Evidence-informed practice is now a common phrase used across schools in the UK. Teachers and school leaders are actively seeking out research to identify the ‘best bets’ to implement in the classroom.
Making good use of day-to-day evidence in our classrooms supports curriculum planning and provides a clear basis for demonstrating impact. Most importantly, it improves outcomes for young people through enabling teachers to respond more effectively to their needs.
Evidence-informed practice should start inside the classroom, by asking three questions:
- Do I collect evidence of learning for all learners in every lesson?
To move learning forward, we must find out what students already know. We can’t predict what students will learn in a lesson; we don’t know what’s inside their heads. This isn’t easy as many students are reluctant to share their thinking. Teachers need to embed a range of techniques into the learning process to collect better evidence to inform the next steps in teaching.
- How do I respond to the evidence I collect?
Feedback from students is a waste of time if it’s not acted upon. This is the big idea of formative assessment, that evidence about learning is used to adapt teaching to better meet students’ needs. These needs have become more varied since the pandemic.
The evidence collected must lead to a response to address gaps in knowledge or problems identified. Teachers need to be clear on what is critical within a lesson or series of lessons through quality learning intentions and have curriculum time built in for actions to be taken.
- What impact does this have on learning, how do I know?
Teaching must be a contingent and highly responsive activity that should be embedded in lessons, moment-by-moment and day-by-day. This involves changing teachers and students’ behaviours in the classroom. We need to continuously check understanding, deepen thinking and elicit reasoning to ensure learning moves forward.
The brilliant five key strategies of formative assessment summarise this:
| Where the learner is going | Where the learner is | How to get there | |
| Teacher | Clarify and share learning intentions, understand and learning intentions | Engineering effective discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning | Providing feedback that moves learners forward |
| Peer | Activating students as learning resources for one another |
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| Learner | Activating students as owners of their own learning |
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Adapted from Leahy, Lyon, Thompson, & Wiliam (2005)
Changing teachers’ habits
Everyday teaching activities, for example, questioning, sharing learning intentions and success criteria and using our favoured techniques is habit based. The routines we develop from these repeated behaviours may not always be as effective as we hope. Reflecting on the everyday action’s teachers take to collect evidence and respond, refining these to become more effective will lead to better learning and improved student outcomes.
Teacher habit change takes time. As in the classroom, it’s not just what we do, but how you do it that matters. Successful implementation of the programme requires schools to pay regular attention to specific additional activities, this is where SSAT’s support is here for you.
Want to make a bigger difference?
The Embedding Formative Assessment programme, is the only whole school programme with proven impact at GSCE in an EEF research trial.
- Direct focus on post-Covid recovery for all learners
- 1% of teachers time working in Teacher Learning Communities leading to two additional months of progress for students
- A shift from curriculum intent to implementation
- Suitable for all schools, all phases
- Fully supported programme with training with regular contact and training from EFA expert
Find out more about Embedding Formative Assessment, a two-year professional development programme for all schools and colleges that has been independently proven to increase student achievement.
