- Complexity is in learner’s zone of proximal development;
- Format and supports match learner’s mindset;
- Content aligns with learner’s interests and background to be relevant and contextualized.
Champions learners taking active ownership of their learning.
Encourage ownership of learning in order to develop the habits and behaviors of lifelong learners, where learning is done with, not to, the learner. This happens in two main ways:
- Learners reflect on their learning to develop metacognition;
- Learners are given more choice and responsibility over what and how learning takes place.
Forms meaningful connections to spark new and different thinking.
Learning happens most effectively through interactions between learners and experts, learners and their peers, and in learners teaching other learners. This supports learning by:
- Grappling with diverse perspectives;
- Informal differentiation;
- Deeper conceptual understanding from explaining the concept to another learner.
Applies knowledge plus experience to explore and create a world beyond Googleable questions.
Deeper learning happens most effectively when a learner constructs knowledge and concepts, rather than passively receives them. This is done best when the learner explores and discovers new concepts:
- In real world and authentic scenarios;
- Situated in the learner’s existing representation of the world.
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