We’re excited to bring you the first episode of The Elements of Great Teaching podcast series. In each episode alongside Adam Kohlbeck we break down the elements of the Model for Great Teaching, from a learner’s perspective sharing insights and real-world applications to enhance classroom practice.

In this inaugural episode, Adam and I dive into Dimension 1: Understanding the Content, specifically focusing on Element 4: Knowledge of Student Thinking. We discuss why understanding students’ thought processes—their strategies, common misconceptions, and typical sticking points—is crucial for effective teaching. This knowledge helps teachers anticipate where students might struggle and enables them to provide more tailored support, leading to a deeper and more lasting grasp of the content.

By better understanding student thinking, educators can create learning experiences that resonate, ensuring students aren’t just memorising but truly comprehending the material.

Listen below to hear how mastering this element can transform your teaching and help students build a strong foundation for future learning.

Are you passionate about helping teachers grow and flourish? Are you rethinking your school’s performance management process to create a greater positive impact on both educators and learners? Recently, Professors Rob Coe and Stuart Kime, hosted an insightful ‘lampside chat’ webinar on this critical topic in schools.

In this webinar, they covered:

Understanding the Term:

• What exactly is ‘performance management’ in the school context?
• Find out research suggests about its impact on teachers and students.

Implementing Fair and Effective Systems:

• How can schools develop motivating performance management systems that align with regulation, are fair and constructive, and genuinely support teachers’ growth?
• Reflect on cost-effective ways of providing meaningful feedback to teachers.

 

The podcast version of this webinar is available below.

In this episode, EBE’s Director of Education, Stuart Kime hears from Helen and Mat from CoachED about the work they’ve done in their own school to help colleagues flourish in within the classroom and without.

From constructing a bespoke programme to thinking more widely about supporting colleagues other schools, Helen and Mat talk about their drive to place wellbeing at the heart of their work, and their enthusiasm for it is palpable!

If you’d like to contact Helen and Mat, you can contact them on [email protected].

Listen to the podcast below.

 

 

How can you facilitate school improvement at scale and across a Multi Academy Trust?

In this webinar, which is also available as a podcast, hosted by Professor Stuart Kime, we hear from a panel of Trust leaders who are:

• Facilitating school improvement across their Trusts
• Growing their Trusts in line with the DFE’s Trust Quality Descriptors
• Identifying strengths and measuring improvement across their Trusts

Thank you to Julie Deville (CEO of Extol Trust), Kirsty McMurdo (Head of Teaching and Learning at Wonder Learning Partnership) and Embrace Multi Academy Trust for joining our panel!

If you would like to discuss how you can facilitate school improvement across your Trust with the Great Teaching Toolkit, please contact us here!

The podcast version of this webinar is available below.

Professors Rob Coe and Stuart Kime, on the 11th of March, discussed the concepts of “routine expertise” and “adaptive expertise” in a webinar. This webinar, which is also available as a podcast, examined the essence of expertise in education and beyond, providing invaluable insights for educators working in any context.

Rob and Stuart discussed:

• Understanding what distinguishes routine expertise from adaptive expertise, and why both are crucial in different contexts.
• The implications of these concepts for professional development and classroom practice.

Professors Coe and Kime have years of research and practical experience between them. This is a rare opportunity to hear them in conversation, and to understand more about the nuances of expertise in teaching, and how to develop more of it!

The podcast version of this webinar is available below.

Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning, interviews Science teacher, co-founder of Carousel Learn and author Adam Boxer about retrieval practice in the classroom.

Understanding the role of memory in the learning process is essential for all educators. It is important for those planning and designing lessons to be aware of the limitations of working memory and recognise how regular retrieval practice can strengthen long-term memory. Retrieval practice involves recalling already-learned information from long-term memory to make that learned information easier and quicker to retrieve in the future.

In this episode:

• Adam Boxer explains why teachers should carefully consider the language used when discussing retrieval practice in the classroom, providing all learners with retrieval opportunities.
• Kate asks Adam how teachers can provide retrieval opportunities, other than a ‘Do Now’ or quizzing starter task. Adam explores the importance of regular retrieval practice and how retrieval opportunities can be promoted throughout a lesson and for homework.
• Adam talks about how Carousel Learning was developed and explains all the different features and tools the platform can provide for teachers. You can found out more about Carousel Learn here.
• Retrieval practice in the primary classroom is also explored.
• Finally, Kate and Adam explain the importance of explaining effective (and ineffective learning strategies) to students.

To enhance your use of retrieval practice you can access the Science of Learning Programme, as part of the Great Teaching Toolkit and download the eBook Retrieval Practice: Myths, Mutations and Mistakes. All of our podcasts can be found in our podcast archive, and we have a host of free eBooks, videos and webinars for you in our Resource Library.

In this episode, Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning, interviews Jane Miller and Finola Wilson, former teachers and school leaders and now running Impact Wales, about evidence-informed classroom practices and curriculum. This podcast focuses on the importance of schools embracing an evidence-based approach to curriculum design, teaching and learning.

• Jane and Finola provide an overview of their careers in education, including their transition from the classroom to launching Impact Wales to support schools across Wales and further afield.
• Finola discusses how she creates and shares research summaries and sketch notes for teachers.
• The importance of an promoting an evidence-informed culture across a school is discussed to help teachers make better informed decisions.
• We cover the challenges and barriers facing teachers and school leaders engaging with evidence.
• Jane and Finola offer advice for school leaders to consider when thinking about how they can do the best for their children.
• Kate asks about the Curriculum for Wales and the origins behind the curriculum design and reform. This includes discussion of the curriculum framework, pedagogical principles and implementation plan.
• Finally, we chat about their latest collaboration with Bruce Robertson as they are teaming up with Bruce to continue to promote evidence informed teaching and learning approaches.

You can follow Jane and Finola on Twitter here and find out more about their work with Impact Wales here.

 

All of our podcasts can be found in our podcast archive, and we have a host of free eBooks, videos and webinars for you in our Resource Library.

The Great Teaching Toolkit offers an evidence-based curriculum for teachers’ professional learning. It provides a common professional language and a shared structure for enabling Great Teaching. The Model for Great Teaching is a summary of the best available research evidence on the things teachers do, know and believe that has the biggest impact on student learning. The review serves to help teachers make better and informed decisions about what they can best do to improve the quality of their teaching. 

Great questioning in the classroom (and beyond) promotes deep thinking, helping students connect and elaborate on ideas.  Great questioning to assess thinking helps teachers plan and adapt their teaching to respond to what assessment tells them.  Teachers ask questions every lesson, every day – so it’s important to make sure that teachers and students are asking the right questions to move learning forward.

Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning, interviews teacher, senior leader and author Michael Chiles about questioning in the classroom – Dimension 4, Element 4.3 of the Model for Great Teaching.

In this episode:

• Michael explains why questioning hasn’t always received the attention and focus it deserves but why it should be a priority for all teachers and schools.
• Mini white boards and cold calling techniques are explored, as well as discussing the role of ‘hands up’ questioning strategies in the classroom.
• The purpose of questioning is explored.
• Michael offers advice about the design, use and implementation of multiple choice questions and how the data provided can be insightful and helpful for teachers.
• Question design and delivery is discussed, both written and oral.
• Kate asks Michael, how carefully should teachers plan the questions they ask in class.
• Finally, how can teachers support students to encourage reluctant learners to participate and ask questions in the lesson.

 

To enhance your use of questioning, look out for Michael’s book and check out the Great Teaching Toolkit Questioning course.

All of our podcasts, including our previous interview with Michael on feedback, can be found in our podcast archive, and we have a host of free eBooks, videos and webinars for you in our Resource Library.

Classroom management is a key component of great teaching. Great teachers manage the classroom to maximise opportunity to learn, and no model of great teaching could be complete without classroom management. Managing the behaviour and activities of a class of students is a huge part of what teachers do. 

Classroom management and culture is multifaceted. In this episode of the Evidence Based Education podcast, we explore just a few factors and ideas that can help teachers consider and manage behaviour in their classroom.  

In this episode: 

• Professor Rob Coe talks about the importance of classroom management for ‘maximising opportunity to learn’ – Dimension 3 of the Model for Great Teaching
• Dr Alicia Chodkiewicz suggests we move away from framing behaviour as good or bad
  
• David Didau reflects on social norms as an influencer of behaviour
  
• Tom Bennett on routines as building blocks of the classroom culture and how teachers explicitly teach routines, and the use of scripts to manage potentially disruptive incidents. 

The classroom management ideas and approaches explored in this podcast are a few of the many that feature in the Great Teaching Toolkit courses; the Behaviour and Culture Programme (for middle and senior Leaders) and Maximising Opportunity to Learn (for classroom teachers).  

All of our podcasts can be found in our podcast archive, and we have a host of free eBooks, videos and webinars for you in our Resource Library. 

This podcast is the fourth installment in our miniseries on teacher collaboration, in partnership with Dulwich College International. Over what has possibly been the most challenging year ever, we’ve followed the journey of teachers and leaders as they seek to enhance collaboration across their family of schools, against the backdrop of a global pandemic!

We started out in episode one by meeting collaborations leads, the people responsible for coordinating subject and specialist groups.  We talked to them about their aims and explored the idea of problem identification as mechanism to kickstart a collaboration project.

Then, in episode two, John Hattie and Dylan William gave quite different perspectives on the idea of collective teacher efficacy and collaboration more broadly.

In episode three we heard from Dr. Jenni Donohoo and Cat Scutt on the culture and conditions of effective collaboration.

Finally, in this episode, we return to collaboration leads to find out what they got up to. Hear about the challenges, the successes and their advice for building and running a collaboration group.

 

All of our podcasts can be found in our podcast archive, and we have a host of free eBooks, videos and webinars for you in our Resource Library.

A year ago, we published the Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review (GTT:ER). The year since then has been extraordinary in many ways, many of them negative. However, one very positive and exciting thing that has been quietly happening this year here at EBE is the development of the tools and courses that will comprise the first part of the wider Great Teaching Toolkit. The response we have had so far from the schools who are working with us – and the results we are beginning to see – make it hard not to feel the anticipation. In this blog, we explore the developments since the Evidence Review, and what’s next for the Great Teaching Toolkit. You can also find the companion audio interview by scrolling to the bottom of this post, or by searching "The Evidence Based Education Podcast" in your podcast app of choice.  In the GTT:ER, we summarised the evidence about what makes a difference to students’ outcomes: the things that teachers do, know or believe. The Review identified 17 such ‘Elements’ of Great Teaching, which we grouped into four broad Dimensions. They are all linked by robust evidence showing that, in classrooms where these Elements (the skills, knowledge, beliefs, behaviours and habits of the teacher) are present, students learn more.    We presented our framework as a curriculum for teacher learning: the set of things that teachers should be trying to get better at. We tried to make it clear that this does not imply that the rich and wonderful complexity of great teaching can be reduced to a list of techniques. But, as with any curriculum that leads to mastery of a complex domain, breaking down the steps is a necessary part of helping people to learn it.   Nor, just to be clear, is there any suggestion that the status quo represents any kind of deficit. There is Great Teaching happening in pretty much every school in the land, every single day. Our children are truly lucky to have such a dedicated, skilled, professional bunch of teachers as show up every day to make a difference to their lives. That said, education and social justice are such powerful forces for empowerment and life outcomes: with the stakes this high, every teacher owes it to those children to be the best they can possibly be. Related to this, my definition of a Great Teacher is one who is willing to do what it takes to be demonstrably more effective next year than this: it is not about how good you are today, but the journey you are on and the commitment to relentless improvement.   We made the case that a focus on everyday classroom teaching – great teaching, in every lesson, from every teacher, every day – is our most powerful lever for driving improvement at system-wide level. The top priority for all school leaders and teachers should be to enhance the quality of the teaching and learning interactions that happen in their classrooms every day. In an educational setting, nothing else matters as much as this; nothing else will make as much difference to the outcomes and equity of the children and young people we serve.     What have we done since June 2020? The Evidence Review provided some hints about the wider Great Teaching Toolkit project and our plans for its development. One year on, what have we done and how has our thinking changed?   First and foremost, we spent a lot of time researching and talking to teachers about the barriers and opportunities around professional learning, and in promoting and maintaining everyday Great Teaching. Through this process, we identified three key challenges:   What to work on? It is difficult for teachers and school leaders to determine the how to get the biggest return on their investment when it comes to improvement; The challenge of change. Changing everyday teaching practices is actually really, really hard; and Is it working? Reliable feedback and evaluation (knowing whether what you are doing is working) is often absent or misleading (in both classroom teaching an...