High Quality Teaching Flashcards

High Quality Teaching & SEND

EEF Recommendation 3: High Quality Teaching for All

  • Good teaching for pupils with SEND is, to a great extent, good teaching for all pupils.

  • Avoid searching for a 'magic bullet' and instead focus on powerful teaching strategies that teachers already possess.

  • Teachers should develop a repertoire of flexible strategies.

Key Strategies to Emphasize:

  • Flexible grouping

  • Cognitive and metacognitive strategies

  • Explicit instruction

  • Using technology to support pupils with SEND

  • Scaffolding

Focus 2: Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies

Cognition

  • Cognition is defined as the mental processes involved in knowing, understanding, and learning.

  • Cognitive strategies are skills like memorization techniques or subject-specific strategies for problem-solving (e.g., in math).

  • Cognitive strategies are fundamental and considered the 'bread and butter' of effective teaching.

Metacognition

  • Metacognition is defined as the ways pupils monitor and purposefully direct their thinking and learning.

  • Metacognitive strategies are used to monitor or control cognition.

    • Examples: Checking if a problem-solving approach worked or selecting the best cognitive strategy for a task.

EEF Guidance Report: Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning

  • The report includes seven recommendations (not specified in this excerpt).

Impact of Metacognition and Self-Regulation

  • Very high impact for very low cost, based on extensive evidence.

    • Implementation cost is rated as low (£££££).

    • Evidence strength is rated very high (#####).

    • Impact is estimated at +7 months of additional progress over a year.

What are Metacognition and Self-Regulation Approaches?

  • They support pupils in thinking explicitly about their own learning.

  • They often involve teaching specific strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating learning.

  • The goal is to provide pupils with a repertoire of strategies and the skills to select the most suitable one for a given task.

Three Essential Components of Self-Regulated Learning:

  • Cognition: The mental processes involved in knowing, understanding, and learning.

  • Metacognition: Often defined as ‘learning to learn’.

  • Motivation: Willingness to engage cognitive and metacognitive skills.

Key Findings on Metacognition and Self-Regulation

  1. Potential Impact: High (+7 months additional progress), but requires pupils to take responsibility and understand what is required to succeed.

  2. Explicit Teaching: Explicitly teaching strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating specific aspects of learning can be effective.

  3. Challenging Tasks: Approaches are more effective when applied to challenging tasks rooted in the usual curriculum content.

  4. Teacher Modeling: Teachers can demonstrate effective use of metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies by modeling their own thought processes, such as when interpreting text or solving math problems. Teachers should also promote metacognitive talk related to lesson objectives.

  5. Professional Development: Professional development can help teachers develop a mental model of metacognition and self-regulation, along with an understanding of teaching metacognitive strategies.

Effectiveness of Metacognition and Self-Regulation

  • Average impact: Additional seven months’ progress over the course of a year.

  • Effective in collaborative groups where learners support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion.

Behind the Numbers:

  • Primary school pupils have typically shown more effectiveness (+8 months) than secondary school pupils (+7 months).

  • Successful across the curriculum, especially in mathematics and science.

  • Studies using digital technology (e.g., intelligent tutoring systems) show particularly high impacts on pupil outcomes.

Closing the Disadvantage Gap

  • Disadvantaged pupils are less likely to use metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies without explicit instruction.

  • Explicit teaching could encourage these pupils to practice and use these skills more frequently.

  • With explicit teaching and feedback, pupils are more likely to use these strategies independently and habitually, enabling them to manage their own learning and overcome challenges.

Metacognitive Strategies: Before, During, and After

Three Sections:

  • Planning

  • Monitoring

  • Evaluating

Analogy:

  • Similar to the 'Plan-Do-Review' mantra used in elite sport (e.g., Team GB at London 2012).

Nine Simple Questions to Develop Metacognitive Strategies:

  • Before a Task:

    • Is this similar to a previous task?

    • What do I want to achieve?

    • What should I do first?

  • During The Task:

    • Am I on the right track?

    • What can I do differently?

    • Who can I ask for help?

  • After a Task:

    • What worked well?

    • What could I have done better?

    • Can I apply this to other situations?

Chunking vs. Scaffolding

  • Scaffolding: Gradually removing support and guidance until the learner can independently complete a given task.

  • Chunking: Dividing a larger task into more manageable separate ‘chunks’.

Benefits of Chunking:

  • Allows each component to be given due attention.

  • Analogy: Painting one room at a time instead of the entire house.

Efficacious Learning: Two Key Principles

  1. Occurs in small chunks that can make it through the bottlenecks of short term memory and cognitive load, designed to build upon each other.

  2. Series of chunks should build upon each other by calling into use the material learned in earlier chunks, providing both repetition and connection opportunities.

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