-
The Primacy of Self-Discovery: Learning happens best with emotion, challenge and the requisite support.
-
The Having of Wonderful Ideas: Teaching in Expeditionary Learning schools fosters curiosity about the world.
-
The Responsibility for Learning: Learning is both a personal process of discovery and a social activity.
-
Empathy and Caring: Learning is fostered best in communities where students' and teachers' ideas are respected and where there is mutual trust.
-
Success and Failure: All students need to be successful if they are to build the confidence and capacity to take risks and meet increasingly difficult challenges.
-
Collaboration and Competition: Individual development and group development are integrated so that the value of friendship, trust, and group action is clear.
-
Diversity and Inclusion: Both diversity and inclusion increase the richness of ideas, creative power, problem-solving ability, and respect for others.
-
The Natural World: A direct and respectful relationship with the natural world, which refreshes the human spirit and teaches the important ideas of recurring cycles and cause and effect.
-
Solitude and Reflection: Students and teachers need time alone to explore their own thoughts, make their own connections, and create their own ideas.
-
Service and Compassion: Students and teachers are strengthened through acts of consequential service to others.