Mastery Learning

Constructive Alignment

Educational programs leveraging mastery learning have to adopt the principles of constructive alignment between the class learning objectives, teachers’ instructional practices, feedback through formative assessment, corrective activities, and evaluation tasks about students’ competence. In other words, learning objectives that reflect mastery in each learning unit must first be clearly defined, followed by instructional practices and grading systems that correspond to the same mastery standards. Constructive alignment is reflected in both horizontal and vertical curriculum alignment.

Horizontal curriculum alignment requires that the same learning objectives and materials covered in classrooms are being tested in assessments. In a similar vein, the materials tested in assessments are necessarily those that have been taught in classrooms and specified in the learning objectives.

On the other hand, vertical curriculum alignment speaks of the congruence in level of understanding between what is outlined in the learning objectives, taught in class, and assessed. Accordingly, levels of understanding are defined using the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. The six levels outlined in the revised Bloom’s taxonomy ordered by the complexity of cognitive skills are as follows: (1) remembering, which refers to retrieving information stored in memory, (2) understanding, which refers to making sense of knowledge such as through giving examples, (3) applying, which refers to using knowledge or executing procedures appropriately, (4) analyzing, which refers to drawing connections between different parts of knowledge, (5) evaluating, which refers to critiquing knowledge, and (6) creating, which refers to putting information together to form new knowledge.

Instructional Practices for Mastery Learning

In the pedagogy of mastery learning, teaching topics are broken down into smaller learning units that teachers focus on one at a time. Learning objectives and standards reflecting mastery are defined at the start of each learning unit. A typical instructional cycle begins with classroom delivery of the unit’s content by the teacher, then includes formative assessment, corrective or facilitative activities, and a second formative assessment before moving on to the next learning unit.

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