Every time I visit a school or college -or hear about one – where a dominant system is ‘three formal observations a year’, I feel sad.  Sad for the teachers and their students. Sad for the state of our professional culture that allows this to continue.  Sad that the leaders and the unions – or whoever else is responsible – can’t see a way around it or haven’t yet realised that tons of schools have ditched this pretty absurd process years ago.   Nothing about three observations a year is inherently good.  It’s a symptom of a culture of mistrust and defens ..read more

Given all the research that’s widely disseminated about feedback in general and the nature of teacher expertise, I’m surprised by how resistant and antagonistic some folk can be to the idea that feedback to teachers should be co-constructed. There are plenty of people who are quite confident in their sense that giving feedback in a straightforward direct manner is a meaningful, legitimate and productive process. Meanwhile, co-construction can be characterised as a rather soft and woolly time-consuming process akin to the folly of discovery learning. I have to take a deep breath. There are alwa ..read more

The theme of so much of my recent blogging and discussions in schools has been the very real challenge of teaching everyone in a class effectively – simultaneously.  I still don’t think the details of this issue get enough attention.  Responsive teaching suggests a simple sequence:  First, Teacher explains and models some new material.  Then, Students engage in a process that involves using that new material, helping them make sense of it and practise it. Then, Teacher gathers some form of information (data?) to check to see how well that has gone, gauging the degree ..read more

I’ve written several blogs about Think Pair Share in the past, because I think it’s such an important teaching routine for teachers to master: However, doing this well isn’t massively challenging but it does require some thought. During my many lesson observations, I frequently listen in to hear what students are actually saying after they’ve been set off to talk to their partners and, to be honest, I often feel that with a few tweaks to the routine, they’d have done a lot better. Quite often an excellent question with rich discussion is there for the taking but the teacher then uses the all-t ..read more

A lot is written and said about behaviour. For good reason. The recent survey and analysis by TeacherTapp for the BBC highlighted how important it is to get right – with way too many teachers reporting significant challenges and bad experiences. As well as classroom behaviour, the @TeacherTapp data for @bbc also revealed: 1 in 5 teachers had experienced verbal abuse from parents. 1 in 5 teachers had experienced abuse online (emails etc) from parents.https://t.co/SXK1jqObz9 — Gráinne Hallahan (@heymrshallahan) March 29, 2024 My perspective on this is informed by time (decades) in the classr ..read more

As my road-trip work comes to an end for the term, I’m reflecting on the qualities of all the great people I meet visiting schools.  Without exception, people everywhere are working hard, often in tough circumstances, and I have huge respect for everything they’re seeking to do. However, there are some schools I visit where it’s clear that the quality of teaching and learning is high, sometimes within a particular phase or subject team, sometimes across the whole school.  Without exception, when the teaching is evidently strong, you also meet the leaders who make it so.&nbs ..read more

10 million views.  It’s a milestone in the life of teacherhead.com that I couldn’t have imagined reaching when I started out back in May 2012 with my first rather ridiculous post: Kitchen Blackboard!  That’s all it was! Me in the kitchen. I had no idea. After that, it took off and I’ve managed to find a style and an audience that seems to appreciate my observations from the sidelines of school life and the challenges and rewards of great teaching. I’m enormously grateful to anyone stopping to read one my posts and for all the interactions via twitter, linkedIn and the comments over t ..read more

I like ideas that cut through complexity – bringing clarity to things that are inherently complex, nuanced (bingo!) and variable. For the coaching process and the general outcomes of a wider professional learning programme, there is sometimes a risk of a false either/or creeping in to the discourse. Also, when I work with schools, I sometimes i find that their CPD processes can fall down because they don’t meet one of two key requirements: a) Specifying Actions: Teachers have to make and sustain changes in their practice that succeed in solving the problems they encounter or, to put it differe ..read more

One of the conclusions from our work with schools supporting their development of CPD programmes, is that it’s incredibly helpful to have a teaching and learning framework that contains within it, a relatively small number of core techniques that everyone knows, understands and, ultimately, uses with real confidence and precision. Having initially found that leaders arrived at this conclusion more or less independently time after time, we are now inclined to suggest it up front: select a set of techniques that most teachers use most days, a set you can call ‘The School Core 8’ (or 5 or 7 or 10 ..read more

A big part of my work is around supporting schools to develop effective professional development programmes. I encounter a wide range of approaches to this but schools are always on a journey, looking to move forward to get their culture and systems right. One thing I often find is still something of a barrier, is an attachment to/ legacy of senior leaders feeling the need to give feedback on lesson observations in old school top-down fashion. Sometimes, this is even done in writing via email or an online platform – without ever involving the teacher in a conversation. (I’ve written about this ..read more