A beginner’s guide to Professor Steve Higgins

What is he best known for?  Higgins specialises in the use of research evidence to support effective spending in schools – probably most famously with the Sutton Trust and Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit; a summary of education research that offers advice for teachers and schools on how to improve attainment ...

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If teachers could learn from each other more, maybe teaching could be a lifelong profession – not a four-year sacrifice

When I started in teaching, I wanted to copy everything I loved about the teachers who had made a difference to me. By the time I started in the classroom I was very much in favour of being tough on kids and demanding superb output from them. I was anti-liberal and, looking back, too much so. Teaching English was a huge amount of fun, but in my ear...

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How to run a journal club in your school: top tips from research

 For any school dipping their toe into evidence-based practice, journal clubs may seem like an obvious activity to try. It gives teachers chance to engage with research and discuss their ideas, and how they might implement the findings, with colleagues in a supportive, environment. But what does the research say about how journal clubs work be...

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Get it right, and teaching is life-transforming and exciting. Get it wrong, and stress takes over

 Teaching is a highly nuanced, complex art, where the most effective teachers build up a range of strategies over years and years of practice. I opted out of the classroom too early to do that, and moved into what in many ways is a less complex, but equally demanding, role of senior administrator, or leader, in schools. I taught for about 15 y...

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How to stop research interventions that don't seem to work: 10 key steps

In early December, there was a strange alignment between the real-world and Twitter when the issue of evidence-based practice in education was discussed in three conversations: The Coalition for Evidence-Based Education talked about the notion of strategic abandonment (thank you @DrCarolineCreaby)Later in the evening, #DebatED discussed "wheth...

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