Good practice in contextualized learning shares common characteristics with other education settings.

Good practice is based on:

1. High expectations of student achievement;
   
2. Development and utilization of authentic methods of assessment;
   
3. Demanding courses of study;
   
4. Providing abundant and varied materials to read and discuss;
   
5. Promotion of new forms of student activity in and out of the classroom;
   
6. Re-examination of the classroom environment because contextualized learning is embedded in a genuine context rather than the decontextualized structure of traditional environments.

1. Historic lack of connection between academic and vocational instructors;
2. Widespread pattern of part-time employment for adult educators, which prevents instructors from spending the required time outside of the classroom that is necessary to implement contextualized learning models.
3. Impact of enrollment mandates. Pressures to keep enrollment numbers high can lead to frequent intakes and placement of new students into existing classes. Teacher is seldom able to develop sustained coverage of a topic if new students do not have the background information.
4. "Individualized" instruction perpetuates a confusion between individual attention and individual instruction.
   • Individual attention: each learner’s learning is idiosyncratic.
   • Individual instruction: each learner will travel the same path at different speeds.