March 27, 2026

When Learning Stalls—Shift Your Teaching Stance

Most of us are familiar with the teaching stance popularly known as the warm demander, the educator who holds high expectations while communicating high levels of warmth and care. This approach is particularly effective because it helps students feel a sense of belonging while also holding them to high standards for success.

Yet, while the stance of a warm demander can yield positive learning results for many students in many circumstances, it is not a panacea. Some students may be less focused on supportive relationships, and others do not necessarily need high levels of accountability to be successful. There are times when students need to be challenged, coached, or stimulated to lift their levels of engagement and learning. Consequently, they may be more responsive to a different approach than the one employed by warm demanding.

Occasionally, we can also feel as though our teaching is stalling, our students are not responding, and we are struggling. We may be facing the need to change our teaching stance. When this happens, we need options. Let’s consider four additional teaching stances beyond “warm demander” from which we might choose and when they might be most effective:

Learning coach: This stance offers high support and high productivity. The focus is on the importance of practicing to develop skills, normalizing struggle, using feedback, and monitoring and marking progress. This approach works best when students need to believe success is possible and identify a path to reach it.

Academic organizer: This stance features high expectations accompanied by high levels of structure and consistency. The approach features predictability, clarity, and consistent routines, and it offers scaffolding, checkpoints, and gradual release of responsibility. It works best when students need organization and increased self-regulation, would benefit from structure, and need focus.

Credible consultant: This approach maintains high standards but also offers high confidence in students’ abilities to learn. This stance focuses on providing clarity, structure, and expertise. Students respond best to this approach when they are seeking clear guidance, content coherence, and depth of expertise to find success. Students want clear expectations, an absence of distractions, and confidence that their teacher possesses deep knowledge and wisdom.

Cognitive stimulator: This approach, like the others, features high expectations, but those expectations are accompanied by a high level of challenge. The focus is on finding and presenting intellectual and skill challenges that attract students’ interest, sense of possibility, and self-competition. This stance works best when students are working below potential, are energized by ideas, and seek intellectual respect.

Considerations for deciding which stance to take:

We may be more comfortable with some stances than others, but our students’ needs and interests should drive the stance we choose.
We can shift among teaching stances during lessons as conditions and student needs emerge and shift. They are meant to be circumstance-dependent!
We may choose one teaching stance with some students and a different one with others.
We may not be certain of the teaching stance to take. When that is the case, we can stop and ask ourselves what we are seeing and hearing—compliance, confusion, disengagement, avoidance, or something else. Once we understand the behavior, we can choose the best response.

What is most important is that we start with what students need and what will stimulate the learning behavior that is most likely to lead to success. The correct choice of teaching stance offers the best opportunity for teaching and learning success.

Of course, the list of teaching stances discussed here is not exhaustive. What other stances have you found to be useful? How do they contribute to developing effective learning habits and academic success?