Unpacking the EEF Toolkit

The EEF Toolkit: Unlocking the padlocks and getting beyond the headlines

What are the top three most accessed elements of the toolkit, any ideas? Well not surprisingly, the most viewed Toolkit Strands are:

Metacognition and self-regulation (+8 months progress);
Feedback (+8 months progress);
Mastery Learning (+5 months progress).

Now, not that I’m sceptical or anything but is this just maybe because these three elements are perceived as having the maximum impact on student progress or am I being facetious and we are, as teachers, actually more discerning than this? Do we actually explore beyond the toolkit headlines?

Interestingly enough if we take the feedback strand for example, the vital point to consider is not to expect that by simply ‘giving more feedback’, for instance, every pupil in your school will make eight months more progress than the average; poor feedback is still poor feedback however much we do! The toolkit identifies and explains these idiosyncrasies demonstrating this through statements like the following;

Feedback studies tend to show very high effects on learning. However, it also has a very high range of effects and some studies show that feedback can have negative effects and make things worse. It is therefore important to understand the potential benefits and the possible limitations of feedback as a teaching and learning approach.

The toolkit takes more than 10,000 studies and distils them into 34 interventions allowing teachers to make informed choices about their teaching using the best available evidence. The EEF describe the toolkit brilliantly as ‘an accessible, teacher-friendly summary of educational research. The ‘Which?’ for education.’ It talks about the toolkit being ‘practice focused’ and that it ‘gives schools the information they need to make informed decisions and narrow the gap.’

In reality we know that the toolkit is much more nuanced than just ‘34 interventions’ and that digging a little bit deeper into each one of these, you will find a wealth of information. The ‘what should I consider section’ is particularly helpful and includes advice on how you can begin to implement each strategy. You should also consider exploring the additional resources contained within each section; this is where you will find the information of real benefit for teachers. Deciphering this information and distilling it for use in the classroom is the key.

It is strongly advised to remember though that all of the research findings, such as “+8 months’ progress” give an indication of average impact and an ‘average’ can include a very broad range of data points [as described above with regard to the feedback strand]. Therefore, the professional judgement of the teacher informed by good research evidence is likely to offer the most productive approach going forward.

When using the toolkit then we need teachers to go beyond the glossy headlines and find out more about what the evidence actually tells us? We should use the evidence as a starting point for dialogue and try to understand the ‘active ingredients’ of implementation; how will this work in my specific school context?

For more information on the terminology used in the toolkit, why not take a look below at our handy little toolkit guide for teachers; a great resource to send out to the staff in your school.

Stephen Foreman: Huntington Research-lead

If you are interested in learning more about how to use evidence more effectively in your school feel free to contact me directly at st.foreman@huntington-ed.org.uk or alternatively you could sign up for our Huntington Research school newsletter here https://huntington.researchschool.org.uk/about-us/sign-up /

10 November, 2017 —