Introduction
In a recent podcast, Building Thinking Classrooms with Peter Liljedahl: Designing Conditions for Deep Thinking, Productive Struggle, and Student podcast with Dr. Caitlin Tucker, Liljedahl shared a scenario from his time teaching high school math:
I posted a thinking question. I changed nothing else about that environment. So they changed nothing about their behavior. They sat and waited for me to tell them how to do it so they could just mimic the work. Yeah, right. So, Building Thinking Classrooms is about changing the environment and doing things right.
(Tucker, 2026)
This got me thinking about how to build a thinking classroom. Based on Ron Ritchhart’s Cultures of Thinking in Action: 10 Mindsets to Transform Our Teaching and Student Learning, Mindset #3 caught my eye.
What does this mean?
According to Canadian researchers Berierter and Scardemalia (Garet et al., 2001), on the website cultureofthinking.org, ‘the cognitive skills a student will acquire in an instructional interaction are those that are required by the student‘s role in the interaction.’ Berierter and Scardemalia explain further that “we must constantly be aware of the roles we are setting for our students.” Berierter and Scardemalia identify four important dimensions on which this might happen:
1) toward more student agency and empowerment and away from total teacher control,
2) toward more student talk and more teacher listening,
3) toward more student problem solving and initiative and away from teacher rescuing, and
4) toward co-construction of curriculum and assessment.
These four dimensions are important because, to build a thinking classroom, we need to change the roles of teachers and students, and this could be the vehicle for teachers and schools to leverage as they embark on creating robust cultures of thinking.
Before I dive deeper into the 4 important dimensions, let’s take a look at Changing the Role of Teacher and Student.
Changing the Role of Teacher and Student: The Why and The How
The Why:
The main reason for changing the role of teacher and student is the deeply entrenched school practices – Teacher-Centered Instruction, as noted by Richhart in his book Cultures of Thinking in Action. Teacher-Centered Instruction is teachers at the front of the room as authority figures, delivering information to students as passive learners. Students are expected to follow directions and comply (2020)
The main cause is the lack of resources, models, or support to help teachers design new teaching approaches. Richhart considers a study of mathematics reform in Urban Schools to make mathematics more meaning-centered (Hill et al., 2018). Even with models or supports to help teachers design instruction, observations done by Hill and her colleagues found that while teachers using new materials and resources focused the content more on meaning and explanation, the instructional format remained the same teacher-centered approach as before.
Hill and her colleagues’ observation also found that class discussions requiring students to comment on one another’s mathematical ideas occurred in only 5% of observed lessons. Therefore, the curriculum changed due to extensive professional learning and the provision of new resources, but the instruction didn’t. The teachers still maintain their roles in delivering information to students as passive learners. It was the teachers rather than the students who were making the meaning of the mathematics.
The How:
Let’s re-center this discussion so we can focus on how to clearly change the role of the teacher and student to help us move forward. Richhart brings up the point made by researchers (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1989)
The [cognitive] skills a student will acquire in an instructional interaction are those that are required by the student’s role in the interaction.”
It is about our awareness of the roles we are putting our students in, both explicitly and implicitly, according to Richhart.
Richhart provides a guide for us on how we might transform student and teacher roles: See the diagram I created in Canva below.
Richhart mentions Yong Zaho (Zaho, 2016), roles that move away from teachers as knowledge transmitters and students as passive receivers of knowledge, and towards passionate adults who work with students as community members. This is shown in the diagram: Old teacher roles to new teacher roles.
The underlying idea for the change is:
When our vision is one of empowered students able to take their place in the world, educating becomes both transformative and liberating.
Richhart notes this vision serves as the grounding force of the vision and image of our students.
Let’s take another look at the diagram and think about these two questions asked by Richhart:
- What do the descriptors in each category reveal about how students and teachers are perceived?
- What vision of education is being advocated?
If you answer the old student’s role is largly to comply and confirm, you are correct. Richhart use the left side of the diagram as a metaphor for workers and teachers, and students. Teachers are managers and evaluative bosses.
What do you notice on the right side of the diagram?
Notice that there is a sense that students are more active and engaged in the learning, and teachers are working with students responsively. There is a sense of community. A metaphor of school as a place of learning and personal development.
The diagram shows the changing roles of teacher and student, which is a shift from traditional to empowerment. The deeper question is what type of learner are we promoting? Richhart asks.
Source: 2023 Richhart pg. 57
What type of learner are we promoting? The diagram shows three types of learners: conforming, engaged, and empowered. Richhart underscores that these three types are not a sequential progression. Richhart explains that when students are compliant and conforming workers and overlearn the message of school-as-work, it becomes very difficult to engage them. Students are constantly seeking authority to provide them with direction because they want to please and conform (Deresiewicz, 2014).
Another thing worth noting is that conformity, or obedience, is not necessarily the foundation of respect, caring, good manners, and socialization, which we all care about. Instead, these practices are better understood as being rooted in community building and empathy toward others. When the authority figure is absent, compliant students are more likely to transgress than those students who adhere out of a sense of responsibility to their community.
Lastly, Ritchhart explains that it is also important to acknowledge that we are not handing over of authority as we focus on engagement and empowerment, but rather a shift in how that authority is used. A shift that is from the focus on control and obedience toward “liberation, empowerment, and supporting students in seeing and thinking for themselves” (Peterson, 1992)
So far, we have covered the why and how of changing the roles of teachers and students. Next, we will discuss the 4 important dimensions that the two researchers point out at the beginning and why the research matters.
Four Essential Dimensions and Why It Matters
Reviewing the research, Richhart considers multiple factors and what is necessary to create a new story of learning.
Ritchhart identifies four well‐supported elements on which to focus: 1) supporting student agency, empowerment, and leadership; 2) attending to the balance of who’s talking and who’s listening; 3) encouraging behaviors that support initiative and resilience; and 4) celebrating powerful and productive identities. Each provides a good starting point for transforming teacher and student roles. They are briefly listed below:
- Toward more Student Agency and Empowerment and away from total teacher control.
- This involves teachers sharing power by gradually building students’ capabilities and allowing them greater control and choice over their learning.
- Toward more Student Talk and more teacher listening.
- Instead of teachers dominating classroom talk (up to 70–80% of the time), increasing student talk allows them to clarify understanding, articulate thoughts, and develop skills in explaining reasoning and critiquing arguments.
- Toward more Student Problem Solving and Initiative and away from teacher rescuing.
- Teachers should avoid the role of “rescuer” to allow students the “productive struggle” needed to develop initiative, self-efficacy, and resilience.
- Toward co-construction of curriculum and assessment.
- This views curriculum and assessment as flexible structures where students and teachers contribute ideas and evaluations in a dynamic, creative interaction, rather than following an “immutable
Student Agency
When Ritchhart describes a culture of thinking, students are more engaged and empowered as learners, but to accomplish this, teachers must make students partners in learning. This way, we can build a robust community of learners that includes both teachers and students (Peterson 1992). When teachers hold all the power and make all the decisions in the classroom, students’ engagement levels decrease significantly (Wolpert-Gawron, 2018). We want to provide students with the opportunities they need to develop as independent, self‐regulating learners, capable of decision making, critical thinking, or creativity (Flynn and Colby 2017; Stefanou, Perencevich, DiCintio, and Turner 2004; Tomlinson 2001; Zhao, 2012). This is what student agency is all about.
It is important to understand that Teachers must gradually build students’ capabilities and provide them with opportunities to exert greater control and choice over the direction and form of their learning (Broom 2015). Gradually releasing control to permit greater agency and choice to students helps students develop as responsible, independent learners (Garcia 2003).
Less Teacher Talk
Ritchhart mentions on average, teacher talk constitutes 70% to 80% of all the talk done in classrooms (Hattie 2009). Ritchhart underscores when teacher talk dominates, it inhbits students’ curiosity and initiative(Ostroff 2020). Without opportunities to talk, not only are students unable to clarify their understanding, but also teachers lose the chance to monitor students’ learning and intervene appropriately (Fisher and Frey 2014). This is why the preceding study of trying to teach mathematics more meaningfully was problematic when teachers dominated the discourse (Hill, Litke, and Lynch 2018).
Ritchhart explains that through classroom discussions, students learn the norms of discourse and develop the skills to explain their reasoning, provide evidence for their claims, and respectfully critique arguments, all of which are part of democratic discourse in civic life (McGregor 2004a)
It is important to note that by taking the role of listener, teachers shift the ownership of learning to students, allowing them to engage in deeper learning and develop the skills needed to become active members in the community (Michaels, O’Connor, Hall, and Resnick 2010; Rebora 2020), according to Ritchhart.
Initiative and Reliance
Ritchhart explains that students must be given the roles that require these skills: a sense of initiative, self‐efficacy, and resilience. At the same time, teachers must be careful not to assume the role of rescuer because we will rob students of these attributes.
It is important to understand that teachers should create a supportive environment where learning is scaffolded within a zone of proximal development, but’helicopter teaching’ is counterproductive to building independent, confident, and creative students (Kettle and Gallagher 2020), according to Richhart. As a result, this may lead to learned helplessness, in which students lose their sense of agency and competence (Seifert 2004).
Recently, an insightful conversation sparked by educational leaders on LinkedIn highlighted a common classroom trap: support quickly turning into a “rescue” mission. When a student gets stuck, a teacher’s natural instinct is often to step in and guide them. However, as one curriculum expert aptly observed in the discussion, “Support can turn into rescue real fast… when we remove the thinking, we get compliance, not capability” [1]. The consensus was clear: effective support should not take the struggle away; rather, it should “hold students in the thinking”.
This real-world observation perfectly aligns with the overarching shift required to build a thinking classroom. If we look closely at the “Creating a new story of learning” diagram (Figure 3.1), “Rescuers” is explicitly listed as an “Old Teacher Role,” in contrast to the new, empowered role of teachers as “Providers of Challenge with Support”.
Why do educators fall into the rescuer trap? According to Ron Ritchhart, teachers often dive in to rescue students out of fear—worrying that if a student struggles too much, they will feel unsupported and completely disengage. However, research shows that this well-intentioned “helicopter teaching” is counterproductive. Stepping in too quickly robs students of the opportunity to build independence and ultimately produces “learned helplessness,” a state in which students lose their sense of agency, competence, and self-efficacy because they are conditioned to wait for the teacher to do the heavy lifting.
To foster true student agency, teachers must consciously avoid the role of “rescuer” and instead allow students the space for “productive struggle”. While students might perceive that they learn more from “hand-holding” or having the teacher feed them the answer, research shows they develop a much deeper understanding of the material when they are allowed to actively participate and work through the struggle themselves. By holding back from rescuing, we empower our students to develop the true initiative and resilience they need to succeed both inside and outside the classroom.
On Identity
What does it mean to be “a good student” or considered “smart” in a particular subject or classroom? asked Ritchhart. Answer,’ not all students have equal opportunities to step into the identities being celebrated and reinforced in the classroom, or within a subject field’, according to Ritchhart.
Ritchhart brings up an important point that due to the deeply entrenched grammar of schools, many students think being a “good student” just means knowing the right answers and being compliant.
If we want students to become independent thinkers, scientists, writers, or entrepreneurs, we have to provide them with the opportunity to “try on these roles and envision them as possibilities for their lives”. So how can we help our students to see themselves as competent, self-directed learners and thinkers in our subject area?”
Conclusion: Crafting Your Theory of Action
Creating a new story of learning by changing the roles of teachers and students is not a quick fix; it challenges the deeply ingrained “grammar of schools” that we have relied on for decades. As we seek to empower our students through agency, more student talk, productive struggle, and powerful identity development, it is helpful to remember an important adage: you need to go slow to go fast.
Reference
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Church, M., & Ritchhart, R. (n.d.). #3 Role of T & Student. Cultures of Thinking in Action. https://www.cultures-of-thinking.org/3-role-of-t-student
No Published Date
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