Research School Network: Adaptive Expertise in the classroom Phil Stock explores responding to learning and removing barriers in our latest blog on Inclusive teaching

The EEF’s recently published Guide to Inclusive Teaching offers clear advice about supporting every child to participate and succeed, including disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. 

Its distinction between universal approaches that support all pupils, and adaptations and additional support that some may also need, provides a helpful way to understand inclusive teaching.

The strategies for universal provision are broadly consistent with previous guidance on teaching pupils with SEND, including the ​‘Five-a-day’ approach.

Calm classrooms, positive relationships, explicit instruction, careful scaffolding and precise feedback offer a sensible and attainable foundation.

I particularly like the Check.Adapt tool and the accompanying scenario-based resources, which help teachers explore classroom decisions. For some schools, these resources will provide much-needed structure. For others, such as ours, they will strengthen existing practice. 

In our context, there are two aspects we want to develop further.

Interpreting whole-class understanding

What is implicit in Check.Adapt, but not clearly stated, is what sits between checking for understanding and taking action: the crucial work of interpretation. This involves noticing patterns in pupils’ responses and considering what might explain them. Interpretation is central to our emerging model of adaptive expertise at Greenshaw.

A check can reveal that pupils are struggling, but it cannot, on its own, explain why. Similar incorrect answers might reflect a misconception, missing prior knowledge, unfamiliar vocabulary or difficulty following an explanation. These possibilities call for different responses.

We also want those responses to connect to our teaching and learning framework, Inclusion by Design. Teachers have a shared repertoire of strategies, organised around Powerful Routines, 100% Participation and Adaptive Expertise. 

Our priority is to strengthen their judgement about which strategies to use, when to use them and how to adapt them to the learning they see.

Noticing individual barriers over time

A second aspect we want to develop is sustained attention to individual pupils. Check.Adapt organises responses around patterns of understanding across the class:

● Many misunderstand, so pause and fix.

● Some are unsure, so adapt support.

● Most understand, so extend and support.

This is sensible and, crucially, manageable for teachers teaching four, five or six periods a day. The pathways also allow responses to individual pupils.

Alongside these decisions, however, we have tried to cultivate a culture of noticing pupils who repeatedly struggle, investigating what might be getting in their way and reviewing our response over time.

​‘Most understand’ is a useful heuristic for navigating classroom complexity, but it raises an important question: what is happening for those who do not?

In observations in my school and others, I frequently see some pupils in most classes whose difficulties persist while learning moves forward around them. These often include pupils with SEND, weaker language skills or lower prior attainment. Their difficulties may appear in incorrect answers, delayed starts, limited participation or written work that does not reflect what they can explain verbally.

Leaving these pupils behind is far from the intent of Check.Adapt. Nevertheless, we want our teachers to hold both models of noticing and responding in mind simultaneously: responding to whole-class understanding in the moment, while noticing patterns in individual pupils’ learning across lessons and using these insights to identify and remove barriers over time.

Responding to class learning: Check, Interpret, Adapt

We have therefore developed Check, Interpret, Adapt (CIA) to help teachers interpret patterns of understanding across the class and select responses from our Inclusion by Design framework.

These strategies provide possibilities to consider in light of the evidence. Several pupils selecting the same incorrect answer to a diagnostic question might indicate a shared misconception. A further model could establish whether a contrasting example would help. Alternatively, pupils may understand the concept but have misread a key term, requiring a different response.

Making interpretation explicit helps teachers explain why they have selected a strategy. It also provides a focus for professional development:

• what did you notice
• what might explain it, and 
• why would this response help?

Removing individual barriers: Barrier, Action, Outcome

Alongside CIA, we use Barrier, Action, Outcome (BAO) to support sustained enquiry into individual pupils’ learning and participation.

BAO is closely connected to our Focus Five approach. Drawing on their knowledge of pupils and information in our inclusion register, each teacher identifies five pupils in each class whose learning and participation warrant more deliberate attention. This creates a manageable focus within the wider responsibility for all pupils.

Teachers gather evidence from these pupils’ responses, work, participation and interactions. Regular Focus Five learning reviews provide opportunities to draw on colleagues’ insights, investigate barriers and review actions.

Noticing patterns is important. A pupil might answer accurately in discussion yet repeatedly struggle to begin independent writing. Another might participate confidently with a partner but withdraw when asked to contribute publicly. These observations give us something more precise to investigate than a general description such as ​‘struggles with learning’.

Conversations with the pupil and insights from colleagues, support staff or parents help us form a current best hypothesis about the barrier. This remains provisional and may change as we learn more.

The action should connect to that hypothesis and, wherever possible, draw on our Inclusion by Design repertoire. A visible model, shorter instructions or an early check-in might help a pupil begin writing. Partner rehearsal or additional thinking time might support public participation.

The same apparent difficulty can have different explanations, so selecting a strategy requires judgement.

BAO also gives teachers accessible language for applying Assess, Plan, Do, Review within everyday teaching:

• investigating the barrier supports assessment;
• choosing an action and identifying success supports planning; 
• implementing the adjustment is the ​‘do’; and
• examining the outcome provides the review.

For the pupil struggling to begin writing, we might look for less prompting, greater accuracy or increasing independence. Our Focus Five reviews help us judge whether the action is helping and whether to refine, intensify or change our response.

Balancing two simultaneous decision focuses

CIA and BAO help teachers balance attention to whole-class understanding with attention to individual pupil learning.

Both models of decision-making involve noticing, interpreting and adapting. The distinction is where attention is directed and how evidence accumulates. These are simultaneous responsibilities: the teacher considers what the class needs next while remaining attentive to what is getting in an individual pupil’s way.

During a lesson, a teacher may judge that most pupils understand and are ready for independent practice. At the same time, they may notice that a Focus Five pupil again struggles to begin, despite demonstrating understanding verbally. The teacher responds to the immediate difficulty while gathering evidence that informs the pupil’s ongoing BAO cycle.

What we learn through BAO then informs subsequent teaching. An adjustment introduced for one pupil may become part of whole-class planning or prove useful for others. Checks during lessons help us judge whether it is supporting learning.

The EEF’s guide explicitly calls for individual adaptations to be integrated with universal provision and their impact monitored. CIA and BAO give us a practical way to pursue that ambition through our existing teaching framework, keeping whole-class understanding and individual pupil learning in view together.