Evidence informed practice: My journey as a Teaching and Learning Leader

I was blessed with the job of Associate Assistant Head Teacher- Teaching and Learning back in October 2024 and boy, have we been on a thrilling, exciting journey. Having put in many hours of reading and research to inform our school’s Teaching and Learning implementation policy, I was initially met with these questions: How do we bridge the gap between theory and classroom reality? How often have we read research that never translates into practice? How important is it to contextualise that research?

In my opinion, there are 3 main categories which factor into effecting evidence-informed practice. Consistency, effectiveness and equity. There are many pitfalls to becoming evidence-informed in our wonderfully over-saturated space of educational research. If, like me you too are deciding which research fits you contextually, you will have met the following frustrations: 

How do you differentiate between research fads and research facts? 

Why is everything so complicated? 

Great, I love this idea but where is the implementation strategy?

We have been on a real journey of improvement with regards to Teaching and Learning and below I will talk through a summary of our evidence-informed journey. 

These strategies are my “research facts” not fads. 

• Instructional coaching

• Retrieval practice

• Dual coding

• Modelling and scaffolding.

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This journey for us began in October 2024. We decided to embed an open door policy and follow suit with learning walks as opposed to lesson observations. We needed to get a real test of the climate. In one half term we completed 104 learning walks. (Here I will say I delivered PD around positive coaching conversations heavily influenced by our very own Adam Kohlbeck) Every staff member received timely and actionable coaching to address need. The above strategies only work for us because we understood the need. Alongside learning walks the need for these was found from our QA of lessons and learning, our PP and SEND statistics, student and staff voice. These pieces of research and strategies are contextual to our need as a school. 

From this we have been able to embed our library of evidence and research for all teachers to be able to access with specific and contextualised research which is linked to our T&L needs and our SDP. Since the launch and the inclusion of coaching, the percentage of staff accessing and using this library has gone up by 30%.

The next obstacle was to create a culture of shared language, expectations and implementation. Thus, our Teaching and Learning Handbook was born. Inspired greatly by Longendale school’s use of dual coding and imagery. This is given to all staff as a minimum expectation in lessons. Every skill has an adjoining page which includes the what, when, why, how, SEND support and behaviour support for every skill. 

This is then used in department time as a toolkit for co-planning using structure briefing time and co planning. These skills are explicitly taught to all staff in T&L briefings and to students.

This is a piece which will continue to build and I’m sure I’ll have much more to say as we embark on this next part of our journey and I would be more than happy to answer any questions in the comments.