PerceptualLearning™ helps teachers uncover what students truly understand, then shape instruction around what they need next.
286th → 1st in Kentucky
One Kentucky School rose from 286th of 713 schools in 2012 to 1st of 700 in 2021.
A student can follow a procedure and still misunderstand the idea behind it. A missing connection or misconception can make the mathematics seem harder than it is. Before deciding what to teach next, we first need to understand what the student sees.
What does the learner perceive?
Where did the misunderstanding begin?
What connection is missing?
What experience will make this concept meaningful?
The shift is simple to describe, but powerful in practice: teachers learn to use student thinking as instructional information.
Notice what students recognize, overlook, connect, and misunderstand.
Use student responses to uncover the perception or misconception producing the result.
Make instructional decisions based on what students actually need next.
Help students connect ideas, reason intentionally, and use what they know when the situation changes.
The lesson becomes responsive to the learner without lowering the mathematics.
Traditional instruction often begins with the mathematics that needs to be taught. PerceptualLearning™ begins with the learner. The content may be the same, but understanding what students currently perceive changes the decisions a teacher makes along the way.
A student can read every word of a poem correctly and still miss its meaning. Mathematics is no different. Students can remember vocabulary, follow procedures, and even arrive at correct answers without seeing the relationships that make the mathematics make sense. PerceptualLearning™ helps teachers look beyond what students can reproduce and investigate what they actually understand.
286th of 713 to 1st of 700
Proficiency at Sublimity rose from about 59 percent to 99.3 percent over that period, in a school where a majority of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
A 30 on the ACT, and a 32 superscore
A student who nearly left the program over refusing to show his work stayed, worked through an approach built around how he learned, and scored a 30 in math on the ACT with a 32 superscore.
From severe gaps to a computer science degree
A student with serious foundational difficulties received long term individualized instruction, later scored a 25 on the ACT, and graduated from the University of Kentucky in computer science.
Math instruction that raised reading scores to 35
A student who came for ACT math preparation saw his largest gain in reading, moving from the mid-twenties to a 35, and credited the way the mathematics was taught.
PerceptualLearning™ works with educators at different levels, from schoolwide partnerships to professional development and individual instruction.
School partnerships
Build a shared way of seeing student learning across a school or district.
Educator development
Help mathematics educators recognize student thinking and use it to shape instruction.
Individual instruction
Apply the framework directly to the needs of individual learners and educators.
Tell us what you are seeing in your classrooms. If Perceptual Learning is the right answer, we will show you what that looks like in your building. If it is not, we will say so.
