[cover image by Pexels on Pixabay]
by Joshua Kurzweil and Suzan Kobashigawa
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Josh Kurzweil began his teaching career in 1990. He has taught and trained in Japan, Spain, the Republic of Georgia, and the United States. He received his Master’s degree in teaching from the SIT Graduate Institute and also holds the Cambridge CELTA and DELTA. Josh has been a trainer with the Peace Corps and has designed teacher development programs for labor unions and higher ed. He is the author of Understanding Teaching Through Learning, which was published by McGraw-Hill in 2006. His particular areas of interest include the Science of Learning, reflective practice, and learning design. In his free time, you can usually find Josh playing pool, studying foreign languages, or traveling.
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Suzan Kobashigawa is a teacher educator working with pre-service teachers in higher education. She teaches courses in intercultural communication, culturally responsive teaching, and learning theories, along with TESOL courses. Suzan has been in the field of English language teaching for over 30 years, and has taught in Japan, Mexico and the United States. Suzan holds a Ph.D. in Composition and TESOL, and an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
The Tension Between Theory and Practice
In teacher education programs, a persistent tension exists between developing instructional techniques and understanding the theory behind them. Teacher candidates (TCs) may focus too much on either mastering classroom moves or absorbing research, without a clear path for integrating the two. This creates a gap between teaching skills and knowledge of how students learn.
This article explores that gap and offers a way to bridge it through a reflective practice tradition that has evolved in English language teacher education. We begin by looking at Practice-Based Teacher Education (PBTE), which emphasizes core teaching practices, and then show how a structured reflection process—DIGPA—can connect these practices to findings from the Science of Learning (SL).
Practice-Based Teacher Education (PBTE)
PBTE, advanced by scholars such as Deborah Ball, Francesca Forzani, and Pam Grossman, aims to professionalize teaching by identifying “high-leverage practices” essential for effective instruction. In PBTE, these practices are modeled (“representation”), analyzed (“decomposition”), and rehearsed in scaffolded ways (“approximation”) so TCs can receive feedback and build skills (1).
Critics such as Ken Zeichner (2) caution that too much focus on core practices risks reducing teachers to technicians who perform routines without understanding the principles behind them. PBTE leaders counter that decomposition should include not only steps of a practice but also the decision-making and learning theories that guide it (3). Still, many programs struggle to explicitly connect classroom routines with findings from the SL, which spans a century of research on what helps and hinders learning (4).
Efforts to Connect Teachers to Research
In recent years, books, podcasts, videos, and websites—including the Learning Scientists—have made SL insights more accessible. Yet a gap persists: teacher education often doesn’t help candidates explicitly link classroom techniques to research, and at the same time, teachers often learn theories in the abstract but struggle to implement them in practice.
The Reflective Practice Tradition and DIGPA
To address this gap, we draw on the reflective practice tradition grounded in the work of John Dewey and extended by programs such as the SIT Graduate Institute’s MA in TESL. This approach emphasizes structured reflection as a meaning-making process that deepens teachers’ understanding of how classroom practices shape learning.
From this lineage, the SIT community developed DIGPA, a four-part reflection cycle that instructors use to guide their reflection, and adapted here to connect teacher practice with SL principles:
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Description – What happened in a lesson segment?
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Interpretation – How did this affect student learning? Why?
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Generalization – Which learning principles (or beliefs) relate to this?
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Planning Action – What will you do or explore in future lessons?
Unlike open-ended reflection, DIGPA focuses attention on specific classroom events and prompts teachers to analyze them through a learning lens, explicitly linking experience to research.
Creating and Using Principles of Learning
Because SL research is vast, we distilled key findings into 16 concise Principles of Learning (Appendix 1), which were inspired by foundational books on the Science of Learning (5, 6, 7, 8). These principles summarize core factors that affect learning.
Early in training, we ask TCs to reflect on personal learning experiences—such as mastering a yoga pose or learning software—and identify which principles were present or absent. Later, in model lessons or practice teaching, they revisit the Principles of Learning and use DIGPA to reflect on their own experiences as learners and teachers.
DIGPA in Action
Here is a simplified DIGPA reflection from an instructor after teaching a lesson about building management, revenue, and costs. In the lesson, students were asked to check their notes with a partner after a mini-lecture:
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Description: During the partner check, George asked Susan about solar panel cost efficiency—a point not directly covered in the lecture.
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Interpretation: George likely felt more comfortable raising this question with Susan than in front of the class.
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Generalization: This reflects Principle #13 (Create a psychologically safe environment). Pair work lets students express uncertainty without fear of embarrassment. It also connects to Principle #9 (Enhancing memory through retrieval and elaboration) and Principle #16 (Supporting autonomy).
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Planning Action: I will include pairwork checks regularly after lectures, sometimes asking students to focus on key terms, while also leaving space for their own questions.
This example shows how DIGPA guides teachers to separate factual observation from interpretation, connect practice to research-based principles, and develop forward-looking actions.
How DIGPA Supports PBTE
In our teacher training programs, TCs write DIGPA reflections on both modeled lessons and their own practice teaching. Teacher educators provide feedback on each stage, helping candidates move beyond judgments like “that was good/bad” toward inquiry such as “what helped or hindered student understanding?”
This echoes Grossman et al.’s call for teacher education to prioritize rigorous analysis of learning over unexamined preferences. Embedding DIGPA in PBTE decomposition helps TCs not only break down teacher moves but also examine their effects on learning.
A Complement, Not a Replacement
We are not suggesting that structured reflection should replace deliberate practice of teaching routines. Rather, DIGPA complements PBTE by adding a rigorous reflective structure that ties high-leverage practices to SL principles. Over time, this habit fosters reflection-in-action and principled decision-making.
Conclusion
DIGPA reflection offers a practical approach to integrating the Science of Learning into teacher education. Combined with clear principles of learning, it enables teacher candidates to connect what they do with what we know about how people learn. By embedding structured reflection into PBTE, we move closer to an ideal where teaching is not only skillful but also intellectually grounded and evidence-informed.
Appendix 1: Principles of Learning (summary list)
References
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Grossman, P. (Ed.). (2018). Teaching core practices in teacher education. Harvard Education Press.
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Zeichner, K. M. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 376–382. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487112445789
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Ball, D. & Forzani, F. (2009). The work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497 – 511.
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Deans for Impact (n.d.) The science of learning. Deans for Impact. https://www.deansforimpact.org/tools-and-resources/the-science-of-learning
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Ambrose, S., Bridges, M.W., Lovett, M.C., DiPietro, M., Norman, M.K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.
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Kirschner, P.A., Hendrick, C. (2024). How people learn: Seminal works in educational psychology and what they mean in practice (2nd edition). Routledge.
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Schwartz, D.L., Tsang, J.M., Blair, K.P. (2016). The ABCs of how we learn: 26 scientifically proven approaches, how they work, and when to use them. W.W. Norton & Company.
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Willingham, D. (2021). Why Don’t Students Like School?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom (2nd edition). Jossey-Bass.