Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm · a working guide

The IPP, your way

There is no single right way to teach with the paradigm — and that is the point. Pick the door that fits how you already think, decide who’s doing the work, then choose how far to take it. Everything below is an option, not a mandate.

“No pedagogical paradigm can claim to hold a monopoly on good teaching… It is useful precisely because its ‘method’ teaches that there is no single method.” — The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: A Contemporary Synthesis, AJCU, 2024

The paradigm, once, in order

Five movements. They’re recursive — the whole arc can run in ten minutes or across a whole unit. Named in the 1993 Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach and restated for secondary schools by Korth:

1 · Context

What do they already know, feel, care about? You can’t predict it — so you have to find out.

2 · Experience

They meet the material — mind, heart, and senses, not just information.

3 · Reflection

They make meaning of it. The load-bearing stage — and the one most often skipped.

4 · Action

The meaning changes what they do. Learning is shown, not stored.

5 · Evaluation

Did they actually learn it? Feedback launches the next turn of the cycle.

Two doors in

The same paradigm reaches teaching two different ways. Neither is more Ignatian. Most of us use both — and each one covers the other’s blind spot.

Door 1 · Curricular — build it in

You put the paradigm into the design — the course, the unit, the module, the assignment. It’s deliberate, sequenced, and it leaves an artifact a colleague can review.

Several curricular approaches — pick your grain size:

Course architecture — the shape of the whole course
Unit design — one unit as a full arc
Module sequencing — the order of items in Canvas
Assignment & assessment design — what a student does and shows

Failure mode: the boxes get filled because the template has boxes. Reflection becomes a discussion post nobody reads.

Door 2 · Pedagogical — run it live

You run the paradigm in the moment: read the room, set something in front of them, make them stop and make sense of it, check. It’s a disposition, not a document — unplannable, and it can run several times in one class.

What it looks like:

Adjusting the material to the students in front of you — not the reverse
Pausing to ask “so what does that mean?” before moving on
Following a student’s question into a better lesson than you planned

Failure mode: it’s unfalsifiable. Everyone can say “I already do this” — and nothing changes.

Why both: the curricular door gives the pedagogy something to be accountable to; the pedagogical door keeps the design from hardening into a five-box form. If you only have time for one, start where you already think — for most of us here, that’s the curricular door.

Who’s the focus — teacher, student, or both?

A quiet fork that changes what a stage is. Korth calls the IPP “a collaborative process between and among faculty and students,” and the 2024 synthesis has both teacher and student as “pilgrims.” So the honest answer is both — but you still choose, stage by stage, who performs it.

Teacher-run

You perform the stage: you set the context, you model the reflection, you judge the evidence. Right for new material and young learners.

Student-run

Students perform the stage — and learn it by doing. They surface their own context, run their own reflection, choose their evidence. The paradigm handed over.

Both · accompaniment

The Ignatian default: the student does the interior work; you accompany — “bring out the best in the other.” You design the space; they make the meaning.

One caution: student-run Context needs a stated destination. Thirty inventories nobody reads is worse than not asking — it tells students their context doesn’t matter.

How far — the four altitudes

The rungs are depth of intent, not which feature. The same move sits at a higher altitude when the intent behind it deepens. Find your row, read across for the climb.

Approach	Foundations	Enhance	Deepen	Innovate
Course architecture (curricular)	Modules published and in a consistent order; a student can find everything.	Same shape every unit; the homepage routes students in.	The sequence carries the pedagogy — units ordered to the IPP arc; prerequisites enforce it.	The path adapts to the student — Mastery Paths, student-owned modules, ePortfolios.
Unit design (curricular)	Each unit has an overview (Context), material (Experience), a check (Evaluation).	A reflection step is built in, not optional; the unit names its purpose.	The unit aims at a stated insight; reflection is a real, designed question.	Students co-design part of the unit or choose their own evidence.
Assignment & assessment (curricular)	Each assessment states what it’s really measuring; one clear format.	More than one way to show the same understanding.	Results feed re-teach; students reflect on them (exam wrapper); construct held constant across formats.	Students grade an AI output, build the rubric, or argue the standard.
Reflection (curricular)	Personal reflection once per unit.	A designed question — debatable, defensible, deep-diveable.	Conceptual & metacognitive prompts, not just personal; the insight is a learning outcome.	Students formulate their own reflection questions; peer reflection.
In the moment (pedagogical)	You read the room before you start; you check for understanding.	You pause mid-class to make them make sense of something.	You adjust the material to the students in front of you — not the reverse.	The class can redirect the lesson; a student’s question reshapes it.

Most of us sit at different altitudes on different rows — and that’s the honest picture, not a failing. Move one row up one rung this semester.

Where to go next

Designing Reflection →

The three levels, and how to write a prompt worth answering.

Design Your Canvas →

Put a unit into IPP shape, alone or with your level.

Module Setup →

Sequence the modules so the order does the teaching.

Assess by Design →

Assessment that measures the thing you meant to measure.

From the August 2026 in-service

Large group on 13 August, breakouts on 14 August, both days in one deck. What follows is the material from that session, kept here so the page and the in-service say the same thing.

Open the session deck → Opens in SharePoint with your RJ account.

Context isn’t the first step. It’s the room.

The diagram the session used doesn’t draw the paradigm as a five-item list. Context is the outer circle — everything else happens inside it — and Reflection sits at the centre, touching Experience, Action and Evaluation alike. Worth holding onto if you’ve been treating Context as something you get past in the first week.

CONTEXT — who is in the room, what they carry in, what is going on around them

Experience

something happens

Action

they do something with it

Evaluation

we find out what it did

Reflection — the centre, not the last step. It touches all three.

Our rendering of the structure shown in the session; the original is from the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy. It makes a point the linear order can’t: the paradigm is not a fixed sequence or template. When you plan, you’ll still move Context → Experience → Reflection → Action → Evaluation. When you judge whether a unit was Ignatian, ask instead whether Context held the whole thing and whether Reflection ran through it.

Eight questions that set Context

From the breakouts. Take one unit — your first, or the one that reliably goes sideways — and answer these about the actual students on your actual roster. You aren’t filling in a form; you’re deciding what you need to find out.

Prior knowledge

What do the students already know?
How did the previous unit go?
What misunderstandings might students have?

The third is the sharpest. A wrong answer you predicted is a teachable moment; one that surprises you is a unit you rebuild mid-flight.

Current mood

How are the students feeling these days?
Are there ongoing or upcoming events that might influence how they’re feeling?
How might worries, anxieties or stresses affect their learning?

The session asked a harder version out loud: what priority do you actually assign to mood? Emotion and cognition don’t run on separate tracks.

Interests & learning profiles

What might catch their interest regarding this topic?
What outside interests and gifts do they bring to the class?

Learning profile means how a student prefers to learn and learns best — preferences and diagnosed learning differences. “Attaching important content to student interests builds bridges between the student and critical knowledge, understanding, and skills.” (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011)

Where the answers live. Rosters, grade level, gender breakdown and Learning Services students are in MyRJ. Prior-knowledge answers usually come from a departmental conversation rather than a document. Mood and interests you have to ask for — which is the point.

“Pedagogy” here does not mean “in the classroom”

Lindsay’s point in the session, with the list the room generated. If you’ve ever taken the IPP for a lesson-plan format, this is the correction — lesson planning is one of nine.

Student and adult faith formation

The Spiritual Exercises

Retreat leadership

Lesson planning & course design

Contemplation and discernment

School policy

Our way of proceeding

College planning with families

The Ignatian Growth Cycle

Questions? Ask the people who ran the session

Ryan, Lindsay, and Jamie led the August 2026 in-service on setting Context, and said plainly at the end: don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or want more conversation. Each link opens an email with the subject already filled in.

Ryan Williamson

The paradigm itself — what the IPP is, why it isn’t a fixed sequence, and where it already operates across RJ.

Email Ryan →

Lindsay Cummings

Go and Atienza’s Learning by Refraction, and using the IPP as the spine of an IGC project — an offer she made in the session.

Email Lindsay →

Jamie Dawkins

Context and empathy — reading student context, the examen from the session, and the teacher’s own context.

Email Jamie →

And for the Canvas side of it — building the IPP into module design, and into item banks and assessment — ask Jason Beyer. Email Jason →

Sources: Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach (ICAJE, 1993); S. Korth, “Precis of Ignatian Pedagogy” (Xavier University); The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: A Contemporary Synthesis (AJCU, 2024); J. Go & R. Atienza, Learning by Refraction (Ateneo de Manila, 2019). · RJ Educational Technology.