Educational Philosophy
Educational Philosophy
Outside The Box Thinking Charter School treats students' engagement, curiosity, and enjoyment of learning as instructional outcomes rather than incidental byproducts. Longitudinal research demonstrates reciprocal relationships between students' academic enjoyment and subsequent achievement, and negative reciprocal relationships between boredom, anxiety, and achievement. Control-value research further indicates that enjoyment develops when students perceive learning tasks as both attainable and personally meaningful, which is why the Charter School pairs high expectations with sufficient scaffolding, accessible materials, student choice, and interest-connections as part of effective instruction. Because a sense of school belonging is associated with stronger motivation, engagement, self-efficacy, and reduced absenteeism and dropout, OTB Thinking will monitor belonging and engagement alongside academic data. (Pekrun, et al., 2017; Pekrun 2006; Putwain et al., 2019)
OTB Thinking further recognizes that reading motivation and reading skills develop together, and that early reading difficulty can diminish students' motivation over time. For this reason, OTB Thinking will provide explicit, evidence-based foundational instruction and timely intervention while also preserving students' access to rich literature, choice reading, meaningful purposes for reading and writing, and instruction that treats reading as valuable in its own right. (McBreen & Savage , 2021)
OTB Thinking Charter School will maintain ambitious academic expectations for all students while recognizing that learners vary in neurological development, sensory processing, language proficiency, attention, executive functioning, communication, background knowledge, and pace of skill acquisition. The Charter School will reject fixed assumptions about student potential and will use ongoing assessment, explicit instruction, meaningful practice, responsive intervention, accessible learning environments, and appropriately intensive support to promote continued growth. Research on neuroplasticity demonstrates that targeted educational experiences can produce measurable changes in academic performance and associated neural systems (Adesope et al., 2017; Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007: Huber et al., 2018; Keller & Just, 2009).
We define Neuro-affirming education operationally as: student voice, identity-respectful language, sensory-accessible environments, flexible communication, predictable routines, interest-based connections, autonomy, assistive technology, and supports that improve meaningful participation.
Furthermore, a neuroaffirming approach has a positive effect on students without learning differences (Cage, et al., 2018; Szumski et al., 2017).
High expectations should mean access to ambitious learning goals, not identical pathways, timelines, response modes, or levels of assistance. High support includes explicit instruction, modeling, feedback, flexible grouping, assistive technology, access to a variety of accommodations, sensory regulation, individualized intervention, and sufficient instructional time (Reece & Cheon, 2021; Rubie-Davis et al., 2015).
