Which teaching strategies are effective?

Just because it is labeled 'research' does not mean that it works in all cases. You should never transplant ideas uncritically. Here are two reasons why not:

• Not all research is replicable: For example, within psychology, in 2015 a group of researchers decided to look once again at 100 published papers and seek to replicate the experiments. They found that only 36 per cent of the studies examined had significant results, in comparison with the originally claimed 95 per cent.
• Research exists within a context – and it may not be yours! What works in education in one country and setting does not always work in another country. Furthermore, we are dealing with free range human beings!

"Classrooms are just too complicated for research ever to tell teachers what to do." (Professor Dylan Wiliam)

"Brain or behavioural research can supply teachers with incredible concepts to draw on for inspiration and ideas. However, the ultimate determination of what these concepts mean for teaching practice can be derived and determined only by the practitioners of that craft." (Jared Cooney Horvath, Tes 14 June 2019)

(Image source: Download Sign, Caution, Warning. Royalty-Free Vector Graphic - Pixabay)

A knowledge organizer is a one page summary of all the most vital, useful and powerful knowledge on a topic. They clarity for everyone what is being taught. It acts as a learning checklist. They:

• direct attention to what is important
• highlight relationships among the ideas to be learned
• remind students of important related information they alread have.

Give the knowledge organizer to each student at the start of each unit of work. They are then used throughout the unit to recap, ensure prior knowledge is being built in the long term memory through regular retrieval practice.

Print them off to use for (daily) in-lesson quizzes. Use bold type for key words / concepts.

Students can self-assess their knowledge of key points, checking their recall of specific details. They can do this by being given the framework and asked to fill in the details.

To help students retrieve the material it is important that abstract ideas / concepts are presented side by side with concrete examples.

Note: these are not 'crib sheets' which are stuck in books and forgotten about!!! Knowledge organisers cannot also not contain ALL the knowledge they need to know - they act as a springboard of all the essential knowledge will helps provide them with a framework for hanging other material on.

The checklist for the knowledge rich lesson shown in the video can be found HERE.

As teachers we need to help students understand how new information relates to what they have already learned, or hwo it fits into a topic. It's a bit like having the picture of the complete jigsaw on the box cover, showing how the pieces fit together. This is the role of 'thinking maps'. They provide a framework to show how information is organised. In The Blackwell Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology (1994), psychologist Michael Eysenck explains that "where the information being learned has a framework or structure that can be used to organise both the learning and the retrieval then memory is often considerably improved." They help students link ideas and concepts.

There are eight different thinking maps that each correspond to a different thinking process: A particular thinking map is selected by the teacher based on the needs of the task and the thinking required. These maps can be used not only to introduce new content but also to review information that has been previously taught.

• Bubble map - describing
• Double bubble map - comparing and contrasting
• Tree map - classifying
• Brace map - identifying whole | part relationships
• Flow map - sequencing
• Multi-flow map - causes and effects
• Circle map - defining in context
• Bridge map - seeing analogies

Be explicit and definite about the words students need to know and use. Do not leave it up to chance.

Teachers need to:

• Identify the key non-technical words as well as the technical words.
• Put them in the knowledge organiser or use a vocabulary book / glossary.
• Get students to practice both saying the words out loud and then recalling them and their meanings (e.g. flash cards), word in a sentence test, spelling tests.
• Do this regularly to build up their confidence. Keep recapping from previous lessons.

These three command terms go to the heart of a teachers' craft - how to present curriculum material in such a way that it is understood and learnt by students. Teachers who do this well are expert teachers (see Making Every Lesson Count).

Explain

An expert teacher has the ability to explain the concepts, theories, techniques that make up their subject in straightforward ways that students can understand. They make the complex simple. "If you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough" (Einstein). As teachers practice explaining these key concepts, techniques etc well. Use departmental professional learning time to practice doing this together. Build up a repertoire of explanatory tools that you can dip into (e.g.using pictures and stories to explain abstract concepts). Don't assume we can do it. In the classroom get students to explain these ideas to the teacher to make sure they have a depth of understanding. Professor Brian Cox gives us a good example of someone who can explain complex ideas about the universe in simple ways. Check this out in his Wonders of the Universe videos. Here is one, where he uses the story of the sand castle to explain entopy. The video not only shows the power of stories to explain but also the power of using pictures and visuals. Cognitive scientists tell us that verbal descriptions on their own fail to register as powerfully as when they ate given alongside a visual sketch - this theory is called dual coding. There when explaining use flow diagrams of concepts, timelines of events etc.

Model

Model everything you want your students to do by actually do it yourself in front of them - and show them how to do this many times. As you model make your thought processes explicit so that students can see how you are approaching the task. Another way of doing this with the class is to do it together - this is when you work with the class to do a piece of work together and discuss how to do each stage of the task as it occurs. In this way you are making the thinking processes visible.

Question

Expert teachers get students to think hard about the material they are studying. It is important that you build up your own repertoire of probing questions that encourage students to think in both breadth and depth and with accuracy about the subject matter. The teacher is both probing for understanding but also to extend thinking. One example of a list of probing questions can be found on Tom Sherrington's blog series on Great Lessons. Click HERE.

Explaining concepts or why a particular step must follow another is a powerful cognitive activity. It compels the learner to think about whatthey already know - their prior knowledge - and integrate it with new information. It is different from summarising and explaining to another person. "Self-explanation is directed toward one's self for the purpose of making new information personally meaningful." (Bisra, K. et al (2018) Inducing self-explanation: a meta-analysis, Educational Psychology Review).

Teachers can encourage this by stopping intermittently throughout a lesson and asking students to write downan explanation for themselves about what is being taught. In other words, how would you explain this to your future self?

References:

Lombrozo, T., & Liquin, E. G. (2023). Explanation is effective because it is selective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32(1), 13–20

Michelene TH Chi et al (1989), Self-explanations: how students study and use examples in learning to solve problems, Cognitive Science

We get better at things that we practice. Drilling builds memory. It boosts automaticity and improves the transfer of knowledge. Daniel Willingham says that drilling  is "one of the most effective ways to overcome the bottleneck of working memory" and "it is virtually impossible to be proficient at any mental task without extended practice." Practice makes permanent.

Practice - drilling applies to all subjects: new maths skills, (foreign) language / vocabulary acquisition, playing the piano or chess etc. by learning to do essential things automatically it means that you don't have to think about these (they become automatic) in exams or when you have to perform or demonstrate your learning.

What do teachers need to do?

• Break down complex tasks down into their component parts so that each of the parts can be practiced individually.
• Practice them with obsessive attention to detail. Drill these fundamentals so that they become automatic.
• Make drills the norm and build them into daily routines. Provide students with instant feedback which is also specific and focused.
• Recognise that skills are subject specific. Click HERE for an excellent blog on Why schools should not teach general critical-thinking skills by Carl Hendrick.

In her book 'Making Good Progress' Daisy Christodoulou writes: "Whilst skills such as literacy, numeracy, problem solving and critical thinking are still the end point of education, this does not mean that pupils always need to be practising such skills in their final format. Instead, the role of the teacher should be to break down such skills into their component parts, and to teach those instead."

Retrieval Practice

Retrieval practice is about recreating something you have learnt in the past from your (long term) memory and thinking about it now. By practicing retrieving information you will make sure that it is more embedded in your long term memory.

Retrieval is hard. The aim is for you to identify what you know and especially where the gaps in your knowledge are.Tom Sherrington writes: "Building knowledge helps to free up working memory for more complex tasks – but too often we toss out a lot of ideas, words and concepts – hoping they will somehow ‘sink in’ but that’s not how learning works. Retrieval practice is important and can be taught."

• Make flashcards. Make sure they contain more than just definitions because you need to test whether you can make links between various aspects of the subject. Make sure flashcards also test main ideas. In this way flashcards become a lot more than a way of memorizing - they become a way of understanding concepts and ideas. (See references below for great blog about how to do this). In the blog they suggest putting these questions on the back of flashcards: describe this concept without using any key words written on the flashcard; draw this concept; give a real life example of this concept; how would you explain this to a child/someone who has never heard of it before?
• Put away class materials and on a blank sheet of paper write or sketch everything you know about the subject you are studying. Put as much detail in as possible. Then check what you have written against knowledge organizer or/and class materials for accuracy.
• Take as many practice tests as you can on the subject you are studying. Use tests as learning events.

Interleaving and Spaced Practice

Interleaving is a way of studying a variety of subjects at once.

Provide all students with a knowledge organizer for the work they are studying. These set out the key knowledge and concepts they need to learn. The knowledge on the organiser does not set a limit on the knowledge they should know but it sets out the knowledge they should be able to recall easily so that the working-memory is freed up to work on more challenging tasks.

As the teacher model how to self-quiz. Take a knowledge organizer, turn it upside down in front of the class, and try and write down as much as you can remember. Turn the knowledge organizer back over and check how much you can remember. Using a different coloured pen correct any errors and fill in any gaps.

Provide each student with a self-quizzing homework notebook and ask them to spend a period of time (e.g. minimum of 30 minutes a week) self-quizzing on their knowledge organizer. They are to write down as much as they can remember from the knowledge organizer. These exercise books are quickly checked in class to see that they are completed. The student can then look back at what they could remember at the beginning of the unit of work and what they can recall as their confidence and knowledge develops.

Because the aim of feedback is to help students move forward in their learning the best form of feedback is given in the moment during a lesson so that a student can correct any mistakes and misconceptions and solidify their learning there and then. It is the surest ways of ensuring that students also act on the feedback the teacher gives. In their book What every teacher should know about psychology (2016) Didau and Rose summarise the features of effective feedback. It should be:

• Specific and clear
• Focused on the task (and not on the student)
• Explanatory - focused on improvement
• Designed to link outcomes with effort.

In their seminal book Inside the Black Box (1998) Wiliam and Black argued that teachers should ditch grades and instead give formative assessment in the form of comments for students to act upon. This was referred to as 'assessment for learning'. Dylan Wiliam says that he now wishes he had used the term 'responsive teaching' because teaching needs to be highly responsive to what they learn about how students are learning. Teachers need to engage students in activities that inform them where they are exactly in their learning and then adjust their teaching in response so that students' learning is advanced. Do you give more explanation? Do students need more practice at what they are doing in order to master it before they move on? Methods for identifying how well students are understanding include the use of:

• questions: quick quizzes, hinge questions, cold-call questioning.
• provide success criteria: what does a piece of excellent work look like in the task you have set them? Get students to self-assess against this standard of excellence. Are they there yet? What do students need to do next to improve their work against this standard of excellence?
• developing the ability to self-assess: it is important that students learn the skill of self-assessing their work - e.g. comparing it against knowledge organisers, mark schemes, models of excellent work. Also use peer assessment against mark schemes and provide students with the opportunity of talking through how they approached the task - make their thinking visible.

How does 'deep learning' happen?

Impact Wales is a consultancy group that uses sketchnotes to present research. In the following video they explore a sketch note on deep learning in which they say that 'deep learning' is about …

• Making connections – the schema of learning
• Creating a mental image – draw a picture of it
• Representing it – in a different format

Website

The Science of Learning Research Centre (SLRC) was established in 2013, funded as an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative, with the vision to improve learning outcomes at pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary levels through scientifically-validated learning tools and strategies. The SLRC brings together more than 100 neuroscientists, psychologists and education researchers from across the country, collaborating on programs to better understand learning, using a range of innovative experimental techniques and programs. The PEN Principles have been developed in video, podcast and poster format to enable ease of use by teachers, students and parents. The resources not only provide valuable information but provide teachers, students and parents a chance to blog and share conversation. If you click on each of the circles of the pen principles you will be taken to the research.

Articles

Principles of Instruction, International Academy of Education poster. Helpful visual of key instructional strategies based on the work of Barak Rosenshine. Click HERE.

Principles of Instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know, Barak Rosenshine.Click HERE.

Six strategies for effective learning, The Learning Scientists set of downloadable posters.

Ten teaching techniques to practise – deliberately, Tom Sherrington, teacherhead blog. Click HERE.

Making every lesson count, Shaun Allison & Andy Tharby, blog summarizing their book proving an overview of the key instructional principles. Click HERE.

Jamie Clarke guides - High-quality PDFs of my one-page guides are available to download for free.

Simple ways to integrate four evidence-based teaching strategies, Laura Lee, August 2019

Making Every Lesson Count: Six pedagogical principles, Helen Webb. The education book Making Every Lesson Count describes six pedagogical principles – from challenging to modelling to feedback – that can give us a great framework for teaching. Helen Webb offers some ideas and tips for how these principles can work in practice.

High-Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS): Widely used in Australia, these strategies, such as explicit teaching, goal setting, and differentiated instruction, align well with the IB’s emphasis on effective teaching practices and student-centered learning.

Teaching for Understanding Framework (TfU): Developed by Harvard’s Project Zero, this framework fosters deep, transferable understanding in students, much like the IB’s conceptual focus.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A framework promoting accessibility and equity in education, UDL’s principles align well with discussions around inclusivity and reducing barriers to learning.

Visible Learning by John Hattie: Based on meta-analyses of educational research, this approach highlights strategies with the highest impact on student achievement, such as feedback, metacognition, and self-regulation, which echo IB’s focus on reflection and growth. Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) according to John Hattie refers to the collective teacher efficacy (based on Albert Bandura) as the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively affect students.

Books

Many of the ideas on this page are taken from:

The Learning Rainforest, Tom Sherrington.

Leading from the Middle, Rebecca Foster and Claire Hill