Rebuilding Students' Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice

To understand the achievement gaps that persist in our schools despite years of equity initiatives, we must look to the insidious legacy of segregated schools and the deliberate underdevelopment of diverse students’ cognitive abilities. Uprooting this “cognitive redlining” requires we reimagine instruction for our most vulnerable learners so they can rebuild their brains’ learning muscles.

Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power outlines a five-step process to coach students to strengthen their natural learning abilities while dismantling over-scaffolding of instruction, the number one contributor to cognitive redlining. Additional features include:

• A cognitive apprenticeship model that recenters the student as the primary actor in the classroom
• Guidance for administrators, instructional coaches, instructional leadership teams, and teachers to collaborate in creating sustainable liberatory teaching practices
• A how-to plan to build teacher capacity to coach students in becoming good information processors

Building on the popular Ready for Rigor^TM framework from her bestselling book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, author Zaretta Hammond offers a practical roadmap for closing the knowing-doing gap, grounded in the science of learning. This essential resource is for educators, instructional coaches, and school leaders who are committed to moving the needle on academic achievement in their districts.