Education Endowment Foundation:Clips from the Classroom: The significance of social support in developing teaching techniques

Teachers love seeing the progress their pupils make and the knowledge they absorb.

But teachers also love to learn themselves. Whether that’s deepening their subject knowledge or refining a teaching strategy to enhance classroom practice.

In my experience, we love to learn together. Whether it’s collaboratively planning a lesson, reading some research with a colleague or watching a lesson as part of a teacher research group, I’ve always enhanced my understanding through the purposeful conversations these activities have prompted.

The EEF’s Effective Professional development guidance report highlights the significance of arranging practical social support on improving pupil outcomes. It is an important mechanism in developing teaching techniques.

When developing teaching practice during PD sessions, snippets of video classroom practice can be a stimulus for focused and productive discussions between colleagues.

The Research Schools Network Clips from the Classroom offer a range of maths videos which aim to exemplify evidence informed classroom practice. There’s an array of topics covered across several phases.

Videos include:

• Modelling metacognition during problem solving (Alexandra Park Research School)
• manipulativesobjects that educators and children can move and interact with to represent mathematical ideas (including fingers, everyday objects, such as buttons or pine cones, and mathematical resources such as Numicon, Cuisenaire rods).-matter”>Manipulativesobjects that educators and children can move and interact with to represent mathematical ideas (including fingers, everyday objects, such as buttons or pine cones, and mathematical resources such as Numicon, Cuisenaire rods). Matter (Great Heights Research School)
• The power of presenting the problem and solution together (Lancashire Research School)
• The activating of prior knowledge (Staffordshire Research School)

Focus questions within the clips provide talking points for discussion. They can promote collaboration between colleagues – working to unpick what they see, and the strategies used.

Pause points within the clips can provide reflection time for peers to discuss how the practice could apply to their own context.

Why not look at the Clips from the Classroom collection and see how they could be used in your context to support collaborative discussions about classroom practice?