Implementing Mastery Learning

The definitive classic―updated for our times.

After 50 years, Benjamin Bloom’s revolutionary work on mastery learning is more relevant than ever. One of the most widely researched and proven-effective education methodologies in existence, it provides a direct challenge to the traditional, deterministic, time-based approaches to teaching and learning that have perpetuated inequities for generations of children.

Mastery learning is the progenitor of many of today’s most promising teaching methods, including competency-based learning, personalized instruction, and differentiated instruction. It helped to elevate the importance and use of formative assessment as a powerful instructional practice. This timely new edition of the foremost practical guide includes:

• Recent applications of the principles of mastery learning to distance, hybrid, and blended learning environments
• Updates including evidence from recent implementation efforts, the results of the most current research on mastery learning and its implications for practice
• Step-by-step guidance on implementation across grade levels and subject areas
• Supplemental, on-line chapters that unpack the development of effective formative assessments and connections between RTI and mastery learning

Written by one of the most highly regarded scholar/practitioners in the field and the leading interpreter of Bloom’s work, this updated guidebook is essential reading for teachers, school leaders, professional learning communities, and anyone who believes that all students can learn well, achieve success, and become confident learners.

Thomas R. Guskey, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. A graduate of the University of Chicago’s renowned Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis (MESA) program, he began his career in education as a middle school teacher, served as an administrator in the Chicago Public Schools, and was the first Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning, a national educational research center. He is the author/editor of twenty-seven books and over three hundred articles published in prominent research journals as well as Educational Leadership, Kappan, and The School Administrator.

Dr. Guskey served on the Policy Research Team of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and on the task force to develop the National Standards for Professional Development. He was named a Fellow in the American Educational Research Association and was awarded the Association’s prestigious Relating Research to Practice Award. He was also awarded Learning Forward′s Outstanding Contribution to the Field Award and Phi Delta Kappan′s Distinguished Educator Award. Perhaps most unique, in the 158-year history of his undergraduate institution, Thiel College, he is one of only three graduates to receive the Outstanding Alumnus Award and be inducted into the Thiel College Athletic Hall of Fame.

His most recent books include Implementing Mastery Learning (2023), Instructional Feedback: The Power, the Promise, the Practice (with Smith & Lipnevich, 2023); Get Set, Go! Creating Successful Grading and Reporting Systems (2020), What We Know About Grading (with Brookhart, 2019), and On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting (2015). He may be contacted by email at guskey@uky.edu, Twitter at @tguskey, or at www.tguskey.com.