Principles into practice: A teacher's guide to research evidence on ...

AND THEN THEREWERE...THE PRINCIPLES 13Can you boil down the principles of effective teaching and learning <strong>in<strong>to</strong></strong> ashort and lucid list? Mary James explains how it was doneLearning is more than acquiringnew knowledge and skills. It isalso about making sense of theworld and creating newknowledge. It involves testing newexperience against previouslylearned ways of thinking and doing things,and changing habits of mind. And itinvolves using the ideas of other peopleexpressed through what they say, write ormake. New knowledge is always, in thissense, a joint production.Developing the 10 principles ofteaching and learning was an act oflearning itself and had thesecharacteristics. As Deputy Direc<strong>to</strong>r ofTLRP, with responsibility for 22 schoolsprojects, one of my tasks was <strong>to</strong> try <strong>to</strong>come <strong>to</strong> some overview of their findingsso that we might be able <strong>to</strong> answer thequestion: What has TLRP found outabout effective teaching and learning inschools? There is still a long way <strong>to</strong> go withthis but I started by reading the reportsand publications that projects hadproduced <strong>to</strong> date and began <strong>to</strong> get a senseof the points of similarity and difference.But then I needed some structure <strong>to</strong>organise these thoughts. I wantedespecially <strong>to</strong> find some way <strong>to</strong>communicate these <strong>to</strong> busy teachers.Andrew Pollard, the ProgrammeDirec<strong>to</strong>r, had developed a simple way ofarranging ideas: moving out from thoseat the heart of classroom processes (aims,curriculum, teaching, assessment andrelationships) <strong>to</strong> those that support theseprocesses, such as teacher learning andMary JamesDeputy Direc<strong>to</strong>rTLRP“It’s throughcommunicationthat we find outwhat we think”policy structures.“Ten” had a niceresonance so we stuck with that. In theirsimplest form, we chose <strong>to</strong> present theprinciples in the round <strong>to</strong> show that,although there is a logic, there is nonecessary hierarchy.We completed this initial work ratherhurriedly because we wanted <strong>to</strong> issue theprinciples in a Commentary from theTLRP at the time when the SchoolsWhite Paper, proposing more specialistschools and academies (now theEducation and Inspections Act 2006),was being discussed. We especiallywanted <strong>to</strong> emphasise that improvementcomes from teaching and learning ratherthan simply changing school structures.The principles didn’t hit us in sudden“Eureka” bursts; rather, we watchedthemes and overlapping findings emerge.Often they chimed with what we knewfrom prior <strong>research</strong>. For instance, theSPRinG project on what makes effectivegroupwork was built on the Oracleproject of the 1970s, and their findingssupport the old cliché that two (or evenmore) heads are better than one. Thevalue of thinking with other people isdemonstrated throughout TLRP’s work,from the high quality talk whichcharacterises the best early years<strong>practice</strong>, as shown by the Effective Preschooland Primary Education project, <strong>to</strong>the benefits of peer review found byTowards Evidence-Based ScienceEducation. It’s through communicationthat we find out what we think.Evidence from numerous projects alsoconfirmed the need for consistent policyframeworks. Repeatedly, <strong>research</strong>ershave found that teachers’ willingness <strong>to</strong>experiment and their progress inbringing in forms of assessment whichhelp children learn have been inhibitedby a climate of testing and league tables.While Ministers on the one handencourage assessment for learning, onthe other, they continue <strong>to</strong> put pressureon schools <strong>to</strong> raise their results in highstakessummative tests. This can militateagainst the use of other, voluntary typesof assessment, even when they are shownnot only <strong>to</strong> boost children’s learning skillsand au<strong>to</strong>nomy, but also <strong>to</strong> raise theirscores in national exams.So how do we know that the principleswe have pinpointed are universal? Theshort answer is that we can never be sure.As the best scientists will say, knowledge isalways provisional. However, theprinciples are drawn from a large numberof recent, highly-regarded <strong>research</strong>projects. People seem <strong>to</strong> find theminteresting and helpful. The first 8,000copies of the Commentary flew off theshelves in a matter of weeks and, and45,000 copies were downloaded from theTLRP website in six months.We have asked our project teams <strong>to</strong>critique the principles so that we canrefine them. Some of the <strong>research</strong>ers haveproblems with the word “should” in eachprinciple, as represented on the poster,finding it <strong>to</strong>o prescriptive, but theyunderstand that teachers seek advice andguidance. So, for now, “should” remains.s