EDM 517 Jordan's blog

 I was immediately struck by how frequently "rigor" in schools is viewed as a badge, something to add to, turn up, or hope pupils would become used to, when I first came across Hess's work. Hess contends in Rigor by Design, Not by Chance that this strategy completely misses the mark. She maintains that rigor ought to be deliberate, thoughtfully designed, and sensitive to the needs of students. Rigor should be a design challenge rather than a default option. How can we create learning settings that foster deeper thinking, transfer, and student agency?  Hess reframes rigor not as more work or higher difficulty, but as complexity, depth, and discipline of thinking . She reminds us that many common myths get in the way: that rigor equals more content, or that it’s about making every assignment harder. Instead, rigor is about designing opportunities for students to reason, make meaning, wrestle with ideas, and engage thoughtfully with concepts. It is about scaffolding growt...

 Karin Hess discusses a key element of rigorous learning in Chapter 4 of Rigor by Design, Not Chance (2023): performance challenges that demand that students apply their knowledge to novel or real-world scenarios. Well-designed performance tasks show how students reason, analyze, and apply what they have learned—all of which are essential components of gaining a deeper understanding—instead of evaluating discrete abilities. Hess contends that in order to encourage students to exhibit higher-order thinking skills like analysis, synthesis, and problem-solving, performance tasks should be purposefully created to correspond with specific learning objectives and incorporate real-world situations. A well-designed assignment focuses on how students solve problems, make decisions, and express their ideas rather than merely focusing on achieving the correct answer. This approach to assessment demands careful planning, but the reward is a more accurate and meaningful picture of studen...

 The term "rigor" in education is frequently misinterpreted. It's about encouraging deeper thought via deliberate design, not about assigning kids more work or more difficult assignments. According to Karin Hess's argument in Rigor by Design, Not Chance (2023), rigor must be purposefully and clearly included into education and evaluation so that students do not stumble into it. Hess provides a framework for creating demanding educational experiences that incorporate challenging assignments, smart scaffolding, reflective opportunities, and intelligent questioning. She stresses that fairness and rigor go hand in hand and that all students should be given the tools they need to thrive while completing difficult coursework. This method is further supported by Barbara Blackburn in her book Rigor and Assessment in the Classroom. She emphasizes the need for evaluations to help students in meeting high standards and be in line with learning objectives. Blackburn emphasiz...

 Karen Hess (2023) breaks the notion that academic rigor means more work for pupils in her book Rigor by Design, Not Chance. According to her, rigor is deliberate and is developed by techniques that promote deeper thinking, such as challenging tasks, scaffolding, schema-building, probing inquiries, and metacognitive reflection (Hess, 2023). Melinda Stewart's evaluation of Blackburn and Miles's Scaffolding for Success (2025) is a convincing addition to Hess's theoretical framework. Stewart (2025) commends the book for providing a dynamic, empirically supported scaffolding pathway that motivates educators to shift from generic supports to intentional, anticipatory design in their teaching. She points out that effective scaffolding must be adapted to the various demands of learners and promote student freedom rather than dependence (Stewart, 2025). Why these texts are important together: They match support and rigor. Scaffolding is one of the five key teaching strategies f...