CETL Glossary
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Opportunity Gapthe term opportunity gap refers to the ways in which race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, English proficiency, community wealth, familial situations, or other factors contribute to or perpetuate lower educational aspirations, achievement, and attainment for certain groups of students. | |
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PedagogyThe study of teaching, including research both on how students learn and best practices by educators. | |
Professional DevelopmentIn education, the term professional development may be used in reference to a wide variety of specialized training, formal education, or advanced professional learning intended to help administrators, teachers, and other educators improve their professional knowledge, competence, skills, and effectiveness. | |
Professional Learning Community (PLC)A professional learning community, or PLC, is a group of educators who meets regularly, shares expertise, and works collaboratively to improve teaching skills and the academic performance of students. The term is also applied to schools or teaching faculties that use small-group collaboration as a form of professional development. | |
Project-based learningProject-based learning refers to any programmatic or instructional approach that utilizes multifaceted projects as a central organizing strategy for educating students. When engaged in project-based learning, students will typically be assigned a project or series of projects that require them to use diverse skills—such as researching, writing, interviewing, collaborating, or public speaking—to produce various work products, such as research papers, scientific studies, public-policy proposals, multimedia presentations, video documentaries, art installations, or musical and theatrical performances, for example. Unlike exams, homework assignments, and other more traditional forms of academic coursework, the execution and completion of a project may take several weeks or months, or it may even unfold over the course of a semester or year. | |
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RelevanceIn education, the term relevance typically refers to learning experiences that are either directly applicable to the personal aspirations, interests, or cultural experiences of students (personal relevance) or that are connected in some way to real-world issues, problems, and contexts (life relevance). | |
RigorThe term rigor is widely used by educators to describe instruction, schoolwork, learning experiences, and educational expectations that are academically, intellectually, and personally challenging. | |
RubricA rubric is typically an evaluation tool or set of guidelines used to promote the consistent application of learning expectations, SLOs in the classroom, or to measure their attainment against a consistent set of criteria. These provide a useful tool to use in formative assessments. | |
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ScaffoldingIn education, scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. This can be thought of as the effective teaching cycle: 1) where the teacher models the task 2) then the students and teacher do it together 3) then the students do it on their own in groups 4) finally, they do the work independently. | |