Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence

This paper presents five standards for pedagogy that are applicable across grade levels, student populations, and content areas. The five pedagogy standards are joint productive activity (JPA), language and literacy development (LD), meaning making (MM), complex thinking (CT), and instructional conversation (IC). These standards emerge from principles of practice that have proven successful with majority and minority at-risk students in a variety of teaching and learning settings over several decades. Indicators are introduced for each standard, revealing action components of the standards and their functions in teaching and learning. Illustrations and examples reflecting the standards and their indicators across a broad range of classroom settings are presented to support a claim of universality for such standards in K-12 majority and minority at-risk students' classrooms. The purpose is to urge standards-based reform to reflect its own recommendation that pedagogy occupy a central place in accomplish-ing all student learning.