If you had to choose one research paper to improve teaching and learning what would it be...

I was asked this at interview recently - if you had to choose one research paper to improve teaching and learning what would it be?

The quality of teaching is one of the most important factors in a student's education, all potential initiatives must be tempered with a clear sense of how they will help the student's learning as this is at the heart of T&L.  Any decision on a T&L initiative needs to address student outcomes, the support needed for students/parents/staff and then, through research, a 'best chance of success' strategy can be developed. 

A razor sharp awareness of the school's context is key, the Dylan Wiliam's adage that

"Everything works somewhere,

nothing works everywhere."

is a salutory reminder; 'in a world of infinite choice, context - not content - is king' (Chris Anderson). What matters to the school will be tempered by the issues within their unique context and their collective knowledge and understanding of the student body which can and will shift from year to year.  The EEF toolkit was once described as a "risk register" of "good bets" and "poor bets" rather than certainties - there is no substitute for knowing what is going on in the classrooms of your school and how it is having impact... or not.

Each school is challenged through the widely available and widely reaching research to think about what Simon Smith calls the "So What?" questions.  

The temptation might be to introduce each and every new shiny piece of research to staff through CPD, but this kind of 'flitting' from research paper to research paper is unlikely to produce sustained and effective change in students' learning.  If research teaches us anything, it is the need to be targeted and deliberate in what we chose to engage with and that which we engage wider staff with.

Data and the quality assurance work of the school will be key in assessing your 'so whats' as will whole school understanding of what it is to teach well in your context, which should be linked to how you appraise your teachers.  My "go to" blog for this is from John Tomsett (here) and also (here).  I love the deep thinking that his whole school has engaged in to identify their 'so what's' - it speaks volumes about the school they are building.  It's based in some of the most useful and practically applicable research there is like Rob Coe's work on 'What makes Great Teaching?' with the Sutton Trust.  Building a supportive and warm culture for teachers with clear expectations and acknowledgements of the T&L complexities, that all important sense of 'this is what we do here'; cue another Dylan Wiliam's adage...

Doug Lemov's approach to T&L is important here - he has codified specific things that effective teachers do, which other teachers can learn from through blogs, books and online recordings of these teachers in action.  It is truly great work and worth a mention here because of the wide ranging resources on offer, which allow staff to pick and choose and develop a program of CPD that targets their needs.  An awareness of this work could be a game changer for personalising CPD for teachers, which is where real success for individual teachers will happen.

Steve Adcock recently wrote a blog that referenced this approach and how it might be usefully transposed to the '6 Core routines of SLT' highlighting how expectations and understandings might also need to apply for leaders.  Building research approaches out into these areas of our practice could be a key area for a school to garner improvements; for example in our school we often talk of how underused the middle leadership team is - could we develop six core routines of middle leadership, target this work with group specific CPD and build agency within our school for students' learning?

Looking at research with middle leaders is key to leading improvements in T&L, I'd also be tempted to consider these pieces of research through Tom Sherrington's blog;

https://teacherhead.com/2017/06/03/teaching-and-learning-research-summaries-a-collection-for-easy-access/

All of these examples highlight moving from a generalised, intuition and experience led approach to T&L to using specific, targeted and informed strategies that are research based.  Using research to inform the specific tasks that we undertake every day is our 'best chance' for improvements if we chose well. Blogs are invaluable as ways of exploring and developing our understanding as professionals on what a piece of research might look like in action, how it might be employed, what the issues might be and how it might develop.

The work of professionals like Tom Sherrington and John Tomsett has had immeasurable impact on me as a professional and starting every teachers'/leaders' journey in discovering and using blogs is significant part of engaging with research through professional reading, but I was asked for just one paper...

There is only one paper that encompasses the whole of the T&L dynamic usefully and purposefully and warrants a whole school awareness for me  - where CPD sessions for staff can be widened into assemblies for learners and into Performance Development discussions and observation reflections for teachers.  It is a piece of research on the purpose of necessary behaviour for both the learner and the teacher, how the learner and the teacher can deliberately target this through specific T&L strategies and how this process can extend and develop learning for both the student and the teacher.

If I had to pick one piece of research to lead T&L work, I'd go for this - starting with how it deliberately identifies responsibilities of the process of teaching and learning process:

• STUDENTS are LEARNING and though there is great power in them becoming more aware of their learning processes within peer to peer sessions giving feedback and some instruction, they are the learner and must take on this responsibility.
• TEACHERS are TEACHING and though there is great power in them continuing to learn throughout their career, they are responsible for teaching the material necessary in such a way that it is learn-able.
• META-COGNITION is key to both roles; teachers and learners can plan for and target their learning/teaching and improve through reflective practice.

The specific strategies within the report lend themselves to purposeful self regulated learning over three key areas of practice:

• MOTIVATION
  Students need to bring a willingness to engage in the process and be prepared to persevere.  They have responsibility for convincing themselves to undertake tricky revision tasks, buying into the hard work early on to ensure future well being, for example, taking the test you know you'll find hard and knowing that practice moves you forward.  Independence in learning is one of the key complaints from teachers at our school - how do we develop and embed these skills?  How do we work in individual classes, across departments and across the whole school to coherently promote and address this gap in our students approach to learning?
  
  We are introducing ENDEAVOUR books (document files) for students next year, where each department will be sharing Knowledge Organisers of the half term's knowledge and skills to be covered, which tutors will be using in registration time to prime and engage students with.  Can we engage parents in sessions where we highlight how these booklets can be used at home?

• COGNITION
  The teacher needs to build skills like memorisation techniques or subject specific strategies like making marks with a different brush or using different methods to solve equations in maths into the original teaching.  These strategies are fundamental to acquiring knowledge and completing learning tasks.
  
  As a school, could we compare how fundamental knowledge is introduced and how it is taught in a memorable way - agree areas where a common teaching method would help students and identify where specific subjects need to create their own approach?
• METACOGNITION
  These are the strategies that we us to monitor, control and develop our cognition, where students should be enabled to evaluate whether a memorisation strategy has worked for them, where they should be able to select an appropriate strategy for the task depending on its content, where they are actively monitoring and purposely directing their learning independently.
  
  As a school a coherent cross curriculum approach to memorisation strategies, planning extended writing tasks, using discussion for deepening understanding will have an impact on how students develop their ability to learn independently.

A coherent approach to where research will be employed collectively and where there is room for autonomy would strengthen everyone's work - see Tom Sherrington's 10 essential discussions for every team blog.  The power of autonomy and collective action needs to be discussed at senior, middle and classroom levels to ensure that we are building on each others work where we can, but still have the creativity to teach our specialisms as a subject specific domain.

Across the 7 recommendations that could be worked on in department, cross department and leadership groups in our regular CPD sessions, the needs of the learner and the requirements and support needed by the teacher are slowly and coherently built up:

• Students need to be supported into and be motivated to work towards
• Understanding their strengths and weaknesses in subjects and across the curriculum
• Addressing weaknesses and attending to strengths
• Being motivated and engaged - whilst understanding that this is hard work sometimes
• Being ready to take on multiple challenges across the curriculum
• Engaging purposefully in dialogue about learning #Oracy
• Training themselves up to be confident at applying independent learning skills
• Teachers need to be supported into and be motivated to work towards
• Guiding students through cognitive and meta cognitive strategies
• Giving explicit instructions
• Engaging and motivating learners
• Supporting with a view to independence long term
• Modelling their thinking to students - verbalising the meta cognitive processes needed #Oracy
• Scaffolding through worked examples and pre-empting through this the removal of structures there to support, thus promoting independence
• Providing appropriate challenge
• Engaging in purposeful dialogue that coaches, guides and supports learners #Oracy
• Giving timely and effective feedback on both cognitive and meta cognitive tasks
• Putting meta cognitive processes at the heart of the learning
• Engaging in regular CPD and reflective coaching conversations with MLT/SLT leaders as appropriate

The cycle promoted by the report (plan, monitor, evaluate) supports the movement of students from novice learners to expert learners where the taught structures of meta cognition become automatic and unconscious.  It is not new to anyone, we all recognise that this is what good teachers do and it is therefore easy to cynically say, 'I do all of that already'.  I have been a teacher for 20 years and remember very clearly helping to write 'Learning 2 Learn' schemes in the early 2000's.  This research is much more direct and has a clarity of processes that our intuitive work didn't - if someone had asked me what meta cognitive processes were before reading the report I could have said in a generalised way that it was about teaching students to be aware of how they are learning.  Having read the work, I have used the real examples to extend my practice and build on them daily in the classroom.  

Reading this report together as a teaching body, being presented with clever summaries from the T&L team, interpreting it across departments, making recommendations and agreeing a collective responsibility action point list would change practice.  In the background, the inventive and creative classroom practitioner will be making autonomous changes to their practice and improving further.  This research report's genius is that it targets fundamental skills through specific and clearly identified practices and strategies, which every teacher can and will build on in their own way and where students will become effective, independent and strong learners.  #metameta

Find it here:  https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/meta-cognition-and-self-regulation/