starry night sky with treeline

A Guiding Framework for Teaching

The framework highlights the teaching philosophy and concepts that shape our educational development programming. 

What Guides Our Work as Educational Developers?

The Poorvu Center is committed to providing programming, resources, and tools that support instructors in holistic and practical ways. To ensure those values align with our practices, the Teaching Development and Initiative (TDI) team, in collaboration with other Poorvu teams, developed a framework consisting of five (5) principles (listed below) that reflect equitable and effective teaching. In addition to receiving input from staff within the Poorvu Center, the TDI team also sought feedback from undergraduate and graduate students, as well as instructors. This comprehensive and iterative process contributed to the development of a framework that we believe enables instructors to create learning environments where all students can thrive. The framework also ensures that we, as educational developers, create programs, workshops, and events that are thoughtful and responsive to instructors’ needs, while actively engaging them in critically reflective ways.    

The 5 Principles (Alphabetical Order):

  • Committing to Ongoing Critical Self-Reflection
  • Engaging with Learners’ Lived Experiences
  • Fostering Equitable Institutional Structures
  • Leading with Humility
  • Striving for Transparency & Clarity 

The framework and its principles draw from the scholarship of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), critical pedagogies, equity-minded teaching, and reflective teaching practices. Instructors can use the framework and resources we provide to build on their teaching practices as they continually evolve into critically reflective educators. To learn more about how the framework and its principles can inform your teaching practices, please visit our teaching resource page.     

What are the Benefits of the Framework?

  • Ensures all students feel welcomed and able to engage actively with the course content (Deslauriers, 2019; Kozanitis & Nenciovici, 2023)
  • Encourages students to question, challenge, and contribute to their own learning, fostering engagement and ownership (Ives & Castillo-Montoya, 2020; Lee & Hannafin, 2016)  
  • Helps build trust, belonging, and respect among students and with instructor (Museus & Chang, 2021; St-Amand, 2017) 
  • Supports academic rigor while all students receive fair opportunities and support to succeed (Castillo-Montoya, 2018; McCallen & Johnson, 2020)
  • Promotes faculty learning via self-reflection (Brookfield, 2015; Kishimoto, 2018)
a graphically-designed star

Principles as Pedagogical North Stars

As instructors evolve, there are certain pedagogical strategies, ideas, and values that become fundamental to our teaching practice. These fundamental principles guide our choices about assignments, assessments, course content, and how we facilitate learning. The framework, grounded in the metaphor of stars and constellations, serves as a tool for instructors to reflect on the principles that guide their teaching practices.

Throughout history, humans have looked to the stars and constellations for direction, storytelling, and the preservation of knowledge. Therefore, we at the Poorvu Center, drew upon our celestial traditions of Black communities in the U.S. and Indigenous communities globally, who have long used the night sky to pass down cultural histories and wisdom — from creation stories to navigating the Underground Railroad, and understanding the natural world.

This rich heritage provides a powerful metaphor for teaching: just as stars connect to form constellations that guide travelers, instructors draw on a constellation of pedagogical knowledge and practices to chart a successful course in the classroom. For our framework, we ask instructors to engage with the five (5) principles in order to understand how they influence and support one’s own pedagogical north stars. 

By thinking of these practices as stars in a shared sky, we remind ourselves that strong teaching draws on many points of light — enduring principles that help us navigate institutional challenges, stay oriented toward student learning, and adapt our path as conditions change.

In this spirit, we have depicted our framework’s constellation in the shape of a “T” for teaching and invite instructors to map their own constellation — their personal arrangement of pedagogical “north stars” — to reflect and refine their teaching goals.

framework principles depicted as stars in the night sky with tree line

Framework Principles as Star Constellation

“The North Star was a beacon for freedom, a light that guided many of us to safety.”

—

Harriet Tubman

Resource Page for Framework

Learn more about how to apply the framework to your teaching development. We provide definitions of the principles, reflection questions, and links to related teaching practices.  

Link to the Resource Page of the Framework
an unoccupied canoe floats still under a night sky full of stars

Anderson, A. D., Hunt, A. N., Powell, R. E., & Dollar, C. B. (2013). Student perceptions of teaching transparency. Journal of Effective Teaching, 13(2), 38-47.

Bensimon, E. M. (2012). The equity scorecard: Theory of change. Confronting equity issues on campus: Implementing the equity scorecard in theory and practice, 17-44.

Bensimon, E. M., Dowd, A. C., & Witham, K. (2016). Five principles for enacting equity by design. Diversity and Democracy, 19(1), 1-8.

Brookfield, S. (2015). So what exactly is critical about critical reflection?. In Researching critical reflection (pp. 11-22). Routledge.

Castillo‐Montoya, M. (2018). Rigor revisited: Scaffolding college student learning by incorporating their lived experiences. New Directions for Higher Education, 2018(181), 37-46.

Copeland, D. E., Winkelmes, M. A., & Gunawan, K. R. I. S. (2018). Helping students by using transparent writing assignments. Integrating writing into the psychology course: Strategies for promoting student success, 26-37.

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39), 19251-19257.

Ives, J., & Castillo-Montoya, M. (2020). First-generation college students as academic learners: A systematic review. Review of Educational Research, 90(2), 139-178.

Jehangir, R. (2010). Stories as knowledge: Bringing the lived experience of first-generation college students into the academy. Urban Education, 45(4), 533-553.

Karp, M. M. (2011). Toward a New Understanding of Non-Academic Student Support: Four Mechanisms Encouraging Positive Student Outcomes in the Community College. CCRC Working Paper No. 28. Assessment of Evidence Series. Community College Research Center, Columbia University.

Kishimoto, K. (2018). Anti-racist pedagogy: From faculty’s self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), 540-554.

Kozanitis, A., & Nenciovici, L. (2023). Effect of active learning versus traditional lecturing on the learning achievement of college students in humanities and social sciences: A meta-analysis. Higher Education, 86(6), 1377-1394.

Lee, E., & Hannafin, M. J. (2016). A design framework for enhancing engagement in student-centered learning: Own it, learn it, and share it. Educational technology research and development, 64(4), 707-734.

McCallen, L. S., & Johnson, H. L. (2020). The role of institutional agents in promoting higher education success among first-generation college students at a public urban university. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 13(4), 320.

Museus, S. D., & Chang, T. H. (2021). The impact of campus environments on sense of belonging for first-generation college students. Journal of College Student Development, 62(3), 367-372.

Orón Semper, J. V., & Blasco, M. (2018). Revealing the hidden curriculum in higher education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 37, 481-498.

St-Amand, J., Girard, S., & Smith, J. (2017). Sense of belonging at school: Defining attributes, determinants, and sustaining strategies.

Waks, L. J. (2018). Humility in teaching. Educational Theory, 68(4-5), 427-442.

Winkelmes, M. A., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (Eds.). (2023). Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention. Taylor & Francis.

Yosso, T. J. (2002). Toward a critical race curriculum. Equity & Excellence in Education, 35(2), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/713845283 

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.

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Reach out to the Poorvu Center team if you have any questions or to learn more about our programs.

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