The 5 Stages of Learning Every Educator Should Know

Leigh Buettler, M.Ed., Director of Professional Learning

“We spent almost a whole month learning about how to find the area of a polygon, but they absolutely bombed the end-of-unit test!” I distinctly remember these words coming out of my mouth as I sat in the teacher’s lounge during lunch, staring down at the pile of assessments I had just finished grading. Despite my students doing well during lessons and even on exit tickets, their cumulative assessment results were well below what I had expected. I’d have to reteach … a lot.

What I hadn’t taken into account was the Hierarchy of Learning (Haring et al.,1978), a framework that helps break down the different stages we move through when learning a new concept or skill. By helping students move through this hierarchy, we can help ensure that students are able to generalize a skill or concept.

When we help students progress through the five stages in the Instructional Hierarchy of Learning with practice and feedback, they move from initial skill acquisition to versatile, sustained application.

1. Acquisition: Focus on teaching accuracy and independence through modeling, feedback, and gradual support removal
2. Fluency: Aim to increase speed while maintaining accuracy with frequent, timed practice and feedback.
3. Retention: Strengthen long-term skill retention with massed and spaced review sessions.
4. Endurance: Develop persistence in skills for extended periods by gradually lengthening practice time and incorporating self-monitoring.
5. Generalization: Encourage skill application in diverse settings by mimicking real-life tasks.

You can read more about each stage, along with instructional strategies and examples, here.

If I had known then about these stages, and how to help my students generalize their ability to find the area of polygons, they would have been much more successful on their assessments. Instead, I had ended their practice in the fluency or retention stage of the hierarchy, which was reflected in their assessment outcomes.

Understanding the Hierarchy of Learning can be a game-changer in how we approach teaching and assessing our students. By intentionally guiding them from acquisition to generalization, we can help them not only master skills but also apply them in meaningful, real-world ways – and cut down on the amount of time we spend wondering what happened? and subsequently reteaching.