KEY PRINCIPLES
of The Seven C’s of Learning
STUDENT CENTERED
Since its inception, The Seven C’s of Learning framework was designed with students in mind. As seen in the work of Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, and Freire, in order for education to be truly transformational, it must engage with the students’ interests and experiences. As demonstrated in Daniel Pink’s Drive (2011), individuals need autonomy, mastery, and purpose to propel their intrinsic motivation. Students cannot be passive recipients; they must be active creators. In The Seven C’s framework, instead of the teacher having all of the answers and dictating all of the learning, the students – often in small groups – research the context, explore the systems, consider the big ideas, analyze the compositional techniques, identify thoughtful connections, apply critical lenses, and create projects and presentations that reflect their learning. Through collaboration and cooperation, students learn from their peers and achieve greater depths of understanding. Socratic seminars invite the class to discuss and ask questions and to build a collective appreciation for the work being studied. Above all, the students are empowered with an analytical tool that they can use in the future. “The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning,” wrote John Dewey in 1938. Empowering students with a framework that can be applied to any class and to any context fosters this attitude and makes for independent, self-directed learners.
RELEVANT & RIGOROUS
Inherent in the structure of The Seven C’s of Learning is relevance and rigor. With regards to relevance, students are constantly given opportunities to make connections to themselves, to other classes, and to the modern world. Their voice is elevated through reader-response criticism and their creativity is bolstered through culminating activities and assessments. Their critical thinking is engaged from start to finish as they investigate educational topics with nuance and sophistication. With regards to rigor, The Seven C’s is founded on complex educational ideas but is delivered in a simple, memorable format. Holistic in nature yet refined for specificity, the depth obtained by the framework can vary depending on the students, teachers, and classroom climate. For teachers of special education and English language learners (ELLs), The Seven C’s of Learning can be simplified so that students focus on the basics while still achieving a breadth of understanding and learning experiences. The main takeaway when it comes to rigor is that how we teach is often more important than what we teach. Graff (2009) writes, “whether academic work is challenging or not depends not on the texts we assign but on how we expect our students to think, talk, and write about them” (p 67).
EASILY IMPLEMENTED
Because The Seven C’s of Learning builds upon many of the best educational practices that teachers are already using, teachers can begin implementing the framework almost immediately. Understanding by Design, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences all fit seamlessly with the pedagogy. Progressivism, constructivism, and problem-based learning can each find a place in the framework. And even though The Seven C’s of Learning is student-centered, there is still space for teacher led activities like lecture and direct instruction. In practice, The Seven C’s of Learning can be used in segmented activities spread out over the course of a unit (e.g. a biographical sketch on context or a do-now activity on connections) or it can be quickly applied to one particular text in a single lesson (e.g. analyzing a non-fiction article, a short story, or a TED talk). Applicable in single-class activities or month-long units, The Seven C’s framework is flexible, adaptable, and easily implemented.
Bring The Seven C’s to your school! Learn more below!