Teaching Students to Drive Their Learning: A Playbook on Engagement and Self-Regulation, K-12

by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Sarah Ortega

High levels of engagement—it’s not an impossible dream. But to attain it we need to focus on what galvanizes learning, and ensure we are offering the tools and mindsets with which students can lean in. In this playbook, an ace team of educators give us the goods to guide self-starting learners.


Nine modules show us how



Cohere standards, success criteria, tasks, and goals so students can travel clear pathways
Offer tools that allow learners to recognize the gap between their current performance and the expected performance, and select strategies to close that gap
Talk with students about engagement as a continuum, and that there are actions they can take to heighten their buy-in to any endeavor
Stress-test our lesson plans to ensure students can discuss, debate, create and problem-solve around highly relevant content
Use lots of low-stakes assessment and feedback routines to develop effective collaboration that doesn’t depend on us.

Our job as teachers is to guide learning experiences that build knowledge and self-efficacy. But from there, we need to stay on the sidelines and let students play. Only then will they develop the muscle to persevere, the strategic actions to excel, and the confidence to make our curriculum the springboard of their own dreams and goals.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 15, 2023

About the author

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is an educator and Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College.

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