From Binary to Both/And: Deepening Clarity and Feedback in Classrooms

This week marked my second cycle of Looking for Learning visits. One of the greatest joys of this process has been the conversations that follow. Teachers have welcomed me into their classrooms with openness and trust, and our discussions afterwards have been equally generous and insightful. This culture of dialogue, where wonderings are met with reflection and opportunity, is a bright spot in itself. It reflects our shared belief that we are already strong educators and that we can continue to grow together. 

Across classrooms, several patterns of strength emerged:

• Clarity of learning: Many students were able to explain what they were learning and how it built on what had come before. They were not only describing the task but also connecting it to prior knowledge, showing they were constructing new understanding.

• Intentional design for collaboration and concept formation: I saw varied and purposeful groupings, where students were supporting one another’s learning. In one instance, concept formation activities helped learners grasp abstract concepts by connecting them to concrete examples, a powerful way to deepen understanding.

• Connecting review with inquiry: In several classrooms, review activities were not stand-alone 'compliance checks'. Instead, they became springboards into inquiry, allowing students to move from surface recall to deeper application. This blend of consolidation and exploration exemplifies what Hattie and Zierer (2018) describe as effective clarity: making the why of learning visible.

Amid these bright spots, I also noticed recurring patterns that prompted reflection:

• Binary thinking: In some spaces, learning was framed as one thing followed by another: content then inquiry, “serious work” then “fun activity.” These framings unintentionally suggest that certain parts of learning are a means to an end rather than integral to the whole, and that some are to 'endured' in order to get to the 'good bit'. What if we shifted from but to and? Content and inquiry. Rigour and joy. Assessment and learning.

• Assessment as the point of learning versus assessment as a tool for growth: I noticed moments where assessments seemed positioned as the end goal rather than a process of informing where learning is and where it might go next. Katie White (2017) challenges us to see assessment as feedback for self-efficacy and agency. How might we more consistently frame assessments as tools that help learners see their progress and plan their next steps?

• Clarity across all moments of learning: Some students spoke clearly about their learning, while others described only the task. This raised the question: how do we ensure that clarity of purpose runs through all parts of the lesson, not just the most 'engaging' activity?

From Either/Or to Both/And

What connects these wonderings is a cultural pattern: the tendency to frame teaching and learning experiences in binaries. Sometimes it sounds like “first the content, then the inquiry.” Sometimes it looks like labelling an activity as the “fun part” and others as the “serious part.” At times, it even extends to the way assessments are positioned, not as tools within learning, but as the very point of learning.

My classroom visits also revealed something hopeful: review tasks that flowed seamlessly into inquiry, purposeful and collaborative groupings, and concept formation activities that were rigorous and engaging. These were not examples of either/or but of both/and.

As leader of learning, this is precisely what I am seeking: patterns that help us serve our community more fully. I am not looking for isolated moments of brilliance or 'perfection' (whatever that means), but for the ways clarity, engagement, and feedback interconnect. The task is to notice when learning is framed as segmented and to ask how we might instead make it feel connected. To ask how we might reframe the story we tell students - from “this is the check” to “this is how we know where we are and where to go next”; from “this is the fun part” to “every part of this learning journey has purpose”.

City, Elmore, Fiarman, and Teitel (2010) define the instructional core as the triad of teacher knowledge and skill, student engagement, and the content of the lesson, and argue that if you want to improve learning at scale, you must strengthen the relationships among those three. In my visits, I noticed that clarity was sometimes strongest in the ‘highlight’ activities but less visible in the connective tissue between them. 

This week has reminded me that impact lies not in replacing what we do, but in reframing how we think about it. The strength of our teaching is already evident in the clarity with which students can articulate their ideas, in the collaborative ways they learn, and in the thoughtful designs that connect knowledge and skills to inquiry. The challenge is to hold these elements together, resisting the temptation to categorise them into separate boxes.

The work ahead is not about dismantling what we already do well, but about holding the pieces together. In doing so, we provide students, and ourselves, with greater clarity, purpose, and possibility. We remind ourselves that content and inquiry, assessment and growth, rigour and joy, are not opposing forces but complementary parts of the same whole. And we continue to affirm that being a great educator and being an educator who is still learning are one and the same.

City, E. A., Elmore, R. F., Fiarman, S. E., & Teitel, L. (2010). Instructional rounds in education: A network approach to improving teaching and learning. Harvard Education Press.

Hattie, J., & Zierer, K. (2018). 10 mindframes for visible learning: Teaching for success. Routledge.

White, K. (2017). Softening the edges: Assessment practices that honor K–12 teachers and learners. Corwin.