Effective Professional Development: Rehearsal and Practice

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14 January, 2023 —
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Effective Professional Development: Rehearsal and Practice

Mark Miller explores Effective Professional Development Mechanism 10: Rehearsing the Technique

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by Bradford Research School
on the 14th January 2023

Mark Miller is Director of Bradford Research School

We see consistent evidence in a range of contexts that suggests elite performance is often associated with practice. This is reflected in mechanism 10 of the EEF’s Effective Professional Development guidance report.

Prompt practice and rehearsal of a technique, at least once in a context outside of the classroom, may support teachers in enhancing their skills and embedding habits.

But more important than simply racking up hours of practice, is for it to be deliberate. Simulation-based deliberate practice in medicine can lead to greater skill acquisition and improved patient outcomes (McGaghie et al, 2016); in sports performance, levels of deliberate practice are associated with high levels of performance (Mcnamara et al, 2016).

What could effective approaches look like for this mechanism for those who lead teacher professional development?

Practice for automaticity

There are certain approaches that can be practised out of the classroom context. I’m thinking in particular of classroom routines, explanation, modelling. By practising in a ‘safe’ environment, the theory is that you don’t have to think quite as much about some of the elements in a classroom environment, and can focus on others.

If you have practised a mini whiteboard routine, you can focus on pupil responses.

If you have practised an explanation, you can manage pupil behaviour better.

If you have practised that tricky phone-call to a parent, you can focus less on your nerves and more on solving the issues.

Without practice or rehearsal, our first attempt is ‘live’. As Doug Lemov writes in Practice Perfect, “…our workshop participants, on returning to their classrooms, were trying to do the equivalent of walking onto Centre Court at Wimbledon and learning a new style of backhand in the midst of a match.”

We can define ‘practice’ in different ways, but I would also place scripting and rehearsal in that category for PD. So those who lead PD can use these as opportunities to make some of the learning more automatic in classrooms. For example, new staff could practice school routines as part of their induction. Or when launching a new policy, teachers could be given time to script their ‘roll out speech’.

When I was at Dixons Kings, way back in 2015, I wrote a few posts on our approach to practice, which I’m glad to say stand up reasonably well – and I know this is still an element valued highly there.

Practice for multiple representations

If new techniques are introduced in PD, and the practice stage is missed, teachers have not had a chance to think about different ways to use the technique and how things might change in a range of contexts. The more of these representations they can consider, the more likely it is that they will respond appropriately when different circumstances occur.

And careful design of practice can build in these examples, with various iterations being used constructively.

Suppose there has been a CPD sequence focusing on questioning. The technique of ‘Cold Call’ has been explained and modelled. The CPD lead then arranges practice groups to practice something simple like: Ask question > wait > name (correct answer).

Once the sequence is automatic, we might introduce: Ask question > wait > name (incorrect answer) > bounce to another pupil (correct answer)>come back to first pupil (correct answer).

This simple variation helps the teacher to go beyond that automated sequence, acknowledging that teaching is never as neat as the first example. Other variations for this example:

What if no one gets it correct?
What if the question was framed differently?
What are the alternatives to this question-answer format e.g. whole class responses?
What are the subject specific variations?
What do you say during the wait time if anything?
Where do you stand in the classroom?

Practice for possibilities

Practice can be mischaracterised as unthinking automation. But it can be a great prompter of thinking, and a means of iterative development of a process. Think of it as similar to how the rehearsal of a play can unearth different ways to say the line, or block the scene. It can identify problems that need to be fixed, and additions and removals of processes.

Practising modelling with a visualiser in a classroom can help you to work out the best position, the right materials, the technology itself, what you will say etc. Practising an explanation might make you change your analogies.

Not all practice is equal. You can do things a lot without necessarily getting better at them, so making practice work better can be having an expert to guide you. Instructional coaching can have those experts facilitating feedback, who can prompt your thinking.

I like Paul Bambrick-Santoya’s framework from Get Better Faster as a way to structure practice:

Plan > Practice > Follow up > Repeat

And he has some questions that could be used to promote effective practice:

What planning could you do with the teacher to set up the practice to be effective? Write out the script, task and exemplar.
What is the most important part of the practice with which the teacher will likely struggle?
What are the key follow-up tasks that you and the teacher should do to lock in the learning?

See the full list of mechanisms below, and the other blogs in the series.

Macnamara, B. N., Moreau, D., & Hambrick, D. Z. (2016). The Relationship Between Deliberate Practice and Performance in Sports: A Meta-Analysis. Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 11(3), 333 – 350.

McGaghie, W. C., Issenberg, S. B., Cohen, E. R., Barsuk, J. H., & Wayne, D. B. (2011). Does simulation-based medical education with deliberate practice yield better results than traditional clinical education? A meta-analytic comparative review of the evidence. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 86(6), 706 – 711.