To meet the unique combination of social, emotional, physical, and intellectual needs of young adolescents, the Developmental Designs for Middle School (DDMS) approach (formerly known as Responsive Designs, or RD) offers an array of strategies designed to keep young people safe, connected, responsible, and engaged in learning. The DDMS approach is based on our research-grounded belief that healthy, enjoyable relationships are the foundation for success in school. In order to establish and maintain those relationships, teachers must know their students; students must come to know and appreciate each other; clear parameters for acceptable behavior must be drawn and consistently maintained; and learning must be engaging, exploratory, relevant, and varied.
DDMS offers workshops and on-site consulting to help teachers develop and hone
practices integrating social and academic learning in the following fundamental areas:
Community-building Advisories that build relationship and establish trust Setting and maintaining goals School-wide social contracts Modeling routines Social-skills development Encouraging language Structured play
Engaged learning Constructivist approach Engaging lesson design Strategies for cooperative group work Routines to support rigorous learning Probing and reflective language
Needs-based behavior management Pathways to self-control Redirecting strategies Development of responsible independence Problem-solving structures Redirecting language
Who are young adolescents developmentally, and what do they need?
Middle school is a time of enormous physical change. It is also the dawn of the capacity to think conceptually, and a time of great curiosity about life, the world, and peers. Most of all, it is a time of preoccupation with self, when many young adolescents are swimming in self-doubt. At their most insecure, young people are taken from the safety of self-contained classrooms and asked to switch focus, environment, and teachers every 50-90 minutes. It is a time when young adolescents declare family to be irrelevant to what's really happening, and yet family has never been more important. In middle school, students whose bones are rapidly growing and realigning, whose proportions seem designed for anything but desks, are asked to sit all day, often without an opportunity to do what their bodies and nerves are asking for most—move!
In the Developmental Designs approach, we draw from Rudolf Dreikurs, Abraham Maslow, William Glasser, and the recent work of psychologist Edward Deci. Here are four needs that must be fulfilled if young adolescent minds and hearts are to be engaged in any learning—social or academic:
Four developmental needs
Relationship: I want to connect with others.
To reduce fear and aloneness, young adolescents need to build and maintain relationships that provide safe ground upon which to make mistakes on their journey. These relationships focus on peers in a way that they never have before, but they also include powerful and reliable adult support. Young adolescents can't make it alone!
Autonomy: I want to be independent.
The adolescent drive to function separate from adults is a powerful motivator. It works for school success when it drives middle level students to show that they can be given big responsibilities and freedom, but against success when it turns into rebellion. They need maps from caring adults to help them find their own way.
Competence: I want to experience success in what I do and feel like a worthwhile, significant person.
Young adolescence feels like a make-or-break time for young people, a time when you have to demonstrate that you've got the right stuff or be seen as a loser. Adult scaffolding can make a crucial difference.
Fun: I want to have a good time.
The need to enjoy moments of pleasure drives much adolescent behavior. Students will find their own fun during school hours (and sometimes pay a big price for it) if adults don't channel the need constructively.
What does Developmental Designs look like in a school?
What does a middle school look, feel, and sound like when all of these adolescent needs are taken into consideration? A school implementing Developmental Designs makes the creating of respectful, caring relationships a high priority. Every day begins with a homeroom or advisory in which students circle up to greet each other respectfully, share what's happening in their lives, and sometimes move around a bit in activities that teach important skills in a lively way. The morning meeting (we call it the Circle of Power and Respect) helps students make the transition from home to school and establishes a clear path into the learning day.
Transitions between classes are taught and practiced, as are all the routines of the school day. Nothing is taken for granted. Everything is modeled and rehearsed. The goal is the development of self-control through proactive strategies that put the emphasis on the prevention of rule-breaking. Consequences for all rule-breakers, no matter who or how small the infraction, are carefully introduced and consistently upheld. The consequences clarify the expectations, provide a chance to restore order, safety, and relationship, and maintain the dignity of the rule-breaker.
Each class the students attend uses the same language and routines to preserve a caring community. Each class has an opportunity for students to get to know each other, to do meaningful work, and to reflect on work afterwards. There is respect for the environment and materials. There is closure for students and teacher at the end of each period, and at the end of the day. Students ask and respond to open-ended questions. They have regular opportunities to help design and make choices in assignments that are meaningful to them. There is a balance in each class between teacher-directed lessons and independent and group work on skills and projects.
Process of Implementation
Developmental Designs for Middle School is an approach that when fully implemented creates a caring, challenging climate in which students can do their best work. For most teachers, it takes from three to five years to learn the skills, practice them enough to feel confident, and experience the full results, but with careful implementation you will see some results immediately. Like any comprehensive approach to professional growth, Developmental Designs calls for some paradigm shifts, is built on repeated practice, and thrives in a school climate of reflection and collaboration. Good relationships among adults are carefully cultivated through meeting structures and shared language, as well as through authentic, ongoing assessment of teacher practices.
Six Principles of Developmental Designs
The Developmental Designs approach is founded upon six researched principles of good practice that form the core of successful teaching and learning:
Social learning is as important to success as academic learning.
We learn best by constructing our own understanding through exploration, discovery, and application.
The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interactions within a supportive community.
There is a set of personal and social skills that students need to learn and practice in order to be successful socially and academically:
C—Cooperation: Students need opportunities to practice working together in many and varied ways all through the day. We can better accept differences when we work together and feel a sense of community and belonging together.
A—Assertion: Students need to be able to stand up for their own ideas without hurting others. Students must be coached and taught to do this. Students must be given the chance to practice in a safe environment, where dialogue about one's ideas and feelings is encouraged. With plenty of practice, students will be able to think for themselves in the face of peer pressure.
R—Responsibility: The way to learn to be responsible is to have many opportunities to practice being responsible. Students need to begin with small amounts of responsibility and gradually be given more. As adults, our most powerful teaching tool is trust and belief in students' ability to come through in responsible ways. This we show in our words and in our actions.
E—Empathy: Empathy is the capacity to care. It comes from knowing others, from the practice of building relationships. Parents and educators want children to be capable of conflict resolution; children must have empathy in order to resolve conflicts.
S—Self-control: The ultimate goal of discipline is that students will control their own behavior and behave in an ethical manner. To grow in self-control, students need many opportunities to practice. The opportunities need to come in increments that are manageable and will lead to success. In being proactive, teachers make sure students understand what's expected and give many opportunities to practice before expecting students to succeed on their own. The reward for ethical behavior is intrinsic—the good, proud feeling inside that comes from having done the right thing. Like responsibility, self-control grows when adults trust and believe in the students they work with.
Knowing the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs of the students we teach is as important as knowing the content we teach.
Trust among adults is a fundamental necessity for academic and social success in a learning community.
Research Basis for Developmental Designs
The following categories of pedagogical research and practice create the theoretical framework for the Developmental Designs approach:
Child and Adolescent Development
Piaget, Dreikurs, Glasser, Maslow, Deci, and others Social-emotional Learning (SEL)
Vygotsky, Glasser, Goleman, Elias, Zins, Jensen, and others Engaged Learning
Dewey, Dweck, and others Supportive Learning Communities
Senge, Bryk, and others Multicultural Understanding
Banks, Delpit, and others
New Research for Developmental Designs for Middle School
Origins is working with Dr. David Hough, Dean College of Education, Missouri State University, and Director, Institute for School Improvement. He has extensive experience with evidence-based program evaluation and research. Previously the editor of Research in Middle Level Education for the National Middle School Association for twelve years, Dr. Hough is now the founder and editor-in-chief of the Middle Grades Research Journal (MGRJ).
Dr. Hough will implement a three-phased research and evaluation approach for Developmental Designs: Phase 1 assesses the effectiveness of DDMS training and consulting, and preliminarily assesses teacher implementation. Phase 2 is a descriptive study looking at and describing all schools who have trained teachers in DDMS. Phase 3 combines Phases 1 and 2 to establish an evidence-based comprehensive research study examining Developmental Designs’ impact on student, teacher, and school outcomes.
Advisories that build relationship and establish trust
Middle school is a time of enormous physical change. It is also the dawn of the capacity to think conceptually, and a time of great curiosity about life, the world, and peers. Most of all, it is a time of preoccupation with self, when many young adolescents are swimming in self-doubt. At their most insecure, young people are taken from the safety of self-contained classrooms and asked to switch focus, environment, and teachers every 50-90 minutes. It is a time when young adolescents declare family to be irrelevant to what's really happening, and yet family has never been more important. In middle school, students whose bones are rapidly growing and realigning, whose proportions seem designed for anything but desks, are asked to sit all day, often without an opportunity to do what their bodies and nerves are asking for most—move!
Developmental Designs for Middle School is an approach that when fully implemented creates a caring, challenging climate in which students can do their best work. For most teachers, it takes from three to five years to learn the skills, practice them enough to feel confident, and experience the full results, but with careful implementation you will see some results immediately. Like any comprehensive approach to professional growth, Developmental Designs calls for some paradigm shifts, is built on repeated practice, and thrives in a school climate of reflection and collaboration. Good relationships among adults are carefully cultivated through meeting structures and shared language, as well as through authentic, ongoing assessment of teacher practices.
