Journeys to Mastery Learning
Schools eager to make the move to mastery learning understand that the process of change is one that requires commitment, innovation, design thinking, and clearly defined targets for growth.
MTC's Journeys to Mastery Learning Framework
Having learned so much from member schools about their unique pathways to mastery learning, MTC developed the Journeys to Mastery Learning Framework, which articulates a set of core competencies that provide aspirational goals yet practical steps to support school communities in designing efficacious change strategies that will transform learning, teaching, and educational systems for good.
This framework is a guide to inquiry, collaboration, and iterative design, not a blueprint for change. While each school will forge its unique path to realize mastery learning in the context of its community, these essential design elements are vital to shifting to mastery learning and implementing the Mastery Transcript.
Draft your Call to Action to create your school Vision Statement | Create your Graduate Profile that describes what students will know and be able to do in order to succeed in college and career | Create your Framework for Mastery Learning that establishes shared pedagogy grounded in research | Define Building Blocks including Mastery Credits, that support mastery for all | Create an Implementation Plan to build and sustain capacity for mastery learning |
Purpose & Vision | Graduate Profile | Learning Model | Alignment | Sustainability |
---|---|---|---|---|
What is your compelling reason to innovate? | What will success look like for all learners? | How will learning and teaching need to change? | How do school culture, instruction, and structure function to support your learning model? | How will you build capacity to sustain changes over time? |
A New Look for the Journey
When we initially designed the “roadmap” image to depict the Journey framework, it appeared linear, representing stops along the path that must be approached one domain at a time. We’ve come to realize through our research and learning directly from our member schools that, in many cases, targeted efforts at transformation are happening across multiple domains, often simultaneously. The revised framework below, which replicates the “credit profile” graphic included on a student’s Mastery Transcript, includes expanded explanations of school-level competencies for each phase of the Journey to Mastery. These indicators were informed by Aurora Institute’s Definition of Competency-Based Learning and MTC’s own research and knowledge about school change in a mastery learning system.


Purpose & Vision: What is your compelling reason to innovate?
Graduate Profile: What will success look like for all learners?
Learning Model: How will learning and teaching need to change?
Alignment: How do school culture, instruction, and structure function to support your learning model?
Sustainability: How will you build capacity to sustain change over time?
Case Studies
One of the core strengths of MTC’s diverse network of schools is that it brings together public and private member schools who are facing similar challenges and offer connections and insight to one another. This is reflected in our initial series of MTC member school case studies that features schools whose Journeys to Mastery Learning have some similar shapes and paths, but with distinctly different contexts and steps.