On the college campus, educators frequently toss around the buzz phrase “student life cycle.” What exactly is it? This approach helps academic leaders analyze, anticipate, and seek ways to improve a freshman student’s success in their first year of college. The life cycle model suggests looking at a student’s first year in a well-rounded way, taking into consideration a variety of factors that could either positively or negatively contribute to a student’s persistence and achievement through the rest of their college years: the state of the student-teacher relationship, physical environment, student participation, vocational interest or direction, personal development, and academic proficiency. In this post, we look at how higher ed’s examination of a student’s learning success through the life cycle lens can also apply in the K-12 school system.

1. The student life cycle considers several values that make up the learning environment. Student retention is at the top of the list for colleges and universities, when they’re up against growing competition and public concerns over the value of a degree. There’s more to promoting achievement and completion for a K-12 student, going beyond mastering a skill or raising their scores. This approach suggests that there are a few things a student needs to realize in the entirety of their learning career: to feel connected, a sense of purpose, resourceful, and competent.

2. It emphasizes strategies for helping students at different transitional stages. In higher ed, it’s important for educators, administrators, and recruitment staff on campus to consider different stages of transition from which new freshman may enter: students who are coming straight after high school, those who return after a break or academic suspension, transfers, adult learners (age 25 and over), and returning alumni (grad school). It’d be a mistake to think students are all the same and that it will suffice to relate to them in the same consistent manner. For K-12 schools, it’s just as important for educators to understand the significance of students’ vastly different backgrounds, financial situations, and what they want or need at different grade levels. As their interests and strengths evolve, so should the plan or pathway for their education.

3. It recognizes the idea that a student’s sense of success will evolve. From a practical approach, students have different needs at different stages, requiring a flexible and evolving system to meet them over the entirety of their learning cycle from pre-K through 12th grade. Professors and academic officers talk through a number of important questions to achieve positive changes. How might educators partner with students to produce more satisfying outcomes? Does the current curriculum fill the evolving needs that a student needs to academically and professionally grow? Colleges commonly use opportunities including surveys to gather qualitative data from the student on the impact of their courses, which can offer insight into additional ways that postsecondary learning models need to grow.

4. It seeks to improve the learning culture as a part of promoting student success. How much do you know about the student’s perspective of what “quality” means for their learning pathway. What are they learning, how do they feel they are treated, and what are they getting as a result? In the duration of a student’s life cycle, students hope for (and rightfully deserve) recognition of their growth in knowledge, skill set, and maturity. As mentioned earlier, one key factor influencing a student’s success is the importance of feeling connected and purpose. K-12 students should also be included in plotting their roadmap to high school graduation – and ultimately, be able to realize their own aptitude in a particular subject area(s) and be inspired toward a vocation. Cultivating an environment where they will be enriched by their relationships with their teachers, their peers, and learning community.