Adaptive Expertise Model

The adaptive expertise model is useful in scaffolding executive functioning. It has three steps: guided learning (educators decide on the learning goals, strategies, and assessments), active learning (learners decide on the learning goals and self-plan and organize around these but with support from the educator), and experiential learning (students guide all aspects of the learning through interaction with others and reflection on their experience). In this model, learning becomes increasingly self-directed (Dumont et al., 2012).

Let’s have a look at how some key strategies for supporting executive functioning might evolve as we move through the stages of adaptive expertise (adapted from CAST, n.d.; Tu & Soman, 2014; Novak & Thibodeau, 2016). These are just examples. Feel free to think of your own strategies to use in your learning environment.

In the activities below, match the correct learning category from the adaptive expertise model with its corresponding example. Each example corresponds to the title strategy (e.g., Planning & Organization).

Planning & Organization

Applying Learning Strategies

Goal Setting, Prioritizing, & Progress Monitoring Progress

Like many other areas of skill development, students come to our learning environments with variable expertise in executive functioning. This variability may be due to opportunities (or lack thereof) for skills development provided in previous learning environments and the stress experienced in these. Furthermore, the inability to interconnect skills and learning from one course to the next can create a siloed learning experience that can increase stress, lack of engagement, and confusion.

Chronic stress impacts the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, resulting in behavioural inflexibility, difficulty making goal-directed decisions, and inhibited working memory (Molina, 2015). In her book on antiracism and UDL, Fritzgerald (2020) unpacks a model called the TERA quotient (Stanier, 2016) through a UDL lens. Each letter in the acronym (adapted below) stands for what happens in our brains when we assess if an environment is safe or unsafe.

1. Team – What communicates to students that they are part of the learning team? 2. Expectations – Do students know what’s about to happen? 3. Rank – Whose status is higher, yours or the students’? 4. Autonomy – How much say do students have here?

If a student assesses that the environment is unsafe, their brain will move into fight, flight, or freeze mode, turning off the prefrontal cortex. The good news is that, like other aspects of the brain, executive functioning is highly plastic. Learners can build new connections across the brain if they find themselves in a learning environment that welcomes their whole selves. As the pandemic has continued, there has been an increased understanding of how trauma- and stress-aware pedagogy can create communities of learning built on trust. These learning communities of trust provide opportunities for more empowered choices of expression and autonomy of learning.