The Learner Before the Teaching
Why understanding the learner must precede decisions about pedagogy
The paradox of modern teaching
Present education has never had greater access to up-to-date research, modern pedagogical strategies, professional learning, and technological resources. We know considerably more today about how people learn, how knowledge develops and which teaching approaches can improve learning outcomes.
Yet, a fundamental challenge remains: Knowing what to do with the Science of Knowledge Transfer when standing in front of a class of actual learners.
Teachers routinely make decisions about what to teach, how to teach it, when to intervene and when to allow students greater independence. These decisions are rarely straightforward. Two students may demonstrate the same difficulty but require entirely different responses. A learner who appears disengaged may lack confidence, prior knowledge, a sense of belonging or simply a meaningful connection to the learning. Another may possess the necessary knowledge but require greater intellectual challenge.
The difficulty, therefore, is not simply finding an effective universal teaching strategy. It is understanding the learner’s journey well enough to determine which strategy is appropriate in circumstances, and for what purpose.
Perhaps we need to reconsider where our thinking about teaching begins.
The learner arrives before the lesson
Every learner enters a classroom carrying something of their world with them.
They bring prior knowledge, experiences, relationships, expectations, language, cultural understandings, personal histories, interests and varying degrees of confidence. Their circumstances may be shaped by family, community, economics, geography, technology and the institutions in which they participate.
These influences are not incidental to learning. They help shape how learners interpret their surroundings, respond to challenges, establish connections and engage with new knowledge.
A classroom, therefore, is not a meeting place of blank slates waiting to receive information. It is an environment in which already-situated individuals encounter new experiences, relationships, expectations and intellectual demands.
Understanding this requires teachers to look beyond what students can or cannot currently demonstrate. It requires attention to what learners bring, what supports their engagement, what may constrain their participation and what conditions might enable them to progress.
This is the importance of understanding the learner before deciding how learning should look like.
What happens before learning can progress?
Learning does not occur in isolation from the conditions surrounding it.
A student’s willingness to attempt an unfamiliar task, for example, may be influenced by their confidence, their previous experiences of success or failure, their relationship with the teacher, their sense of belonging and their understanding of what is expected.
Let’s consider these situations:
Real World Teaching Maths
In a mathematics lesson, I might notice a student leaving a fractions problem untouched while others begin. Rather than assume disengagement, I check in gently. If I am nearby, I quietly ask, “Are you okay?” From across the room, I might use a small gesture towards their work and mouth the same question.
I have found that this gentle prompt is often enough to help students begin. Sometimes, however, a student shakes their head to indicate that they need help. In these situations, I may pause the class and work through the first question on the board, slowly and step by step. My intention is to provide a shared starting point without singling out the student. I want to protect their self-esteem, offer reassurance and strengthen the skills anchoring that may help them feel ready to try.
Alternatively, I could work through the first step privately with the student, then invite them to attempt the next independently. Before choosing between individual support and a whole-class demonstration, I ask myself:
Which response would best help this student begin with confidence while preserving the mathematical challenge?
I also need to consider what each response would offer the rest of the class:
Which response would strengthen skills anchoring for students who are attempting the problem but have not yet mastered the process, while maintaining appropriate challenge for those already ready to move ahead?
After modelling the solution, I ask myself: How could I connect this process to an everyday situation so that students use their skills and anchor them deeper not simply to repeat the steps, but to reason, make decisions and explain their thinking?
For example, I might move from the worked fractions problem to a cooking situation: “A recipe needs three-quarters of a cup of milk, but you only have a quarter-cup measure. How could you measure the amount you need, and how would you know it is correct?” If the student is still unsure, I could invite them to draw the measures or talk through their idea with me before writing. I would then ask, “Why does your method work? Could you show it another way?” My aim would be to give the student an accessible starting point while keeping the reasoning theirs: not just following a procedure, but choosing an approach and justifying it.
Real World Teaching Science
In a science lesson, I might ask students to plan an investigation into how light affects plant growth. A student who contributes confidently to the discussion may still hesitate when asked to put a plan on paper. Before deciding how to respond, I need to understand what is making it difficult for them to begin.
I ask myself:
Is this student unsure about the science concept, how to structure the investigation, or what I expect them to write?
Therefore, what knowledge, skills or reassurance could provide a starting point?
I also consider the rest of the class:
Who else might need the same clarification? Would a brief whole-class discussion establish a shared foundation, or would individual guidance be more appropriate?
How could I provide that support while allowing students who are ready to continue independently?
These questions guide my next move rather than assuming that everyone needs the same response.
The shift to thinking in terms of Anchors
Within AXIOMS Learning Cascade, these foundations are understood through the concept of Anchoring.
Anchoring considers the knowledge, relationships, experiences, dispositions and conditions that provide learners with a sense of grounding and orientation in a particular learning context.
An anchor is not simply a resource, a personal characteristic or a psychological need. Its significance lies in the function it performs for the learner: helping them establish a point of reference from which they can engage, interpret, respond and progress.
Some anchors are strong. Others are fragile, uncertain or even absent. Their significance may also change as the learning context changes.
Get Maynard Victor Erece, Sc D (hon)’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
For teachers, this creates an important professional question:
What is influencing this learner’s capacity to engage with the learning in front of them, and what is the most appropriate support or challenge to provide?
The question shifts attention from immediately correcting an observable difficulty to understanding what may be contributing to it.
It also challenges the assumption that the same teaching response will produce the same learning opportunity for every student.
From teaching strategies to professional judgement
Evidence-informed teaching is essential. Research provides valuable insights into cognitive processes, memory, explicit instruction, feedback, retrieval, motivation and the development of expertise.
However, knowing that a strategy can be effective does not automatically establish that it is the right strategy for every learner, at every moment, in every context.
The application of research requires professional interpretation.
A teacher must consider what the learner already understands, identify what remains uncertain, determine the nature of the difficulty and decide what support is proportionate to the learning need.
Sometimes this means providing explicit instruction. At other times, it means allowing students to explore, introducing a different representation, revisiting prior knowledge, offering targeted scaffolding or deliberately increasing intellectual challenge.
The objective is not to accumulate more strategies but to develop the professional judgement required to select, adapt and evaluate them. This is where the Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching meet.
The Science of Learning informs our understanding of how learning develops. The Art of Teaching requires us to interpret that understanding and respond thoughtfully to the particular learners and circumstances before us.
Neither should operate independently of the other.
Introducing AXIOMS Learning Cascade: A learning architecture for pedagogical judgement
AXIOMS was developed around the proposition that understanding learning requires more than identifying effective teaching strategies. It requires a coherent way of interpreting how learners engage with, develop and ultimately take ownership of knowledge.
It provides a human-first learning architecture for knowledge transfer through six interconnected and recursive phases:
Anchoring — establishing and continually reassessing the grounding and orientation that enable learners to engage with learning.
eXploration — encountering, investigating and questioning new ideas, experiences and possibilities, including the productive disruption of existing understanding.
Infusion — introducing, strengthening and extending the knowledge, support and experiences required for learning to progress.
Integration — connecting new understanding with existing knowledge, schemas and experiences, allowing learners to develop increasingly coherent understandings.
Ownership — developing increasing independence, agency and responsibility for learning.
Mastery and Scholarship — deepening understanding, demonstrating expertise and extending knowledge through application, reflection and intellectual contribution.
These phases are not a fixed sequence of developmental steps or a staircase that every learner must climb in the same way. They describe interconnected dimensions of learning that can recur, overlap and require revisiting as learners encounter new challenges.
A learner may need to revisit Anchoring when an unfamiliar task disrupts their confidence or understanding. Another may require additional Infusion to strengthen a knowledge gap before Integration can meaningfully occur. A student demonstrating Mastery in one area may simultaneously be exploring unfamiliar territory in another.
Anchoring, in particular, remains active throughout the entire learning process. As learners explore, acquire knowledge, integrate understanding and assume greater ownership, their anchors and the relationships between them continue to change.
The teacher’s role is not limited to moving every student through predetermined stages. It is to interpret the learning evidence, recognise what is needed and make informed decisions about the next appropriate response.
AXIOMS therefore does not seek to replace established pedagogical approaches or the evidence informing them. Rather, it offers an organising logic through which teachers can consider when, why and how those approaches might be used.
What might this mean for schools?
For an educational institution, the implications extend beyond individual classroom strategies.
A shared understanding of how learning develops can provide teachers with a common language for professional dialogue, collaborative planning and reflection.
It can help shift conversations from simply asking whether a teaching strategy was implemented to considering whether it was appropriate for the learner, what evidence emerged and what should happen next.
It can also encourage institutions to reconsider how they approach differentiation, student engagement, intervention, extension and the development of learner independence.
Importantly, this is not about adding another administrative layer or imposing another prescribed teaching programme. It is about strengthening the thinking that informs existing professional practice.
When teachers develop a more coherent understanding of the relationship between learners, learning conditions and pedagogical decisions, professional collaboration can become more purposeful and responsive.
The ultimate objective is not greater uniformity in teaching. It is greater intentionality in the decisions teachers make in a shared language.
A different starting point
Through this logic, one of the most important questions in education can now shift from simply what teachers should teach or which strategies they should employ, into what teachers need to understand about their learners before making the moment-to-moment classroom decisions.
Teaching begins long before the first explanation, activity or assessment. It begins with the professional responsibility to understand the learner.
And that responsibility does not end when the lesson begins. As learners encounter new experiences, challenges and knowledge, teachers must continually reconsider what grounds them, what may be changing and what is needed next.
The quality of our teaching decisions depends, in part, on the quality of that understanding.
The learning before the teaching is not a delay in teaching. It is where purposeful teaching begins.
About the author:
Maynard Victor Erece is an multiple award-winning Australian educator, STEM leader, author and mentor with extensive experience across secondary education, gifted and talented learning, curriculum development and pedagogical leadership. He is the creator of AXIOMS, a human-first learning architecture designed to connect the Science of Learning with the Art of Teaching through informed professional judgement and responsive pedagogical practice.
