Principle 12: Skill building can occur along multiple pathways.
The messy reality is there is no single pathway for building skills.
Note: Unconstrained Kids unpacks, translates, and integrates academic research and data about constrained and unconstrained skills for people that run, fund, and assist organizations that teach and serve kids. This post is part of a series that describes 14 key principles of skill building I identified from the Science of Learning and Development. (Especially Dynamic Skill Theory.) Like everything on this Substack, this post is a work-in-progress. I will make updates as needed. Citations are included at the end. Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome.
Last updated: June 4, 2025
Key Takeaway
Skill is the ability to think and act in an organized way in a specific context (Immordino-Yang and Fischer, 2010). Children develop skills along multiple pathways. The “constructive web” is a powerful metaphor for understanding the dynamic relationships that shape the pathways for children’s skill development. The strands in the web are jointly built by the learner (the “web builder”) and the support conditions that they receive for skill building. These support conditions are akin to the tree branches or corner of a wall that a spider might use to build a web (Fischer & Bidell, 2006).
The constructive web “highlights the opportunity for instructional and curricular designs that address these alternative pathways and, in so doing, channel student effort toward the pathway where individual progress will be greatest, therein optimizing developmental range and literacy [and math] development for all students” (Cantor et al., 2019).
“There are various routes to effective skill development for reading and math. The job of education is to provide support for children with different neuropsychological profiles to develop effective yet flexible skills. Children use whatever capacities they have to learn the most important skills they need. Although there is often a modal way of learning a specific skill, people can adapt their capacities to learn skills in diverse ways.” (Immordino-Yang and Fischer, 2010)
We’re accustomed to marking growth and development milestones in terms of month, years, and grade levels. Physical, social, and language milestones. Reading and math skill benchmarks. These markers are based upon the idea of a typical (or average) sequence of growth and development.
The messy reality is there is no single pathway for building skills. Multiple pathways are possible (Cantor et al., 2019).
Successful classroom performance often requires following a prescribed set of procedures. “Examples of such procedures include “borrowing” as an algorithm when subtracting, remembering rules of thumb like “when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking,” or learning to apply strategies such as visualization, prediction, and self-questioning as the solution for comprehension difficulties” (Snow, 2008).
Learning these procedures might be tremendously helpful for some children. But for others they could be a hindrance. Some children who are successful in math or reading use “tricks, reminders, and strategies” that differ from what is formally taught in the classroom (Snow, 2008). Fischer and colleagues found three developmental pathways for developing word-reading skills (Fischer & Bidell, 2006).
In mathematics, “derived strategies” can greatly differ from the prescribed procedures or algorithms in the classroom.1 These different approaches appear to represent less “traditional” skill pathways that are nonetheless effective. Moreover, such approaches in math appear to be associated with greater conceptual understanding of math principles than rote memorization of algorithms (Dowker, 2019).
Given that children's skill development is both uneven and stable at the same time (See Principle 11), it naturally follows that the sequence of skill development – the developmental pathways of individual skills and groups of skills – can and does vary by child as well.
“[V]ery few developmental challenges can be solved in only one way. For many challenges, there is an “easy way,” the way that the majority of learners adopt and that teachers might usefully offer to their students, but also alternative routes to the same end. Most children start to talk by babbling, then producing single words, and then gradually increasing the length and complexity of their utterances. But some never babble, some start with longer, only partially segmented utterances, and some rely on gesture for a long period before moving to speech. Most children crawl, then “cruise” by walking upright with support, and then walk independently. But some scoot instead of crawling; others prefer to be upright from a very early age and never either scoot or crawl before walking. As far as we can tell, the linguistic and locomotive skills of the “easy route” groups end up indistinguishable from those of the ones who have taken alternative paths.” (Snow, 2008)
Developmental psychologists describe these varied pathways as a “constructive web.” The strands in the web are jointly built by the learner (the “web builder”) and the support conditions that they receive for skill building. These support conditions are akin to the tree branches or corner of a wall that a spider might use to build a web (Fischer & Bidell, 2006).
The web strands are fragile and tentative at first. They need support from surrounding strands. With practice and experience, the strands can become a stable part of the web. Unlike spiders, however, humans build their webs of skills by interacting with other people. (See Principle 8.)
“Within the web, strands represent pathways along which a child develops simultaneously, with pathways demonstrating responsiveness to emotion and support, the capacity for resilience, and variability in sequence, synchrony, and developmental range.” (Cantor et al., 2019)
The existence of multiple pathways for learning and development suggests powerful opportunities to discover and support children’s journeys along their unique pathways. In formal learning settings, a key challenge will be to create individualized support in the context of standardized instruction and assessment (Snow, 2008; Immordino-Yang, 2008; Christoff, 2008).
This could be one place where organizations outside of the classroom (out-of-school, family support, informal learning) can leverage their greater flexibility to meet individual student needs. This could also help support children’s ability to develop broader skill sets for critical thinking and problem solving (Christoff, 2008). Technology such as artificial intelligence might be helpful if it could help children discover and follow the most productive developmental pathways that work for them.
But wait, there’s more
Works Cited
Cantor, P., Osher, D., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2019). Malleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children learn and develop in context. Applied Developmental Science, 23(4), 307–337.
Christoff, K. (2008). Applying neuroscientific findings to education: The good, the tough, and the hopeful. Mind, Brain, and Education, 2(2), 55–58.
Dowker, A. (2019). Individual differences in arithmetic: Implications for psychology, neuroscience and education. Routledge.
Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic development of action and thought. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 313–399). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2008). The smoke around mirror neurons: Goals as sociocultural and emotional organizers of perception and action in learning. Mind, Brain, and Education, 2(2), 67–73.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Fischer, K. W. (2010). Neuroscience bases of learning. In V. G. Aukrust (Ed.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd Edition, pp. 310–316). Elsevier.
Snow, C. E. (2008). Varied developmental trajectories: Lessons for educators. Mind, Brain, and Education, 2(2), 59–61.
See Chapter 6 in Dowker (2019) for a detailed discussion about derived math strategies.