Summary of my presentation at the Directors of Improvement conference today.

(Strap in, it's a bit of a beast)

↓ First up, expertise matters.

The most expert teachers help their students to learn at multiple times the rate of the least expert.

Improving teaching is the biggest lever we have for improving the learning and life chances of the young people in our care.

The 40 finest edu-threads from the last 4 months:

(a mere glimpse of the vast intellectual talent alive across our profession)

↓ 1/ @dazzalee127320 on the (under-rated) power of choral response

https://twitter.com/dazzalee127320/status/1733211763376595185

Mining for student mistakes (& misconceptions) isn't just good for learning.

Done well, it can also strengthen classroom culture. Here's how:

↓ One of the most powerful ways we can flip failure is by constantly being on the lookout for when students make mistakes or misconceptions...

and then taking the opportunity to highlight them, analyse them, and ensure that everyone (not just the mistake maker) learns from them.

The anticipation of success (aka 'expectancy') is vital for student motivation.

BUT it's easier to destroy than develop.

3 ways to flip failure:

↓ Success is a powerful force in school.

However, despite our efforts, students will sometimes fail.

It is an inevitable part of school, and an important aspect of life.

Great teaching is not enough—we also need to *frame* success for our students.

6 strategies that can help:

↓ Success is a powerful motivating force in school.

It's primarily the product of great teaching. However, great teaching—by itself—is not enough...

because success is highly subjective.

10 of the best teaching-related research papers from the first 10 weeks of 2024

(all open source 🔓)

↓ 1/ Article on the limits of applying general cognitive science principles to specific school contexts

→ also serves as a helpful overview of the evidence around the value of several core #cogsci principles

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23…

Success is one of the most powerful drivers of motivation in school.

Why is this and how can we secure it?

↓ First up, it’s useful to understand that our brain uses unconscious ‘rules of thumb’ (aka heuristics) to make decisions about where to invest our attention and effort.

One of the main rules it uses is our anticipation of future success.

This is called 'expectancy'.

Feedback can enhance learning. But it can also inhibit it.

Here's what we know:

↓ Feedback is simply any process where students get information on their thinking or performance.

However, not all kinds of feedback lead to improved learning—some can even be detrimental.

We all have an (implicit) theory of learning that guides how we teach.

Here's mine:

↓ First up, a reminder of why having a theory of learning is useful for teachers. It can help us:

→ Better understand how our teaching strategies 'work'
→ Deploy them at the right time and in the right way
→ Adapt them for novel situations (and avoid lethal mutations)

Exit tickets. Let's go...

↓ Responsive teaching entails regularly checking for understanding, in valid and efficient ways.

But *when* exactly should we do it?

At Steplab, we're *obsessed* with codifying great teaching.

Eg. we've just spent 3 months re-organising our steps around a 'simple model of teaching'.

This is to help...

A. Coaches make better diagnoses
B. Teachers develop more expertise

A geeky thread:

↓ IMPORTANT

We're not saying that this is an accurate model of teaching...

(teaching is WAAY more complex than this)

...only that having a model, and one that is sufficiently simple and aligned to the evidence of how people learn, is more useful than not having one.

Top tier teaching requires regular checking for understanding.

Ideally C4U that is both valid and efficient...

↓ First up, a reminder:

Responsive teaching is about making small course-corrections to our teaching as we go.

This rests heavily on us having a secure knowledge of what our students know (and don’t know) at every point along the way.

Aka 'checking for understanding'.

Short thread on one of the most critical concepts in planning for learning:

Reverse design (aka backwards planning)

↓ As teachers, nailing our approach to planning is paramount.

It not only makes a huge difference to pupil learning, but also to workload.

OG David Berliner even suggests that expert teachers plan lessons 50x quicker than novice teachers 😱

What exactly *is* responsive teaching? And what 2 things need to be in place for it to flourish?

Let's go...

↓ Responsive teaching entails adjusting our approach, to meet the needs of our students, regularly throughout the learning process.

We can contrast this with 'rigid' teaching, where we simply follow a plan or our own intuition.

Fun story:

In 2021, a collective of researchers and teacher educators analysed 104 high quality studies and ushered in a new paradigm for teacher development.

On Boxing Day 2023, their work was finally immortalised in a peer-reviewed journal...

↓ First up, some history...

Until recently, professional development (PD) has mostly been thought about as either 'forms' or 'characteristics'.

→ Forms are things like: instructional coaching or lesson study
→ Characteristics are things like: collaborative or sustained

Is choice motivating in school? Hmm, not always...

Let's unpack:

↓ Choice is motivating, SOMETIMES.

It can be more frustrating than empowering when we have too many options, the alternatives are things we don’t care about, or we feel we are not the best person to make the decision.

For choice to be motivating, it must also be *meaningful*.

Should teachers and schools actively be trying to do LESS?

Let's talk about 'de-implementation'...

↓ Teachers and school leaders tend to care a *lot* about helping their students learn.

As a result, we can easily find ourselves in a place where we have—over time and with the best of intentions—added lots of strands to our work.

In the last 4 months I've read *loads* of twitter threads on teaching.

To ease you into the holidays, here're 40 of the finest:

↓ 1/ Big dawg @doug_lemov on the curse of expertise ⤵️

https://twitter.com/doug_lemov/status/1699487630222623210

Over at @Steplab_co we've been thinking hard about which is better: generic or specific teacher development.

Here's where we're at and why:

↓ @Steplab_co First up, the argument for specific approaches:

→ Effective teaching cannot be isolated from the content or learner—each subject & phase has unique characteristics
→ Specific explanations and models are easier to understand and apply
→ They are also more relatable

Teachers: smartphones are eating your (student) attention.

Here's the lowdown:

↓ Smartphones are an incredible invention.

They put a world of information at our fingertips, facilitate communication faster than ever before, and act as a safety net in a variety of stations.

Reading on paper leads to better understanding than reading on-screen (in *certain* situations).

What teachers should know about 'screen inferiority'...

↓ Despite its compelling narrative, the idea of the 'digital native' is more myth than reality.

Mere exposure to digital tech does not automagically lead to enhanced digital literacy 🦄

What’s more, digital devices may even diminish learning in some instances.