I have been a teacher for 26 years, a Headteacher for 11 years and, at the age of 50, this much I know about what makes great teaching?
I have never thought so hard about teaching as I am currently. Working with Alex Quigley and Professor Rob Coe hurts my brain; every time I think we get somewhere close to defining good teaching their thinking dissolves the definition and we start again. Consequently, I was delighted earlier this week when Rob sent me a copy of a publication he co-wrote for the Sutton Trust entitled What makes great teaching? I have read it once and will read it several more times over the next few days. Here’s my favourite paragraph so far:

Ultimately, the definition of effective teaching is that which results in the best possible student outcomes. There is currently no guaranteed recipe for achieving this: no specifiable combination of teacher characteristics, skills and behaviours consistently predicts how much students will learn. It follows that the best feedback to guide the pursuit of effectiveness is to focus on student progress…

The Golden Thread through to student outcomes; it’s so obvious isn’t it? I bang on about it all the time…
GT 2
 
The key to life is to know it’s good when it’s happening, not when you look back after the event. On Sunday I fly to Washington DC to spend three days with people like Tom Sherrington, Ani Magill and, yes, you guessed it, Professor Rob Coe, to explore how we create the conditions in schools to improve the quality of teaching. I’ve packed the Ibuprofen.

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This post has 10 Comments

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  1. Good luck – it sounds like a fascinating few days ahead. Your post resonate with me. As a new school governor I am struggling to unpick the school’s robust narrative about good teaching when the progress and achievement
    data tell a different story.

  2. Good luck – it sounds like a fascinating few days ahead. Your post resonate with me. As a new school governor I am struggling to unpick the school’s robust narrative about good teaching when the progress and achievement
    data tell a different story.

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