The Mastery Learning Handbook: A Competency-Based Approach to Student Achievement

Mastery learning is an instructional approach that empowers every student to progress with confidence.

Using flexible pacing and targeted supports, teachers guide students through a cyclic process of preparation, demonstration, and formative feedback until there is a mutual agreement between teacher and student that the student is ready to advance.

In this book, educator Jonathan Bergmann, a pioneer of the flipped classroom movement, walks you step by step through the mastery learning cycle, explaining what it entails and providing the templates, models, and rubrics you need to start using it in your own classroom. You'll learn how to Set meaningful, measurable, and transferable learning objectives that target essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Develop a mastery rubric to check for student levels of proficiency. Create an assessment plan that ensures positive learning experiences for all. Plan and deliver units that incorporate both time-shifted direct instruction and collaborative application activities within the classroom space. Provide timely differentiated support, based on students' individual learning needs.

Informed by trial and error in his own classroom and by discussions with other expert practitioners, Bergmann shares commonsense solutions to the major challenges of mastery learning implementation: everything from how to manage pacing to how to create multiple versions of tests, determine grades, and get stakeholder buy-in.

The Mastery Learning Handbook is both an introduction to this exciting instructional approach and a practical resource that K-12 teachers can turn to again and again. See for yourself just how effective, enjoyable, and transformative mastery learning can be.