Evidence & Research Update

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Research Schools Networks have a number of programmes and resources to support schools and advance understanding of implementing evidence based practice. Listed below are several new documents, podcasts and blogs.

Updated EEF Implementation Guide

An educational approach or idea may seem great in principle, but what really matters is how it manifests itself in the day-to-day work of people in schools, colleges, and early years settings.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) updated guidance on effective implementation – and its accompanying resources – are designed to help teachers and leaders make sure new approaches or practices have the biggest possible impact on children and young people’s outcomes.

Based on a new review of the evidence, the EEF has updated guidance and it is now focused on 3 key elements:

1. The behaviours that drive effective implementation.
2. The contextual factors that facilitate implementation.
3. A structured, but flexible, process to enact implementation.

The process is designed to support you to do implementation, while the behaviours and contextual factors help you to do it well.

View their webpages for full information and download the guide.

Adaptive Teaching Blog Post

Gary Aubin is an Associate for the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and SEND specialist shares a 5-minute read on adaptive teaching based around the EEF’s ‘Five-a-day approach.’ This describes the 5 approaches that the evidence base underpinning the SEN in Mainstream guidance report suggests teachers should be considering for all learners, including those with SEND.

Two new Practice Reviews

In this post the EEF introduce 2 new practice reviews highlighting some of the key challenges for schools in teaching secondary maths and writing.

The first review, by a team from Sheffield Hallam Institute of Education looked at the practice of teaching maths across secondary schools. It highlights previous research that finds that due to the lack of specialist teachers, the small number available are being prioritised for ‘high stakes’ classes in many schools, such as high prior attainers and those with GCSE exams coming up. This could mean that many younger pupils and classes with low prior attainers are more likely to be taught by teachers who do not specialise in maths.

The second, by a team from Pearson, looked at the practice of teaching writing across both primary and secondary schools. A survey of teachers investigated what they thought were the biggest challenges to teaching writing. Issues like poor pupil vocabulary and inconsistent approaches to teaching writing came through strongly for both primary and secondary school teachers.

Implementing Oracy – Exploring the Why

One of Staffordshire Research School’s evidence advocates, John Marsh, explores how to use the new implementation guidance to start to think about the ‘WHY’. This three-part blog series will explore the why, the how and the impact of implementing Oracy at Southfields Community Primary School, while also giving an insight into the application of the latest EEF guidance on implementation.

We’re talking about feedback!

This blog is the third in the series from Staffordshire Research School and focuses on recommendation 3 from the EEF guidance report on teacher feedback.