Research School Network: The Great Teaching Toolkit Part 1: Into the Fourth Dimension The first of our posts on the excellent Great Teaching Toolkit

The Great Teaching Toolkit from Evidence Based Education is an evidence review that sets out to answer a question: What are the best bets for teachers to invest time and effort in if they want their students to learn more? In the foreword, Dr Tristian Stobie states that ​“helping teachers become better is the most important responsibility we have as educational leaders, as it is the best way to help learners fulfil their potential.”

The 17 elements of the model set out a pathway for teacher development. An understanding of each of their elements is a brilliant launchpad for teacher reflection, coaching and CPD. In a series of blogs, we explore each of the 4 dimensions, starting with the first: 1. Great teachers understand the content they are teaching and how it is learnt

Into the Fourth Dimension

Models of great teaching can often end up focusing on easily observable classroom behaviours, so become swayed towards what teachers do. The three dimensional model is common: ​“they create a supportive environment for learning, they maximise opportunity to learn and they activate their students’ thinking.” These elements remain, but in the review they add the additional element of teacher knowledge because ​“there is enough evidence that effective teachers need to have particular kinds of knowledge and understanding of the material they are teaching to justify including it here as something that some teachers could profitably work on.” They also make a decision to place this (fourth) dimension first to counter the idea that teacher knowledge is simple a prerequisite for good teaching, rather than something that can be improved through professional development.

Content and how to teach it

The first two elements are as follows:

1.1 Having deep and fluent knowledge and flexible understanding of the content you are teaching
1.2 Knowledge of the requirements of curriculum sequencing and dependencies in relation to the content and ideas you are teaching

These are distinct elements, and placing them together in the review helps to highlight that distinction. Teachers need to develop their content knowledge, to understand distinctions, connections, sequences, analogies in their subject. They need to be able to ask and answer the questions that pupils will ask and which will stretch them. They need to be able to answer the problems and model the answers well. While we may not call this element groundbreaking, it may not always be the thing prioritised in teacher development. There is an assumption that a teacher knows their subject and perhaps CPD should prioritise those other, generic teacher behaviours.

But knowing the subject isn’t enough. Pedagogical Content Knowledge ​“involves knowing and being able to explain the dependencies and connections among different parts of the curriculum, and hence the requirements for sequencing.” It concerns the way that the teacher can come to grips with the interaction between the content and the learning of it. This kind of thing may be seen in observable behaviours, such as the way a teacher plans for and addresses misconceptions, but it will also be in unobservable things like careful curriculum design and sequencing. An understanding of the ways that schemas are developed is an important part of this pedagogical content knowledge.

We have written about some of the tensions between generic versus subject specific CPD here.

The toolkit within a toolkit

1.3 Knowledge of relevant curriculum tasks, assessments and activities, their diagnostic and didactic potential; being able to generate varied explanations and multiple representations/​analogies/​examples for the ideas you are teaching

This third element is concerned with teachers making the best decisions to present the content. But this will only ever be as good as teachers understanding of a range of the most effective ways to do so. Part of this understanding is addressed in dimension 4 of the review, which looks at some of the complex ideas about learning teachers should understand. But it also about reflecting on the optimal design of lessons and choices for explanations in the particular topic.

Teachers need to develop their ​‘repertoires’ of explanations, models and analogies. They need examples and non-examples. It isn’t enough to have a good model to explain gravity; it’s a second model for pupils that don’t understand; it’s a non-example to remove a misconception; it is reviewing that model at regular intervals. A discussion of the best method to solve equations in a maths meeting would be a valuable use of time, rather than simply relying the method you were taught. The EEF’s Improving Secondary Science guidance report has a section on models that is useful reading for all subjects.

These all form part of teachers pedagogical content knowledge. But often they are achieved through trial and error, through a twitter feed, a magpie here and there. Far better for it to become an explicitly taught part of a teacher curriculum.

Don’t forget the pupils!

1.4 Knowledge of common student strategies, misconceptions and sticking points in relation to the content you are teaching

A knowledge of the subject should also take into account the places where misconceptions arise. It’s important is to foresee and diagnose misconceptions which hinder pupils’ understanding of science – and most will be fairly predictable. There will also be preconceptions of the subject which are not necessarily incorrect, perhaps just incomplete. While this will be better understood with a careful consideration of the elements above, it is the interaction with the learner that makes everything more than theoretical.

There are no quick fixes here, just a careful focus on the things that teachers should spend their time on.

Next time: Dimension 2 ‑Great teachers create a supportive environment for learning.