Research 24/06/2022

To the next level: improving secondary school teaching to outstanding

By Peter Daw, Carol Robinson

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Building upon a previous report, this research focuses on schools that either achieve and maintain high-quality teaching or succeed in rapidly improving the effectiveness of lessons.

The report builds upon a previous report and reviews current UK research. It identifies some key features of teachers' strategies and professional development:

teachers' skills of questioning and explanation, based on sound subject knowledge, are seen to be important to learners’ progress
teachers' professional development is found to be most effective when based on individual need and in context and when pursued collaboratively in schools
coaching and mentoring are also useful when characterised by high-quality support.

The report makes recommendations for moving to the highest stage in teaching quality, based on interviews with university-level experts and the findings of a number of in-depth case studies at secondary schools. These recommendations focus on:

developing subject leaders
making time for subject teams to meet and plan
being subject-specific about pedagogy
establishing longer units of work as the standard currency of scrutiny
making judicious use of student self-assessment
seeing the school as a contributor to local networks.

Downloads

To the next level: improving secondary school teaching to outstanding

Building upon a previous report, this research focuses on schools that either achieve and maintain high-quality teaching or succeed in rapidly improving the effectiveness of lessons.

Download now

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