Tag Archives: peter pappas

5 whys and 4 negotiables


I enjoyed Pam Lowe’s recent post about personalized learning. She asked four important questions:

  • Why does everyone have to learn the same thing?
  • Why can’t learners learn what they want to learn?
  • Can learners choose their own learning tools?
  • Why do learners have to learn the way a teacher says?

Using Peter Pappas’ four negotiables of student-centered learning, we can see that Pam’s four questions center around the first two ‘negotiables.’ We can tack on the other two from Peter and get a list that looks something like this:

  1. Why does everyone have to learn the same thing?
  2. Why does everyone have to learn in the same way?
  3. Why does everyone have to show their knowledge and skills in the same way?
  4. Why does everyone have to be assessed in the same way?

I think it would be valuable for schools to use a 5 Whys approach to really dig into these latter four questions. Doing so would allow us to uncover existing belief systems and would reveal the widespread variability that exists across educators – even when we’re in the same building – in terms of both instructional ideologies and classroom practices. Too often we believe that we have shared understandings and commitments around learning and teaching that simply aren’t there. Making the effort to peel back our hidden layers of disagreement could have a transformative impact on the kinds of conversations that we’re able to have and the kinds of changes that might result in students’ learning experiences.

Dare to ask the 5 whys around the 4 negotiables. Let us know how it went!

Image credit: Students travel around the world with books, US Army Garrison Red Cloud – Casey