Teaching and Learning Domain - Best Practice

Definition and Key Concepts

The Teaching and Learning domain defines the entities and associations for organizing instruction. Key concepts are as follows: A course is an organization of subject matter and related learning experiences provided for the instruction of students on a regular or systematic basis. Courses reflect the official organization of instruction for teaching by a school (in a classroom and/or virtually). State Education Agencies (SEAs) typically define a standard set of courses (with identifiers) that are to be taught in the schools and may be required in certain combinations for a student to graduate from high school.

A course offering reflects the offering of teaching a course by a school during a session. As such, the set of course offerings represents the course catalog of planned courses at a school for the session. A school’s course offering is typically associated with a state-defined course. A course may have multiple course offerings within a school when there are differences in complexity or difficulty, in target population, or the instructional methods applied.

A section represents the actual delivery of a course offering in a setting (classroom, virtual, or hybrid), to one or more students for a given period of time. A course offering may be taught in more than one section. Sections have staff assigned as teachers and other support. Sections have students enrolled, or assigned, to the section. When taught in a classroom setting, a section is defined for a specific time during days of the week, at specific location(s), and for a single course offering. In practice, it’s possible for multiple Sections of a Course to be taught within the same classroom by the same teacher, with the students being administered a different curriculum in each.

A program refers to a school sponsored or approved recurring activity, event, or function, on- or off-school premises, where students are under the authority of the local education agency (LEA) or are supervised by school staff. Programs may provide supplemental instruction, training, services, or benefits. Programs may also include organized extracurricular activities for students. In some cases, students participate in a program as part of receiving instruction in a section. See the Alternative and Supplemental Services domain.

The organization of instruction into the Course–CourseOffering–Section pattern reflects the typical flow of instructional planning activities by the State Education Agency (SEA), Local Education Agency (LEA) and School, as depicted in the following diagram.

In a secondary school context (middle and high school), the sections into which students are assigned are scheduled for class periods organized by day of the week and times according to a bell schedule. In an elementary school context where students may receive all instruction from the same teacher, simple grade-oriented courses, course offerings, and sections are defined.

Teaching and Learning Use Cases

The Teaching and Learning domain entities and associations address the use cases associated with organizing instruction (per the diagram above), assigning teachers and placing students as shown in the following table.

Primary Use Cases	Ed-Fi Domain and Entity needed for the Use Case
SEA designation of the courses to be offered in the state. SEA designation of learning standards for instruction and their mapping to courses. SEA designation of the course requirements for graduation.	Teaching and Learning    - Course   Assessment    - LearningStandard Graduation    - GraduationPlan
LEA designation of the course offerings for a session to be offered at each school.	Teaching and Learning    - Course    - CourseOffering
School designation of the sections to be scheduled for each course offering according to the population of students requiring that course.	Teaching and Learning    - CourseOffering    - Section
Student assignment to a specific section for a course offering. Student exit from a section. Student withdrawal from school and exit from all sections. Student completion of a section during a session. Student transfer to another section of the same course offering. Student transfer to another section with different course offering but teaching the same state course.	Teaching and Learning    - Section    - StudentSectionAssociation
Student participation in a program as part of section instruction Student exit or withdrawal from a program associated with a section.	Teaching and Learning    - Section    - StudentSectionAssociation Alternative and Supplemental Services    - Program    - StudentProgramAssociation
Staff assignment to a section Staff exit from a section	Teaching and Learning    - Section    - StaffSectionAssociation
Student registration for a dual credit (dual enrollment) course at a post-secondary institution Secondary registration at another school to take a course.	Teaching and Learning    - Section    - StudentSectionAssociation Enrollment    - StudentSchoolAssociation

The Teaching and Learning domain includes the following entities and associations:

• Course: An organization of subject matter and related learning experiences provided for the instruction of students on a regular or systematic basis.
• CourseOffering: An available course offered by a school during a session. The course offerings represent the course catalog available to students.
• Location: The space, typically physical, where students gather for a particular section. Virtual (online) spaces and applications may also be defined as Locations.
• Section: The school setting in which organized instruction of a course offering is provided, in-person or virtual, to one or more students for a given period of time. A course offering may be offered in more than one section.
• StaffSectionAssociation: Indicates the sections to which a staff member, typically a teacher, is assigned.
• StudentSectionAssociation: Indicates the sections into which a student is assigned to receive instruction.

Prerequisites for Writing the Teaching and Learning Domain Entities

The Teaching and Learning domain has dependencies on other data that should be entered into the Ed-Fi API prior to writing domain entities and associations, as follows:

• Year-based setup: The best practice convention has a separate Ed-Fi API instance for each school year. This means that teaching and learning entities and associations must be written into the appropriate Ed-Fi API instance for the school year.
• EducationOrganizations, minimally Schools, LocalEducationAgency(s) and the StateEducationAgency, need to be created for the scope of the Ed-Fi API.
• LearningStandards need to be written before defining Courses of instruction are organized by learning standard.
• School calendar entities (minimally the Sessions) need to be written before the CourseOfferings are defined for a School and a Session.
• Courses need to be defined before writing CourseOfferings.
• CourseOfferings need to be defined before writing Sections.
• Locations for each School, if used, need to be defined before writing Sections.
• BellSchedules and ClassPeriods need to be defined before writing Sections.
• A Student entity and a StudentSchoolAssociation (school enrollment) needs to be written before assigning students to sections using the StudentSectionAssociation.
• A Staff entity and the StaffSchoolAssociation needs to be written before assigning the teachers to sections using the StaffSectionAssociation.
• Programs that are associated with Sections need to be defined before writing Sections or StudentSectionAssociations that are associated with a program.
• A Section entity needs to be written writing a StudentSectionAssociation or a StaffSectionAssociation.
• Descriptor values need to be loaded, organized by the referring entities and associations, as follows.
  • Course
    • AcademicSubject, an optional collection of descriptor values to indicate the intended major subject area(s) of the course.
    • CareerPathway, optionally indicates the career cluster or pathway the course is associated with as part of a CTE curriculum.
    • CompetencyLevel, an optional collection of descriptor values for competency levels defined to rate the student for the course.
    • CourseDefinedBy, optionally specifies whether the course was defined by the SEA, LEA, School, or national organization.
    • CourseGPAApplicability, an optional indicator of whether or not the course being described is included in the computation of the student's Grade Point Average, and if so, if it is weighted differently from regular courses.
    • CourseIdentificationSystem, a required descriptor for the optional CourseIdentificationCode common that specifies the system that is used to alternatively identify the Course.
    • CourseLevelCharacteristic, an optional collection of descriptor values to indicate various designation(s) with which the course is associated (e.g., AP, IB, Dual Credit, CTE).
    • CreditType, optionally used as part of the MinimumAvailableCredits and MaximumAvailableCredits commons to specify type of credits or units of value awarded for the completion of a course.
    • OfferedGradeLevel, an optional collection of descriptor values using the GradeLevel descriptor, indicating the grade level(s) in which the course is offered.
  • CourseOffering
    • CourseLevelCharacteristic, an optional collection of descriptor values to indicate various designation(s) with which the course offering is associated (e.g., AP, IB, Dual Credit, CTE). The collection should be populated if it differs from the CourseLevelCharacteristics identified at the Course level.
    • CurriculumUsed, an optional collection of descriptor values to indicate the type of curriculum used in classroom or group.
    • OfferedGradeLevel, an optional collection of descriptor values using the GradeLevel descriptor, indicating the grade level(s) in which the course offering is offered. This collection should be populated if it differs from the OfferedGradeLevels identified at the Course level.
  • Section
    • CourseLevelCharacteristic, an optional collection of descriptor values to indicate various designation(s) with which the section is associated (e.g., AP, IB, Dual Credit, CTE). The collection should be populated if it differs from the CourseLevelCharacteristics identified at the CourseOffering level.
    • CreditType, the type of credits or units of value awarded for the completion of a course.
    • EducationalEnvironment, the setting in which a child receives education and related services; for example: center-based instruction, home based instruction, hospital class, mainstream, residential care and treatment facility.
    • InstructionLanguage, the primary language of instruction; if omitted English is assumed.
    • OfferedGradeLevel, an optional collection of descriptor values using the GradeLevel descriptor, indicating the grade level(s) in which the section is offered. This collection should only be populated if it differs from the OfferedGradeLevels identified at the Course Offering level.
    • MediumOfInstruction, the media through which teachers provide instruction to students and students and teachers communicate about instructional matters; for example: technology-based instruction in classroom, correspondence instruction, face-to-face instruction, virtual/on-line distance learning, center-based instruction.
    • PopulationServed, the type of students the Section is offered and tailored to; for example: bilingual students, remedial education students, gifted and talented students, Career and Technical Education students, special education students.
    • SectionCharacteristic reflects important characteristics of the Section, such as whether or not attendance is taken, and whether the Section is graded and awards credits.
    • SectionType specifies whether the section is for attendance only, credit only, or both.
  • StudentSectionAssociation
    • AttemptStatus, an indication of the student's completion status for the section.
    • RepeatIdentifier, an indication as to whether a student has previously taken a given course. Repeated, counted in grade point average, Repeated, not counted in grade point average, Not repeated, Other.
  • StaffSectionAssociation
    • ClassroomPosition indicates the type of position the Staff member holds in the specific section; for example: teacher of record, assistant teacher, support teacher, substitute teacher.

Alternative Patterns for the Teaching and Learning Domain

As discussed above, the primary mechanism for structuring teaching and learning is the Course–CourseOffering–Section pattern. This document section discusses the best practices for how to apply this pattern to common special cases.

Elementary School Sections

In the Ed-Fi, the Course–CourseOffering–Section pattern is central to supporting secondary teaching and learning where the section is the mechanism to assign students and teachers, take attendance, and post grades.

However, elementary school teaching and learning is often organized with students spending their instructional time in a single classroom where all subjects are covered. Best practices have the following approach:

1. Courses are defined for each subject and grade, for example Grade 1 Mathematics, Grade 1 Language Arts and Reading, and so forth.
2. CourseOfferings are defined for each of the subject-grade Courses available at a school.
3. Sections are defined for each subject-grade Course-CourseOffering to support the assignment of students and teachers to classrooms. These subject-grade sections provide the mechanism to organize multiple classrooms for a grade level and to record grades by subject.

Local Course Offerings

The Course entity typically captures the state’s instructional requirements for organizing teaching, for grade level advancement, and ultimately for high school graduation. Districts (and perhaps even schools) may be given the flexibility to define local courses to best serve the educational development needs of their students.

Conceptually, this may seem like there would be a CouseOffering without an associated Course entity (which would be an anti-pattern). The Course–CourseOffering–Section pattern requires a CourseOffering to be associated with a Course. Best practices find there are two ways to handle the situation of locally-defined courses:

• The state may define open-ended courses that are specifically identified for local course offerings. For example, a Course could be defined for “Advanced Mathematics” to which a local CourseOffering for “Topology” could be associated. The advantage of this approach is that the state’s graduation requirements can address the credits associated with any “Advanced Mathematics” course offering.
• Alternatively, the state may allow the districts (or schools) to define Courses for these local course offerings. In the example a local CourseOffering for “Topology” would create a Course for “Topology.” In this case, it is important that the local Course be properly identified:
  • Course.EducationOrganization should reference the LocalEducationAgency or School that defines the local course offering; and
  • Course.CourseDefinedBy descriptor value should indicate whether it was defined by an LEA or a school.

Dual Credit Courses

In a general sense, dual credit courses refer to situations where the student can earn credits for both high school and college by taking a single course. There are three variants:

1. Dual enrollment involves students taking college courses while in high school. A dual enrollment experience earns college credit and may or may not allow students to earn simultaneous credits for high school.
2. Advanced course eligible for college credit are high school programs, such as Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB), that allow students to earn academic credit that is accepted by some colleges and universities. This experience may or may not allow students to earn simultaneous credits for both high school and college for the course taken in high school.
3. Concurrent enrollment courses (as the subset of dual enrollment) are taught by college-approved high school teachers in a secondary environment earning college credit and may or may not allow students to earn high school credits.

The following table outlines the distinctions between these variants.

Type of Dual Credit	Type of curriculum	Teaching and learning setting	High school credit	College credit
Dual enrollment	College	College	Maybe	Yes
Advanced course eligible for college credit	High school	High school	Yes	Maybe
Concurrent enrollment	College	High school	Maybe	Yes

To address these situations, the Teaching and Learning model requires that a Course be defined to earn the high school credits, independent of whether the course is taught at a college or if it is taught in the high school.

The descriptor Course.CourseLevelCharacteristic is used to identify courses that are specifically designated as dual credit. The same descriptor value may be used for course offerings (CourseOffering.CourseLevelCharacteristic) when it differs from that specified by the Course. Similarly, at the section level, the Section. CourseLevelCharacteristic may be used where the section value differs from that specified by the Course or CourseOffering. This approach provides a large amount of flexibility to manage different approaches for dual credit situations.

Credit Recovery

Credit recovery sections are organized to bring several students into a specific location and class period to study courses required for graduation that they have previously missed or didn’t pass previously. A credit recovery section may be staffed by one or several teachers, each assigned course(s) to teach in their field. The Ed-Fi section model supports credit recovery with the approach that every different course taught must have a section defined, identifying the specific teacher(s) assigned and those students that are studying that course.

School districts operate credit recovery sections somewhat differently, including as follows:

1. The different courses to be taught for credit recovery in a section are determined before student assignments to sections. Sections are defined for each course, assigned a teacher, and assigned the same ClassPeriod and Location.
2. A “Credit Recovery” section is defined for students to register in and be assigned. At the first meeting of the section, the needs of the students for credit recovery are assessed and additional Sections are defined for each different course and assigned the same ClassPeriod and Location.

The first approach is easily supported by the Section model. The details of the latter case are as follows:

• A credit recovery section is defined for students that need to make up credits. The Section is for “Credit Recovery” and is defined in the SIS and scheduled for an assigned Location and a ClassPeriod in the Bell Schedule with Section.SectionType equal to “Attendance Only.” A teacher or proctor may be assigned to that section using the StaffSectionAssociation.
• Students are assigned to the “Credit Recovery” section at registration time using the StudentSectionAssociation.
• For those students assigned to the “Credit Recovery” Section, the needs of the students are assessed, and it is determined which courses need be studied, which students need those courses (a student may study more than one), and which teachers are assigned to cover those courses. A new instructional Section is defined for each of those courses and assigned the same ClassPeriod and Location; the Section.SectionType equal to “Credit Only”. The appropriate StudentSectionAssociation assigns specific students to specific instructional courses for credit recovery. The StaffSectionAssociation identifies which teachers are responsible for which instructional courses for credit recovery.
• In this variant, daily section attendance is only taken for the “Credit Recovery” Section. A different variant may involve each teacher individually taking attendance for the courses they teach. Grades and credits are awarded for each instructional Section as usual.

Program Participation as Part of a Section

There are cases where students (or a subset of students) assigned to a section may also be participating in a defined program. For example, this may occur when special education students are also receiving services while learning in a section, or for CTE students that are getting on-the-job experience or exposure while also receiving classroom instruction.

These cases are handled as follows:

• Students are assigned to a Section using the StudentSectionAssociation as normal.
• If one or more students in a section are associated with program(s) the Section.Program collection references those Program(s).
• Each student participating in a program must also have an associated StudentProgramAssociation (or a specific StudentXxxProgramAssociation).  

Teaching and Learning Best Practices

The following best practices are organized by entity and association in the Teaching and Learning domain.

Course

The Course entity reflects the organization of instruction into courses for teaching by a school, whether that occurs in a classroom and/or virtually. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the Course attributes.

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
CourseCode (key) EducationOrganization (key) CourseTitle NumberOfParts CourseIdentificationCode.IdentificationCode CourseIdentificationCode.CourseIdentificationSystem	CourseLevelCharacteristic OfferedGradeLevel AcademicSubject CareerPathway	CourseDescription DateCourseAdopted CourseDefinedBy MinimumAvailableCredits MaximumAvailableCredits	CourseIdentificationCode.AssigningOrganizationIdentificationCode CourseIdentificationCode.CourseCatalogURL TimeRequiredForCompletion HighSchoolCourseRequirement CourseGPAApplicability CompetencyLevel LearningStandard MaxCompletionsForCredit

Keys in reading the table and following ones:

• Required attributes in Ed-Fi are hard constraints, meaning that a record or API payload will be rejected if the attribute is not present. These necessarily include key values.
• Must Have attributes are those whose intended use of the entity requires them to be used, even if, upon creation, they may not be present.
• Recommended attributes are those whose best practices encourage their use.
• As Needed attributes are those that should be used when appropriate, based upon policy.

Best practices for the use of Course and its attributes

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• In the school-year-specific situation, the set of Courses should reflect only those “active” courses that are available for being offered during that school year.
• The Course.CourseCode (key) should reflect the unique identifier established by the assigning (managing) Course.EducationOrganization. Additional identifiers, such as the SCED Code (School Codes for the Exchange of Data) should be included in the Course.CourseIdentificationCode collection.
• All CTE (Career and Technical Education) courses should populate the
• Course.CareerPathway attribute.

CourseOffering

The CourseOffering entity represents the course catalog of planned courses to be offered at a school for the session. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the CourseOffering attributes.

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
LocalCourseCode (key) School (key) Session (key) Course	LocalCourseTitle	CourseLevelCharacteristic OfferedGradeLevel	InstructionalTimePlanned CurriculumUsed

Best practices for the use of CourseOffering and its attributes

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• CourseOffering.CourseLevelCharacteristic collection should be populated if it differs from the CourseLevelCharacteristics identified at the Course level. For clarity, the attribute may be populated in all cases.
• CourseOffering.OfferedGradeLevel collection should be populated if it differs from the OfferedGradeLevels identified at the Course level. For clarity, the attribute may be populated in all cases.

Location

The Location entity represents the space, physical or virtual, where students gather for a particular Section. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the Location attributes.

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
School (key) ClassroomIdentificationCode (key)			MaximumNumberOfSeats OptimalNumberOfSeats

Best practices for the use of CourseOffering and its attributes

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• If used for a physical classroom location for a section, the Location should provide a unique ClassroomIdentificationCode within a school, indicating, for example, the building and room number. Normally, this would match the classroom location provided to students in their schedule.
• If used for an online or virtual course section, the Location should provide a unique ClassroomIdentificationCode, such as the web domain or the URL for the online section.

Section

The Section entity represents the delivery of a course offering in a setting (classroom, virtual, or hybrid), to one or more students, typically at a given period of time. Multiple Sections may be defined for a single CourseOffering at a School. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the Section attributes.

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
SectionIdentifier (key) CourseOffering (key)	SequenceOfCourse AvailableCredits ClassPeriod Program	SectionName EducationalEnvironment MediumOfInstruction PopulationServed CourseLevelCharacteristic OfferedGradeLevel	SectionType SectionCharacteristic InstructionLanguage LocationSchool Location OfficialAttendancePeriod

Best practices for the use of Section and its attributes

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• The Section.SectionIdentifier is the unique identifier for the section assigned within the Student Information System (SIS).
• The Section.Program collection is populated with the program reference(s) to which one or more students may be assigned in association with the section. Individual students may or may not participate in specific program(s).
• Section.CourseLevelCharacteristic collection should be populated if it differs from the CourseLevelCharacteristics identified at the CourseOffering level (or at the Course level). For clarity, the attribute may be populated in all cases.
• Section.OfferedGradeLevel collection should only populated if it differs from the OfferedGradeLevels identified at the CourseOffering level (or at the Course level). For clarity, the attribute may be populated in all cases.

StaffSectionAssociation

The StaffSectionAssociation indicates the Section to which a staff member(s), typically a teacher(s) or supporting staff, is assigned. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the StaffSectionAssociation attributes.

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
Staff (key) Section (key) ClassroomPosition BeginDate (key)	EndDate	HighlyQualifiedTeacher PercentageContribution	TeacherStudentDataLinkExclusion

Best practices for the use of StaffSectionAssociation and its attributes

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• A Staff member with a StaffSectionAssociation must have a StaffSchoolAssociation for the same school as the section is being offered.
• A StaffSectionAssociation is created for each staff assignment to a Section, including the teacher of record and all supporting staff.
• Minimally, one StaffSectionAssociation is created for each assigned Staff member per Section during a Session.
• At any point in time, a staff member should have no more than one active StaffStaffAssociation for a single Section.
• Staff assigned via a StaffSectionAssociation that is also responsible for students’ participation in a Program must also have a corresponding StaffProgramAssociation.

StudentSectionAssociation

The StudentSectionAssociation indicates the Section into which students are assigned to receive instruction. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the StudentSectionAssociation attributes.

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
Student (key) Section (key) BeginDate (key)	EndDate AttemptStatus Program	RepeatIdentifier	HomeroomIndicator TeacherStudentDataLinkExclusion

Best practices for the use of StudentSectionAssociation and its attributes

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• A Student with a StudentSectionAssociation must have a StudentSchoolAssociation for the same School where the Section is being offered, reflecting either a primary or secondary enrollment.
• The period (defined by the BeginDate and EndDate) specified in the StudentSectionAssociation must be contained within the period (defined by the BeginDate and EndDate) specified in the associated StudentSchoolAssociation.
• A StudentSectionAssociation is created for each student assignment to a Section during a session.
• The EndDate of a StudentSectionAssociation must be equal or after the BeginDate.
• When students complete a section at the end of the session, the StudentSectionAssociation.EndDate must be written to reflect the Session.EndDate.
• A Program identified in the StudentSectionAssociation that the student is participating in the context of the Section must also have a corresponding StudentProgramAssociation (SPA or SXPA).