NDE1029: NEPF Instructional Practice/ Educator Microcredential 3/5: IP Standard 3

This microcredential focuses on the implementation of the NEPF Teacher Instructional Practice Standard 3 - Students Engage in Meaning-Making Through Discourse and Other Strategies. Instructional Practice Standard 3 demonstrates the need for teachers to use discourse and other strategies to help students make meaning of their learning. Teachers must provide students opportunities to engage in extended, productive discourse between themselves and the students and among students; create and interpret multiple representations; and use existing knowledge and prior experience to make connections and recognize relationships. Teachers must also create classroom environments that enable collaboration, participation, and create a positive affective experience for all students. When teachers provide students opportunities to make meaning of their learning, they enable students to explore ideas from multiple perspectives and sources (texts, images, other people, and personal experiences); encourage students to develop and defend their own points of view and subject their viewpoints to the scrutiny of their peers and teachers; and provide opportunities for “conflicting and controversial ideas to find voice—and for difficult conversations to take place across the traditional divides of politics, religion, race, class, and gender, awakening students to the need to hear other perspectives and build common ground” (ASCD, 2004).