Crafting Educational Tools: A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Resources

Every lesson a teacher delivers is shaped not just by what they know, but by the tools they choose to teach with. Learning resources – from textbooks and charts to locally made models and digital content – are the building blocks of effective teaching. Selecting and developing the right materials is one of the most consequential decisions a teacher makes. When done thoughtfully, it can transform a routine lesson into a meaningful learning experience. When done carelessly, even the best curriculum can fall flat.

What are learning resources? 🔗

Learning resources is a broad term covering all materials and tools that teachers and students use to achieve specific learning objectives. These range from printed and digital texts, primary sources, workbooks, and multimedia content to classroom assessments, open educational resources, and teacher-created materials. They also extend beyond physical objects – human resources such as guest speakers, community experts, or local professionals are equally valid learning tools. A science teacher, for example, might invite a physician to speak about public health just as meaningfully as they might use a diagram from a textbook.

It is useful to distinguish between teaching and learning materials – specific items like textbooks, maps, flashcards, and lab equipment – and the broader category of teaching and learning resources, which includes people and community environments as well. Both play distinct but complementary roles in classroom instruction.

Why the selection of learning resources matters 🔗

The resources a teacher selects directly shape how students engage with content and how well they achieve learning outcomes. Decades of research confirm that high-quality instructional materials – those with coherent lesson sequences, rigorous content, and evidence-based instructional strategies – significantly improve student outcomes. The converse is also true: poor-quality or misaligned resources can undermine even a skilled teacher’s efforts.

Expanding access to high-quality, standards-aligned materials can especially benefit students from historically underserved communities, helping close persistent learning gaps. This makes material selection not just a pedagogical decision, but an equity decision.

Key criteria for selecting learning resources 🔗

Choosing resources is not a matter of picking whatever is available. It requires deliberate evaluation against clear criteria. Effective selection starts with alignment – materials must match your learning objectives, course structure, and teaching approach. Beyond alignment, the following factors are essential:

Curriculum alignment and content accuracy 🔗

The material must directly support the specific outcomes outlined in the curriculum. Content should be accurate, up to date, and appropriate for the students’ grade level and developmental stage. Selection decisions should be grounded in evidence about how likely students are to learn effectively through the use of those materials, not just on surface-level appeal or publisher reputation.

Relevance to students’ context 🔗

Resources are far more effective when students can connect them to their own lives, communities, and cultures. Educators in Duval County, Florida, for instance, found that incorporating local history into African American studies not only deepened students’ understanding but also boosted engagement and improved learning outcomes. Similarly, a New York school district that reviewed its materials for cultural relevance found that standard curriculum consistently failed to reflect its predominantly student-of-color community – prompting a full materials overhaul. Relevance is not optional; it is central to student motivation and comprehension.

Inclusivity and accessibility 🔗

A resource is only effective if every student can access it. Inclusive materials must be available in multiple formats – such as braille, large print, sign language, and audiobooks – and should use a mix of text, supporting graphics, and pictures to serve learners with different needs. The principle of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which underpins accessible material design, calls for presenting content and facilitating expression in a variety of formats to accommodate the diversity of learners within any classroom.

Language is also a dimension of accessibility. Children are more likely to enroll in and succeed at school when instructed in their mother tongue, and parents are more likely to engage with their children’s learning when materials are in a language they understand. This is especially relevant in multilingual classrooms and developing-country contexts where first-language literacy materials remain scarce.

Readability and visibility 🔗

All selected materials should be clearly readable and visible for all learners. Resources should be large enough for visibility and use simple, accessible language that matches learners’ reading levels. Using plain language ensures that materials are equitable for students with varying levels of background knowledge and ability.

Cost and local availability 🔗

Practical constraints matter. Locally available resources are strongly recommended because they are simpler to repair or replace, and they give learning direct meaning since students are already familiar with them. When budgets are tight, teachers can also explore Open Educational Resources (OER) – freely available, openly licensed materials that can be used, adapted, and redistributed. Research shows that 93% of students using OER perform as well or better than those using traditional commercial materials, making them a credible and cost-effective option for most classrooms.

Developing your own learning resources 🔗

Selecting resources from existing materials is only one side of the equation. Teachers also have the capacity – and often the need – to develop their own. Teacher-developed materials can be directly tailored to students’ specific needs, reflect local content and issues, and be revised as circumstances change – advantages that commercial textbooks simply cannot match.

Improvisation with local materials 🔗

Teachers can use locally available objects – seeds, plants, papers, empty containers, and everyday household items – to create teaching aids that are both practical and meaningful. This kind of improvisation does more than solve a resource shortage. It models creativity for students and grounds abstract concepts in familiar, tangible experience. Involving students in making these materials has an added benefit: learners enjoy seeing classroom walls covered by materials they helped create, which deepens ownership and engagement.

Adapting existing materials 🔗

Teachers rarely have to start from scratch. Adapting existing textbooks and materials to better fit their students is a recognized and valuable professional skill. This can involve deleting content that is not age-appropriate or culturally relevant, rewriting sections to reflect students’ interests, simplifying instructions, or reordering content to match the local curriculum sequence. A middle school, for example, might supplement a standard English textbook with local primary sources and trade books, while a biology teacher might choose local species to illustrate principles of natural selection rather than defaulting to the textbook’s examples. The goal is not textbook fidelity – it is student learning.

The role of teacher agency 🔗

Teacher agency in resource selection and development is not just a nice idea – it is backed by research. The concept of “pedagogical bricolage” describes how teachers use their professional agency to creatively combine and adapt various resources to meet their students’ needs – a process that evolves over a teaching career. Early-career teachers tend to experiment more broadly with adaptation, while experienced educators make targeted, strategic refinements. In both cases, the teacher is the primary architect of the learning environment, not a passive executor of prescribed materials.

Teacher-created content allows educators to tailor lessons to the unique needs of their students, ensuring greater engagement and deeper understanding, while addressing specific learning objectives and incorporating classroom dynamics. When teachers share these materials within Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), the quality improves further through peer feedback and collaborative refinement.

Balancing textbooks with supplementary resources 🔗

Textbooks remain the backbone of most classroom curricula, and there is good reason for that. Experienced teachers use textbooks flexibly as a teaching resource – moving back and forth between book-based input and teacher-initiated input, improvising based on learner responses, timing, and emerging difficulties. The same lesson taught from the same textbook becomes a different lesson each time, shaped by the teacher’s live decisions.

Supplementary resources – videos, community field visits, invited speakers, digital tools, and teacher-made aids – enrich what a textbook provides. High-quality instructional materials are most effective when paired with aligned professional learning; likewise, supplementary resources are most effective when they are purposefully chosen to fill specific gaps in coverage, relevance, or student engagement rather than added arbitrarily.

Practical steps for teachers 🔗

Putting all of this into practice involves a straightforward but deliberate process. Before selecting or developing any resource, teachers should ask: Does this material align with the learning objective? Is it accessible to all students in this class? Does it reflect the students’ cultural and linguistic context? Is it readable and age-appropriate? Is it cost-effective and sustainable?

Instructional materials are most appropriately selected on the basis of their relationship to clearly defined educational objectives, with input from relevant teaching staff and subject specialists. Building a personal resource library – a curated collection of lesson materials, external resources, and teaching ideas organized by topic and format – helps teachers systematize this process and avoid starting from zero with each new unit.

What do you think? When you think about the resources currently used in your classroom, how well do they reflect the cultural backgrounds and lived experiences of your students? And if you were to develop one original teaching resource for an upcoming lesson, what local material, person, or community context would you draw on – and why?

References

1. https://learningdesign.hawaiipublicschools.org/school-design/learning-materials
2. https://www.doe.mass.edu/instruction/impd/default.html
3. https://www.doe.mass.edu/instruction/impd/
4. https://www.cmich.edu/offices-departments/curriculum-instructional-support/select-or-develop-materials-and-tools/selecting-instructional-materials
5. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/9607/chapter/5
6. https://www.edelements.com/comprehensive-hqim-curriculum-guide
7. https://www.edu-links.org/learning/importance-accessible-learning-materials
8. https://accessibledigitallearning.org/resource/making-lessons-accessible-to-all-learners/
9. https://www.wvi.org/education-and-life-skills/creating-teaching-and-learning-materials
10. https://elearning.reb.rw/course/view.php?id=601&section=7
11. https://dcal.dartmouth.edu/resources/teaching-methods/creating-accessible-materials
12. https://sparcopen.org/open-education/
13. https://professorjackrichards.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-using-instructional-materials-in-teaching-esl/
14. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/managing-resources/articles/should-you-be-developing-your-own
15. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2025.1577721/full
16. https://educationalvoice.co.uk/teacher-created-content/
17. https://www.oasd.k12.wi.us/cms_files/resources/Instructional_Materials_Rules_Exhibit_361-1_Clean_Copy_REVISION_1.pdf