Research School Network: Adaptive Expertise: more a mindset than a set of strategies Phil Stock considers Adaptive Expertise, one strand of Greenshaw’s Inclusion by Design teaching and learning framework.

In my previous post, I explored the rationale behind the development of our Inclusion by Design teaching and learning framework. I explained why we felt it was necessary to redesign our approach from the ground up to support our ambition of becoming a truly inclusive school.

In this blog, I want to examine one strand of the framework in greater detail: Adaptive Expertise. In particular, I want to explore how we think about Adaptive Expertise at Greenshaw and why we see it less as a collection of strategies – such as scaffolding or modelling – and more as a mindset or professional disposition that shapes how teachers notice, interpret and respond to pupils’ needs in the classroom.

What is Adaptive Expertise?

In order to explain how we conceive of Adaptive Expertise, I want to draw upon an example maths question that I have adapted from Craig Barton’s Diagnostic Questions website.

The question is, ​‘What different kinds of knowledge would a teacher require to be able to respond to the following classroom situation?’

When you think about it, responding effectively to this typical classroom scenario requires a considerable amount of professional knowledge and judgement.

1. For a start, you would need secure knowledge of the maths curriculum and of the misconceptions pupils commonly hold when calculating area, such as adding all the sides together or incorrectly applying the method for finding the area of a triangle to a rectangle.
2. The incorrect responses are all informative because each reveals a different underlying misconception. One pupil may be calculating perimeter instead of area, while another may be incorrectly applying the method for finding the area of a triangle.
3. You would also need strong assessment knowledge to be able to craft questions capable of accurately revealing the above misconceptions. Alongside this, you would need a strong grasp of how to elicit pupils’ thinking accurately and efficiently, as well as an ability to interpret their responses meaningfully in real time.
4. Beyond curriculum and assessment knowledge, you would also need considerable pedagogical expertise, particularly in how to address common errors in understanding in a way that helps pupils understand the correct process without undermining their confidence or self-efficacy.

But all of the above also requires deep knowledge of the pupils themselves:

• which pupils have lower working memory capacity or slower processing speed and may therefore require additional scaffolds or prompts;
• who may need support with emotional regulation; and
• who may require carefully framed explanations in order to fully understand the teaching.

Adaptive Expertise involves not only possessing all this knowledge, but also the ability to deploy it effectively at the right time, in the right way and with the right pupils. It’s the integration of curriculum knowledge, assessment knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and deep knowledge of the pupils in the class, all within the specific circumstances of the present moment.

In this sense, Adaptive Expertise is less a discrete set of strategies and more a professional mindset: the ability to notice, interpret and respond to the shifting demands of the classroom without lowering ambition.

Adaptive Expertise overlaps significantly with responsive teaching and formative assessment because all depend upon teachers accurately interpreting pupils’ thinking and adjusting instruction accordingly.

In this sense, adaptive expertise is not simply about selecting strategies, but about disciplined professional noticing and responsive decision-making.

Why is Adaptive Expertise difficult to develop?

At the heart of this articulation of Adaptive Expertise is the discipline of noticing and synthesising the insights gained from interpreting the raft of incoming information from pupils in such a way as to promote further learning.

In many ways, this mirrors the logic of the Assess – Plan – Do – Review cycle (APDR), traditionally associated with SEND support. Teachers are continually noticing patterns in pupils’ responses, interpreting possible barriers to learning and participation, adapting their teaching and then reviewing the impact in real time.

This is precisely what we have been working on at Greenshaw: taking the APDR cycle and placing it at the heart of classroom practice. If we want to realise our inclusive ambitions, we have to locate the process of identifying and removing barriers to learning firmly inside the classroom, rather than treating it as something detached from everyday teaching, as is often the case.

Yet in a world where many schools, including ours, have heavily codified aspects of teaching and learning, particularly the more routine aspects of pedagogy, perhaps this aspect of professional judgement has been neglected.

In these instances, teaching can easily become more process-led than learner-led. While the codification of teaching and learning has many benefits, particularly in making effective classroom practice more explicit and consistent, it may also have reduced opportunities for teachers to develop the professional judgement that sits behind instructional decision-making.

Codified routines matter enormously because they reduce complexity and create predictable conditions for learning. As I explored in my previous blog, these routines are vital in helping pupils feel safe and understand what is expected of them. However, routines alone are insufficient. Inclusive classrooms also require teachers to recognise when pupils are not responding as expected and to adapt deliberately without reducing challenge or participation.

Developing this disciplined approach to noticing and responding to pupils in real time is complex. Teachers can sometimes become over-reliant on the routine application of predetermined strategies without fully developing an appreciation of the conditions under which those approaches are likely to be most effective.

This challenge is further complicated by the increasing demands on teachers to make classrooms as inclusive as possible and to meet the needs of a growing number of pupils with SEND. Yet it is often these pupils for whom we most need to improve our ability to observe, interpret and respond to the impact of our teaching on their learning.

How do we cultivate Adaptive Expertise?

Developing Adaptive Expertise at Greenshaw has been a difficult and ongoing process. We are still very much at the start of this journey and are continuing to work collaboratively to understand both the challenges involved and what is impactful and manageable for busy teachers.

Fortunately, we already had structures in place that made embedding the APDR cycle into ordinary classroom practice both manageable and meaningful. For nearly six years, our Focus Five approach has provided a scalable way of concentrating our attention on the pupils for whom responsive teaching is likely to make the greatest difference.

Over the past two years, teachers have been regularly reviewing the impact of their teaching on up to five key pupils within each of their classes. Some of these pupils have been identified by the school as requiring additional targeted in-class support as part of The Hundred, while teachers are also able to select pupils using a combination of the Inclusion Register and their own professional judgement based on the needs emerging within their subjects.

To make this process meaningful – and to better understand how teachers think about the pupils in front of them – staff complete short half-termly reviews of their Focus Five pupils. Over time, these reviews have evolved to include greater structure around identifying barriers, evaluating adjustments and reflecting on impact.

As a school, one of the most important shifts has been a gradual movement away from describing challenges as fixed characteristics residing within the pupil towards a greater focus on identifying barriers to learning and participation that teachers might be able to address through classroom practice.

Comments have increasingly moved away from statements such as ​‘This pupil struggles with concentration’ towards more precise reflections such as ​‘This pupil struggled to sustain attention during extended teacher explanation, so I introduced more frequent checks for understanding and participation.’

More recently, this thinking has become increasingly structured through a shared Barrier – Action – Outcome framework, encouraging teachers to move beyond description towards clearer causal reasoning about learning and participation.

It has also been necessary to provide teachers with the time to engage in this kind of reflection properly. These conversations require teachers to look carefully at pupil work, assessment information and classroom participation in order to evaluate the impact of their teaching on learning over time.

One colleague jokingly suggested that it now made sense to ​“BAO-bun it” when reflecting on pupils through the APDR cycle. The phrase stuck and has gradually become part of our shared language around Adaptive Expertise and professional noticing.

Importantly, this process involves noticing:

• before the lesson (during planning)
• during the lesson (through teaching and interaction) and
• after the lesson (through evaluating pupil responses and outcomes).

In this sense, Adaptive Expertise is not a single moment of adaptation, but an ongoing process of interpretation and responsive decision-making.

I am not suggesting for a moment that all teachers have fully embedded the APDR cycle into their everyday practice. However, we are increasingly seeing Adaptive Expertise develop not simply as a collection of strategies, but as a disciplined way of noticing, interpreting and responding to pupils’ needs within the flow of everyday classroom practice.

Ultimately, inclusion is realised through thousands of responsive decisions made within mainstream classrooms every day. Adaptive Expertise therefore matters because it shapes how teachers notice pupils, interpret barriers to learning and participation, and respond without lowering ambition.

Developing this kind of professional judgement is difficult work. But if we want all pupils to succeed, participate and belong, then cultivating Adaptive Expertise must become a central part of how we think about teaching and inclusion.