The Instructional Core and 4MAT

Richard Elmore in his long standing career, made significant contributions to the field of education and provides practical guidelines for improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools.

In his work with Instructional Rounds, Elmore defines an Instructional Core as crucial, to creating high impact instruction.  And while 4MAT and the Instructional Core come from different traditions,  they connect deeply because both focus on the interdependence of teacher, student, and content — and both emphasize that what students actually do is the real driver of learning. 

Here is a description of The Instructional Core and how it relates to the 4MAT Model of Teaching and Learning. 

The Instructional Core, as defined by Richard Elmore,  is composed of a  teacher and student in the presence of content. The relationship between these
three elements, and not the the qualities of any one element, determines the nature of instructional practice.  

At the heart of this trinity is the Instructional Task: what students are being asked to do in the classroom.  Elmore is quick to qualify this by saying that the Instructional Task is what students are actually doing, not what teachers think they’re being asked to do or what the curriculum says they’re doing. If a student in Advanced English class is asked to memorize a list of literary terms, that Instructional Task is memorization: the lowest level of cognition on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.  It doesn’t matter that the course is “Advanced;” the thinking skills required aren’t.

Elmore says there are only three ways to improve student learning at scale — in other words, more than just one or two classrooms:

• Increase the teacher’s instructional knowledge and skill (capacity)

• Increase the level of complexity of the content students must learn

• Change the role of the student in the instructional process

Everything else in the school or district is important only insofar as it affects the core.  A great example of this is the presence of technology.  Technology has the potential to affect the core, and it can certainly seem cutting edge, but if the tech only substitutes for static resources it can’t really affect the core. Students doing worksheets on an iPad are still doing worksheets. 

Here’s how the 4MAT Model compares to the Instructional Core. 

1. Teacher Knowledge and Skill

Elmore: One of the only three ways to improve learning is by increasing teacher capacity — their instructional knowledge and skill.

4MAT: The model equips teachers with a structured cycle that intentionally varies instructional approaches to engage all learning styles (Why? What? How? If?). By using the full 4MAT cycle, teachers expand their instructional repertoire and move beyond relying on a single teaching style.

Connection: 4MAT is a direct method for building teacher capacity by giving them a framework to design more engaging and cognitively complex tasks.

2. Content Complexity

Elmore: Learning improves when the level of content is raised, provided it is taught effectively and made accessible to students.

4MAT: Each phase of the cycle requires students to engage with content in progressively deeper ways:

Reflecting on personal meaning (Why?)

Gaining conceptual knowledge (What?)

Applying knowledge in practice (How?)

Transferring learning to new contexts (If?)

Connection: 4MAT ensures that students encounter content not just at surface levels (memorization) but through multiple cognitive pathways that demand higher-order thinking.

3. Student Role in the Learning Process

Elmore: True improvement requires changing the role of the student — moving them from passive recipients to active participants in constructing meaning.

4MAT: The model is designed to engage students experientially and cognitively. By structuring learning around the cycle, students take on multiple roles: reflective thinker, conceptual learner, active experimenter, and creative problem solver.

Connection: 4MAT operationalizes the shift in student role that Elmore insists is necessary. Students aren’t just listening; they’re actively making meaning, practicing skills, and extending learning.

4. The Instructional Task

Elmore: The “Instructional Task” is what students are actually doing—not what the curriculum says. If the task is low-level (like memorization), learning remains shallow.

4MAT: Every phase of the cycle is anchored in a purposeful task that aligns with how people learn naturally. Tasks are designed to move beyond recall and push students toward analysis, application, and transfer.

Connection: 4MAT helps teachers design higher-level instructional tasks that embody Elmore’s principle: improving learning requires tasks that demand more of students cognitively and experientially.

5. Systemic Improvement

Elmore: Any improvement effort that doesn’t affect the Core (teacher, student, content) is irrelevant.

4MAT: Provides a practical design tool that touches all three elements of the Core at once as it: 

1. Builds teacher skill (capacity),

2. Raises content engagement and rigor,

3. Reshapes the student’s role from passive to active.

Connection: 4MAT is a concrete way to make the kind of systemic instructional improvement Elmore calls for.

Bottom Line:
Elmore gives us the theory of the Instructional Core — learning improves only when teacher capacity, content complexity, and student role are strengthened together.

4MAT gives us the practice — a model for designing instruction that simultaneously builds teacher skill, increases content rigor, and transforms student engagement.

The key benefit of 4MAT is it provides an instructional engine or teaching methodology for guiding teachers in how to teach content, that cultivates student learning and results in much higher levels of student involvement.

Request more information on 4MAT Training to gain to become skilled at creating more dynamic and engaging learning that maximizes student engagement.