Impact Journal: Journal of chartered college of teaching (Demo)

Welcome to The Profession, the new annual publication for early career teachers, and also welcome to the fantastic career path you have chosen. Hopefully you agree with me that you have made two excellent choices. You have chosen to do the most important job that exists. Without teachers, there would be no other professionals – […]

Teachers are amazing. By entering the teaching profession, you’ve committed to making a real difference to each and every child in your classroom. We share a phenomenal opportunity to make a real positive difference. Every single day, we’re able to inspire, guide and enable the young people we teach to achieve great things. We may […]

This article summarises the report: Coe R, Aloisi C, Higgins S et al. (2014) What makes great teaching? Review of the underpinning research. Sutton Trust, October 2014. London: Sutton Trust. Available at: suttontrust.com/researcharchive/great-teaching. The aim of our review was to address three deceptively simple questions: What makes ‘great teaching’? What kinds of frameworks or tools […]

Changing perspectives When I began teaching, back in 2003, I was frequently told that I was a teacher first and subject specialist second. There was a prevalent idea that we should be teaching generic transferable skills, such as evaluation or interpretation, and that our subjects were just a vehicle through which this was delivered (Marsden, […]

Subject associations can support your professional development by providing opportunities to develop your subject knowledge and engage with colleagues within your subject specialism. They include: Association for Achievement and Improvement through Assessment (AAIA) (aaia.org.uk) Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) (teachingcitizenship.org.uk) Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education (itte.org.uk/wp/) Association for Language Learning (ALL) (all-languages.org.uk) Association for Latin Teaching (arlt.co.uk) Association for […]

Assessment can sometimes feel like a tedious chore. Teaching should be about inspiring young minds, not driving them through a series of stultifying tests. And when assessment is done badly, it can get in the way of good teaching, and even distort it. But done well, assessment can give pupils better information about their performance […]

Questions are an integral part of classroom life and essential to every teacher’s pedagogical repertoire. Questioning serves many purposes: it engages students in the learning process and provides opportunities for students to ask questions themselves. It challenges levels of thinking and informs whether students are ready to progress with their learning. Questions that probe for […]

As a memory researcher and teacher-educator, I sometimes get a negative reaction when I talk about improving teachers’ understanding of human memory. Am I suggesting that school learning is just a matter of memory? And isn’t memorisation a bad thing? I think that using memory effectively isn’t a bad thing at all, and in fact […]

Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) has recently become ‘The Next Big Thing’ in teaching. Dylan Wiliam tweeted on 26 January 2017 that he had ‘come to the conclusion Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory is the single most important thing for teachers to know.’ This is an emphatic statement and it is important to consider the implications. As teachers, there are huge demands on our time, so when considering a new strategy it is […]

Welcome to teaching, the most rewarding, challenging and exhilarating job that you will ever be involved in. You have just stepped into a world where each and every day will be different. Where you will realise, no matter how experienced you get, that no single child is the same and no matter how much you […]

As an English teacher, head of department, SENCo, Senior Leader and now head of a large innercity teacher training organisation, I have had the privilege of considering inclusion from a variety of roles and perspectives throughout my career. Morally, I see it at the heart of education and teaching practice, and practically, I see the […]

“Good teachers use good techniques and routines, but techniques and routines alone do not produce good teaching. The real art of teaching lies in teachers’ professional judgement because in teaching there is seldom one right answer.” (Tripp, 1993) In teaching, as in every profession, evidence is key to exercising good judgement. It takes time to develop […]

As a trainee you will probably be expected to write a detailed lesson plan for your teaching course. Of course, you want to be prepared, but where do you start, and how should you go about planning lessons throughout your career? Effective teaching, which is crucial for students’ understanding and progression, is supported by effective […]

One of the biggest changes in education in the last few years has been a shift of focus from pedagogy to curriculum. As a new teacher, it is increasingly important to understand the principles behind meaningful curriculum design, both for your own development and to empower you to take part in the conversation at a […]

Feedback seems extremely powerful. It is ‘among the most common features of successful teaching and learning’ with an average effect size of 0.79, ‘twice the average effect of all other schooling effects’ (Hattie, 2012). Such meta-analyses are problematic (Wiliam, 2016) and more recent reviews have offered lower effect sizes, but the overall picture is clear: ‘Good […]

A common characteristic of the British education system is the high level of student diversity that exists within classrooms. Whether new to teaching or experienced, a key challenge for all teachers is catering simultaneously for all the different learning needs. It is important to recognise that every child is an individual with unique characteristics, needs […]

When used effectively, technology can support teachers in improving educational outcomes. So, let’s explore five evidence-informed principles for great teaching and consider how technology can be applied to help along the way. 1 Quality of instruction It will come as no surprise that quality of instruction is key to raising attainment. Following their review of […]

This is it. Your class, without anyone sitting at the back. Your class, without having to justify every move. Your class. Utterly brilliant and utterly terrifying at the same time. There is, however, a fundamental problem with taking on a new class and being able to immediately manage their behaviour. You don’t know them and, […]

For too long, education research lived in an academic ‘secret garden’, accessible only to a select few. To get even a very basic overview of the research around one topic, you would have had to have spent hours – if not days – reading papers, usually presented in inaccessible jargon and hidden in expensive journals. […]

Fitting everything in is tough, and that goes for everyone, whether you’re new to a job or you’ve been in it for years. But what if we thought harder about our time management and took a deliberate approach to the waking day, not just the working day? What would the impact be on our practice […]

Teaching assistants (TAs) are one of the biggest investments we make in terms of provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those eligible for the Pupil Premium funding. Most TAs spend the majority of their time supporting these pupils in lessons across the curriculum. Yet, perhaps counter-intuitively, the evidence shows that […]

‘Teachers need to know how to look after themselves. This may seem a simple and easy task; however, when faced with a multitude of teaching tasks, one of the areas all teachers can miss, is taking care of themselves.’ (Turner and Braine, 2016) Teaching is a privilege! What other job enables you to transform lives? […]

I write this article as a proud member of the teaching profession. This is no less true today than it was when I first stepped foot in the classroom as a primary teacher back in 2002. Admittedly, it was a different classroom. The challenges teachers face today are different. Regardless, the opportunity to shape young […]

Like any new teacher, you will be keen to make a prompt start with your planning for the new academic year. However, at this point, I urge you to stop. Taking time to ask your new departmental colleagues key questions before you begin and making the time to build your professional networks within and beyond […]

Engaging with educational research, alongside gaining practical experience in the classroom, is fundamental to developing the knowledge and understanding you need to teach effectively. Critiquing research evidence will continue to be important throughout your career, helping you to make informed judgements about ‘what works’ in education and to challenge the kinds of myths around teaching […]

The late, great Ted Wragg once calculated that a teacher typically makes upwards of a thousand ‘on-the-spot, evaluative decisions’ on any given day (MacBeath, 2012). When I first came across this, I thought: ‘That sounds like a lot… you’d be exhausted!’ However, when you consider how busy a school is – how busy a classroom […]

Learning to teach always involves learning from and in schools, and all prospective teachers have to take responsibility for planning, teaching and assessment as well as ensuring the progress and wellbeing of their students in order to meet the Teacher Standards. This cannot be done in theory, at a distance or by proxy. It is […]

Your first year as a qualified teacher is one of the most important in your career, so how do you make the most of it and keep developing? Teachers typically develop faster in the first years in the classroom than when more experienced (Kraft and Papay, 2014). However, not all development is effective, and some […]

First things first: Who are you? Faced with the challenge of finding a school where you will be happy in your work, where does a newly qualified teacher begin? Well, begin with yourself. Ask yourself a series of fundamental questions: Why did I choose to teach? What type of school am I most likely to […]

Completing teacher training and induction is pretty intense anywhere. Figuring out curriculum expectations, planning lessons, working out how to build on successes and avoid bear traps, navigating your way around school rules and staff rooms and, above all, getting to know your students create big, cognitive, practical, emotional and time demands. This article brings into […]

Welcome to the teaching profession. You have taken the decision to begin your journey as a teacher and, as such, to start a career working with children and young people that you will soon come to realise is truly the most fulfilling, demanding and exciting job you could have chosen. I became a teacher when […]

Make sure to have a look at the end of each article for helpful tips and links, and here are some more! Books As a Chartered College member, you are entitled to 20% off the full range of popular education titles on the Routledge website. Further discounts are available to you from: SAGE Education Bloomsbury Education John Catt Crown House […]

Assessment for learning (AfL): Also known as formative assessment, the process of gathering evidence through assessment to inform and support next steps for a students’ teaching and learning Attainment grouping: the practice of grouping students according to measures of attainment Baseline assessment: a measurement of a child’s performance conducted within a few weeks of them […]