Professional Learning
RESEARCH BECOMES USEFUL WHEN IT CHANGES HOW WE UNDERSTAND LEARNING -AND HOW WE DESIGN FOR IT
LAJAM’s professional learning translates research from cognitive science, literacy, bilingual education, and neurodiversity into frameworks educators and educational leaders can use to examine and strengthen instructional systems.
OUR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING PATHWAYS
The Reading Brain
Understanding reading as a cognitive, linguistic, and neurodevelopmental process.
Examine the neural and cognitive systems involved in learning to read.
Understand how language and writing systems influence reading development.
Explore how bilingual experience shapes the development and organization of literacy.
Analyze reading difficulty through the interaction of learner variability, language, cognition, and instruction.
Translate knowledge of the reading brain into more informed instructional decisions.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The Master Classroom
Understanding the classroom is an integrated human system.
Examine the classroom as an interconnected learning system.
Distinguish teaching from learning and examine the shared responsibilities that shape both processes.
Analyze how cognition, emotion, relationships, environment, and instructional design interact to influence learning.
Recognize how learner variability challenges assumptions about the "average" classroom and requires intentional educational design.
Design classroom systems that promote participation, self-regulation, independence, and meaningful learning.
Integrate instruction, classroom culture, and learner development into one coherent educational framework.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The Architecture of Learning
Understanding the conditions that allow learning to occur.
Examine learning through the interaction of attention, memory, prior knowledge, cognitive load, emotion, and executive function.
Distinguish conditions that support task completion from those that support durable learning.
Analyze how instructional design can increase or reduce cognitive demands.
Connect principles from cognitive science to instructional design decisions.
Design learning environments that make cognitive participation more accessible.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The Architecture of Biliteracy
Examining literacy as a system of interacting linguistic, cognitive, and instructional processes.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Examine how phonological, orthographic, morphological, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension processes interact.
Distinguish learning to decode from developing the broader architecture required for skilled reading.
Explore how language structure influences the development of literacy.
Analyze literacy difficulty through multiple interacting pathways.
Translate literacy research into coherent instructional design across diverse learners and language contexts.
INSIDE THE IDEAS
Short videos that introduce the research and frameworks behind our professional learning pathways
The Reading Brain
Exploring the neural and cognitive systems that support reading and how they shape instructional decisions.
Institute Overview
The Architecture of Learning Institute: Includes The Reading Brain, The Master Classroom and The Architecture of Biliteracy
The Master Classroom
From strategies to systems: designing classrooms where every component supports learning.
ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
LAJAM also develops professional learning around specific instructional challenges and organizational priorities.
These engagements can stand alone or be integrated into one of the four learning pathways above.
Bilingual Literacy & Multilingual Learners
Designing literacy instruction around the interaction of language, biliteracy development, transfer, and cognitive demand.
Neurodiversity & Inclusive Instruction
Understanding learner variability and designing instructional systems that provide access without reducing cognitive expectations.
From Professional Learning to Implementation
Moving beyond one-time training toward implementation cycles that include application, observation, feedback, refinement, and sustained instructional change.
Dyslexia in Spanish-Speaking Learners
Understanding dyslexia through the linguistic characteristics of Spanish, bilingual development, and evidence-informed instruction. Available for both classroom educators and educational specialists.
Professional learning can also be designed around a district or school’s specific instructional priorities.