Transformative
Teaching Methods &
Lesson Plans
Kurt Love, Ph.D.
Central Connecticut State University

What is a “Lesson”?
It depends on your conceptual frame...
What are the traditional, liberal/
progressive, and transformative
definitions of lessons?

Traditional Lesson Liberal/Progressive Lesson
Learning experiences Learning experiences focused on
focused on facts, “right facts, skills, and concepts
answers,” skills, and including connections to the
concepts for the students interests of the students
to know and internalize
Transformative Lesson
Learning experiences focused on generating
“thick descriptions” of social, cultural, and
ecological (including “natureculture”)
relationships; “deep” historical and aesthetic
explorations of community (social, cultural, and
ecological as the major components of any
community) with investigations of power/
knowledge relationships

Metaphors Matter
Based on Conceptual Frames
Traditional: Teacher-as-director
Lib/Prog: Teacher-as-facilitator
Transformative: Teacher-as-mediator

Metaphors Matter
Based on Conceptual Frames
Traditional: Teacher-centered banking
method
Lib/Prog: Student-centered banking
method
Transformative: Students as social
theorists, sociologists, culturalists,
community activists, and ecologists

Teacher-as-Director Teacher-as-Facilitator
Teacher has destination in Teacher has destination in mind,
mind and provides the but students and teacher provide
directions to take in the the directions to take in the
learning experience learning experience towards that
set destination
Teacher-as-Mediator
Teacher knows that there is no end destination,
only stops along a journey. Students and teacher
explore community to take in the learning
experience. Although no set destination is
established a priori, students arrive at a variety of
destinations depending on their path. This is a
“true” research and/or inquiry approach that is
connected to community and social identities.

Common Questions About
Transformative Teaching
Does this mean that we can’t plan
lessons?
Planning for transformative learning
experiences is generally more complex
because of the amount of research the
teacher needs to do in order to understand
the current global and community-based
issues. Also, designing the learning
experience takes more effort to find an
authentic context.

Common Questions About
Transformative Teaching
Does this mean that we can’t assess
students if we use transformative
teaching practices?
Assessment is also more involved than in
traditional or lib/prog settings. Teachers
can and should check to see how students
understand concepts, but the “real”
assessment is how they interact/perform
in the community.

Major Parts of
Transformative Lesson Plan
Essential/Central Question(s): These drive the lesson and
will generally be answered by the end of the lesson to some
degree of significance
Objectives: They mirror the essential/central questions.
They are usually written as, “Students will be able to...”
indicating that there is something new that the students
will be able to actually do.
Assessment: These are the actions that the students can
now do, which the teacher checks for to see to what extent
the students can actually do them. Assessment occurs
frequently, and in various forms, throughout the lesson.

That’s a little
backwards...
Step 1: Think about what you want the students to be
able to do (i.e. Central/Essential Questions & Objectives)
Step 2: Think about how you will assess their ability to do
what you want them to be able to do (i.e. Assessment)
Step 3: Think about how you would like them to learn to
be able to do what you want them to do (i.e. Activity).
In other words, think about assessment before you
think about the activity.

Assessment
Based on your Conceptual Frame:
Traditional: Teacher-Centered
“Banking Method”
Lib/Prog: Student-Centered “Banking
Method”
Transformative: “Authentic” & Thick
Descriptions of Community

Activity
Transformative activities have 2 primary goals:
a) engaging in “thick description,” that is, helping
students shape their thoughts with the inclusion
of social justice, ecojustice, and multiculturalism,
b) being rooted in some kind of community
involvement.
Don’t get trapped in binary thinking. This does NOT
mean that skills and content are not included.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Thick Description”
Superficial
Mainstream
These t wo might
Message
set up a binary
Null
Message
These t wo
Relationships generally show a
complexity not
Tensions binary “packaged”
Deep info

Community
Involvement
Oral histories Connecting with
community leaders
Ethnographies
Connecting with
artists/musicians
Raising Awareness
Field trips
Art Exhibits
Meeting/petitioning
Activism
gov’t officials
Connecting with elders

Differentiation
Cognitive connections: Connecting with
students’ diverse ways of learning.
Cultural connections: Connecting with the
diverse cultures of your students. Breaking out
of the Eurocentric mindsets present in the
curriculum.
Levels of resistance: Connecting with students
who are creatively maladjusting because they
see schooling as hurting them.

Transformative Teaching Practices Continuum
Transformative Context
Co-centering traditional curriculum with
transformative perspectives
Transformative perspectives as “
add-ons”
No transformative perspectives included
No Transformative Transformative
Perspectives Context
Transformative Co-Centering
Perspectives Transformative
as “Add-Ons” Perspectives

Transformative Teaching Practices
Transformative Context
A transformative topic(s) is centered and traditional content
supports the understanding of the transformative topic(s).
Vocabulary learned in order to understand the transformative
topic more deeply. Traditional vocabulary is contextualized.
Focus is on engaging students in community-based action.
Co-centering traditional curriculum with transformative
perspectives
Both the transformative topic(s) and traditional content are
equally emphasized.
Vocabulary may be generated from student research, but it is
also at least partially driven by the established curriculum and/
or textbooks.
If students engage in social action, it may be a mixture of
classroom- and community-centric actions.

Transformative Teaching Practices
Transformative perspectives as “add-ons”
Traditional content is emphasized with
transformative topics added as peripheral
information.
If students engage in action, it is primarily
classroom-centric.
No transformative perspectives included
The focus is primarily on the established curriculum.
A teacher may include a “relevant” topic not
emphasized in traditional, established curriculum,
but doing so does not automatically mean that it is
transformative.

“Methods”
Teaching methods, or practices, are also
defined depending on the conceptual
frame that the teacher employs or
emphasizes.
What are the traditional, liberal/
progressive, and transformative
approaches towards methods?

“Methods”
Traditional - Methods as tools to plug in or “deposit”
information and reach predetermined destinations;
teacher-centered “banking method”
Lib/Prog - Methods as tools to explore various
pathways to reach predetermined destination;
student-centered “banking method”
Transformative - Methods as pathways for
students to explore history and aesthetics to create
“thick descriptions” of community (understandings
in a social, cultural, and ecological context); “deep sea
cave diving” and “dialogical method”

Transformative
“Methods”
Joe Kincheloe: “From the post-formal, new
paradigmatic perspective the well-prepared teacher is
not one who enters the classroom with a fixed set of
lesson plans but a scholar with a thorough knowledge
of subject, an understanding of knowledge production,
the ability to produce knowledge, an appreciation of
social context, a cognizance of what is happening in the
world, insight into the lives of her students, and a
sophisticated appreciation of critical educational goals
and purposes.” (p. 13 from Unauthorized Methods)

Transformative
Cooperative Groups
Traditional and Lib/Prog cooperative
grouping has each member with a
different task (i.e. timekeeper, recorder,
taskmaster, etc.). A critique is that this is
very bureaucratic.
Transformative cooperative grouping is
about connecting to each student’s
strength with some aspect of the
community-based issue that is at hand.

Transformative Inquiry
Focused on authentic, community-based
(social, cultural, and ecological), real-
world issues as the context and purpose
for learning
Uses investigation and exploration as
the learning experience

Transformative Inquiry
1. Teacher/students determine a
transformative context
2. “Mess about” & develop testable questions
3. Investigation
4. Report findings & discussion about
connections to curriculum; “vocabulary”
emerges from findings and teacher’s
guidance

Transformative
Socratic Method
Using authentic questions exclusively to explore social,
cultural, and ecological relationships embedded in the
curriculum
Authentic questions are grounded in asking who we are,
what are our relationships, and what our are actions
and decisions that support them?
Authentic questions are NOT focused on getting
students to generate the “right” answers. These more
traditional questions may occur occasionally, but they
are not the focus. If at all, they are so that the teacher
can check in for understanding so that they can move
on towards the relevant issues.

Transformative Direct
Instruction
Can be helpful when the teacher wants to help
students construct lenses of analyses.
Can be helpful when the level of disequilibrium is
more than the students might be able to handle
effectively on their own.
Use it sparingly! It can be done very well, but it
can be overdone pretty quickly.

Transformative Small-
Group Discussion
Students working in small groups to explore
transformative concepts and develop
analyses.
Each small group reports out to the rest of the
class.
Teacher might ask for groups to report based
on commonalities/differences rather than
having each group do its whole presentation.

Transformative Whole-
Class Discussion
Teacher/students driving discussion
through transformative analyses and
questions.
Good for when everyone needs to be on
the same page, but not as engaging as
small group discussions.

Transformative Use of
Media
Viewing = consuming
What is transformative “viewing/consuming?”
Creating = producing
What is transformative “creating/producing?”
Viewing/consuming transformative issues is
coupled with creating/producing transformative
awareness and action in one’s community.

Transformative
Projects
Go beyond posters and tri-fold boards
Working in community-based projects
This is a rich form of assessment that is inherently
differentiated, can be done in groups or
individually, and can affect communities
Think beyond having students recite facts. Think
about having students describe implications and
provide analysis.

Showing Relationships Bet ween Concepts
with Graphic Organizers
T-chart Obser vation-
inference chart
Venn diagram
Cornell Notes
Drawing pictures
KWL
Mind/concept maps
KWS
Cause-effect chart
(with prior causes and Describing Wheel
subsequent effects)

Embedded Questioning
Instead of having the questions at the
end of the text, they are located to the
side of the text.
The questions coincide with the
adjacent text.

“Initiation” or
Framing the Discourse
Initiating Communication: Rev their
engines with interesting, relevant,
real-world connections
Use contemporary issues as much as
possible to set up the frame of discourse
and analysis that will then be used for
the rest of the lesson.

“Closure” or
Going Beyond Exit Slips
Closing communication: An important
opportunity to check in with the students to see
where their thinking is. This is information that
will help you plan, adjust, and modify for the
next class meeting.
Researchers focus on implications rather than
on rote memorization. Ask What does this mean
for us as a people? rather than What does this
mean? and What does that mean?

Extending the Learning
Experience
Homework is the traditional concept here,
but this can be reconceptualized to an
activity that extends thinking and analysis.
Ask one question that’s open-ended and
requires analytical or relational thought. The
“facts” or concepts that you want the
students to know will be
embedded...guaranteed!

Transformative Lesson
Sequence (Version #1)
Initiation - Ask a great contextualized, question (use
of articles, quotes, images, art work, videos, excerpts
from texts, etc.) to connect with community.
Activity - Students work in small groups to support
each other’s thoughts. They report out their
thoughts to the class. Students investigate these
issues in the community (local or global).
Closure - Ask questions the implications of these
new thoughts that we now have.

What about the
TEST!?!?
Teaching to the test does NOT create better test
scores. Just get that out of your head.
Here’s your brain on the test....
Thinking is reduced to memorizing a bunch of
disconnected, decontextualized “fact packages”
and meaningless skills that need to be memorized.
THIS IS ACTUALLY HARD TO DO AS A LEARNER!!
Your students might as well be memorizing phone
numbers from the telephone book.

What about the
TEST!?!?
When learning is contextualized in our community, when it
is connected to our social identities, and when it asks us to
be better as a people, we don’t usually forget it...
Why?...because it’s important to us!
Fortunately, you can’t learn about complex social, cultural,
and ecological concepts without learning about the basic
facts and skills that curriculum exclusively focuses on.
Ergo, learning in a transformative context creates richer,
more robust understandings of the content that is typically
on the traditional, standardized tests, and it also happens
to create stronger democratic societies that work for
social and ecological justice.

Ok, fine...what’s the
catch?
Unfortunately, there are a few:
1. Research: Lots of background research in contemporary and
transformative issues.
2. No Easy Answers: You can’t rely on binaries anymore.
Knowledge is complex, and connected to issues of power and
cultural value systems. Lesson plans are much more complex.
3. Change is Often Misunderstood: Colleagues, administrators,
and stakeholders are so focused on high-stakes testing that
there’s potential for much questioning and skepticism.
4. Questioning Power: Oh, right...that. Let’s not forget that some
people gain from the current social power structures, and
what makes it even more difficult is that they generally don’t
see themselves as implicated.