Mastery Learning

Mastery learning is “both a philosophy of instruction and a set of methods for teaching and assessing” (Gentile & Lalley, 2003, p. 172). As a philosophy, it endorses the belief that, except for the most severely cognitively impaired, all children can learn what the schools are accountable for teaching. As a set of teaching and testing methods, it requires that each student be assessed in a criterion-referenced manner—that is, without reference to the performance of others—on how well he or she is achieving the required instructional objectives.

The belief that all children can learn was a central tenet of Benjamin Bloom's initial formulation of mastery learning in 1968. He deduced this from John Carroll's 1963 model of school learning, in which Carroll rejected the traditional norm-referenced view of aptitude as an intellectual trait of cognitive complexity or capacity in favor of a criterion-referenced measure of time needed to learn a preestablished standard. Individual differences still existed, but they would be measured by rate of achieving mastery for a given domain of instructional objectives (e.g., in math vs. history vs. music).

Bloom championed this notion, suggesting that by using criterion-referenced techniques to hold students accountable for achieving important instructional objectives, and by requiring that students remediate and retest, they would all eventually attain mastery. Bloom's methods, called Learning for Mastery, allowed traditional group-based instruction, with individualization occurring as needed depending upon the results of mastery testing. Another system, derived independently from a behavioral contingency management approach by Fred S. Keller (1968), required a totally individualized approach to instruction. Keller's Personalized System of Instruction was more popular in higher education settings than in public schools.

Both systems have the following common features, which serve to define mastery learning (e.g., Block & colleagues, 1989; Gentile & Lalley, 2003):

• 1.
  Clearly stated mastery objectives, published for all and sequenced to facilitate transfer of previous knowledge and skills to current and future lessons
• 2.
  A preestablished passing standard that is sufficient to guarantee adequate original learning (e.g., 75% correct or more)
• 3.
  Criterion-referenced grading, with correctives and retesting required to demonstrate attainment of those objectives
• 4.
  Grading incentives to encourage students to go beyond initial mastery and strive for fluency in the material, to better organize, apply, and even teach it

The most common failings in implementing mastery learning occur when mastery is conceived as the endpoint of learning. Mastery, rather, implies only that initial learning of knowledge or skills is sufficient so that when it is forgotten, as it inevitably will be, it can be relearned quickly. With sufficient practice beyond original learning, called overlearning, the material or skill can become automatized, relatively permanent in memory, and sufficiently fluent to be [Page 306]available for transfer. Thus, a mastery learning scheme must award the lowest passing grade for initial acquisition of the required objectives (even if the score on the test is 100% correct) and reserve higher grades for students who complete projects or otherwise demonstrate applications or higher-level analyses of the course content or skills.