Teaching and Learning is a big part of my identity. I believe that “agency formation” is the central work of any learning process. It could be agency in a particular discipline, but it is also, more generally, the building of agency that increases and strengthens a learner’s freedom, and empowers them to act in the world in meaningful ways. The articles on this page reflect that overall vision.
More specifically, I have recently published and done a series of presentations on “The Social Model of Learning.” Many articles on this page stem from that research. Feel free to read the articles below.
The Most Important Educational Technology: The Small Group
There remains a more basic question: how do human beings actually become capable learners? Before we ask what technology can do for students, we need to ask what kind of social conditions allow students to develop attention, confidence, responsibility, judgment, and agency. My claim is simple: small groups are not merely useful classroom techniques. They are one of the oldest and most powerful structures through which human beings learn, cooperate, and become capable of action.
Educated Agency in the University: From Mastery to Authenticity
What is a university education ultimately for? Is it meant to help us master chance, become more efficient, and secure our place in a technological society, or should it help us ask what kind of life is worth living? In “Educated Agency in the University,” I explore how higher education might recover its deeper purpose: cultivating self-knowledge, moral agency, and the freedom to become more authentically who we are.
Social Mobility and Liberal Education
What if we have burdened university education with the wrong promise? A degree is often presented as a ladder to greater status, security, and success, yet this vision can deepen competition, anxiety, and inequality. “Social Mobility and Liberal Education” asks us to recover a richer purpose for education: gaining knowledge, learning to live responsibly with others, and developing the capacity to thrive without measuring our worth by how high we climb. Read the article to explore what liberal education might offer when it serves human dignity and the common good.
AI, Authorship, and the Responsibility to Answer for What we Write
Artificial intelligence can produce polished writing in seconds, but can it make us authors? This essay argues that authorship is more than generating words or claiming originality. It means becoming answerable for what we say: understanding our claims, checking our sources, exercising judgment, and accepting responsibility for the final work. AI can deepen thought when it helps us question, clarify, and revise; it becomes dangerous when it allows the appearance of understanding to replace understanding itself. As schools and writers struggle to define responsible AI use, this article offers a timely standard: the author is the person who can answer.
Home Education in the Foreground
During the pandemic, parents were suddenly pulled into the work of education. Yet this article asks a deeper question: what might families discover when schooling no longer occupies the foreground? Drawing on Locke, Rousseau, and Mill, it revisits an older liberal concern that schools can cultivate conformity as easily as freedom. Home education, even when temporary or partial, may remind parents that they are more than assistants to institutions. They can become thoughtful participants in forming judgment, character, and independence. Read “Home Education in the Foreground” for a provocative reflection on what homes can offer that schools cannot fully provide.
The Neurodivergent Advantage…. and Challenge
What happens when neurodivergence is treated as a strength rather than a problem to manage? Drawing on experience with neurodivergent newcomers learning English, this article examines how cultural stigma and institutional habits can hide abilities. It argues that inclusion requires more than accommodation: schools and workplaces must be willing to change as well. Neurodivergent people may bring creativity, intense focus, resilience, precision, and distinctive ways of solving problems. Yet those strengths flourish only where people feel safe enough to disclose how they learn and work. Read “The Neurodivergent Advantage… and Challenge” for a call to move from tolerance toward belonging.
The Evolution of Ability
What does it really mean to be “able”? We often treat ability as an individual possession, measured by grades, credentials, intelligence, or productivity. Yet human capacity rarely develops in isolation. It grows through recognition, collaboration, curiosity, resilience, and the support of communities that help people contribute. Drawing on experiences in education, work, family, and life across cultures, this article questions whether our meritocratic systems recognize the qualities that matter most. Perhaps ability is less about proving ourselves alone and more about discovering what becomes possible together. Read “The Evolution of Ability” and reconsider how we measure human potential and worth.
Social Learning Models: A Path For Neurodivergent Success
What if the most effective educational technology is not a device, but a small group? Traditional classrooms often reward solitary performance, yet modern workplaces depend on collaboration, communication, and shared responsibility. For neuro-diverse adults, especially newcomers shaped by displacement or trauma, social learning can create safer spaces to contribute, develop confidence, and discover that difference is also a source of strength. Combined with Universal Design for Learning, small-group education offers flexibility, belonging, accountability, and practical preparation for employment. This article explores how changing the structure of learning can help every learner move beyond access toward genuine participation and success together.
Re-Thinking Inclusion: Introduction
Inclusion has become a contested word in education. Supporters defend it as necessary justice; critics see it as coercive, performative, or incompatible with merit. This article asks whether both sides are missing the deeper problem. As colleges confront neurodiversity, rising accommodation needs, and strained support systems, inclusion can no longer be treated as a marginal concern. The real question is how educational institutions help learners develop agency rather than merely granting access or assuming independence. “Re-thinking Inclusion” opens a timely series on what genuine openness requires, why current models are overwhelmed, and how education might respond more truthfully and effectively.
Re-Thinking Inclusion, Part 2: Neurodiversity and Expectations of Agency
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Re-Thinking Inclusion, Part 3: Case Studies in a Revolution in Education
What happens when inclusion moves beyond accommodation and becomes a way of learning together? Through vivid case studies of neurodivergent newcomers, this article shows how small, stable groups can build confidence, accountability, practical skills, and belonging. A student learns to read a tape measure because a community refuses to let him struggle alone. Another turns a love of cars into permanent employment. Cooking, conversation, mentoring, and shared responsibility become more than classroom activities; they become pathways to agency. “Rethinking Inclusion, Part 3” offers a compelling glimpse of an educational revolution in which learners discover that success is never entirely individual.
Professional Learning Communities
What turns a school from a collection of isolated classrooms into a community committed to continuous improvement? Professional learning communities begin with shared purpose, but their success depends on much more than an inspiring mission statement. Teachers, leaders, students, parents, and administrators must work together to define a vision, clarify their commitments, set meaningful goals, and connect daily decisions to student learning. This article offers a practical account of how schools can replace isolation and top-down habits with collaboration, responsibility, and collective growth. Read “Professional Learning Communities” to discover how shared vision can become sustained educational practice for everyone involved.
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 