New Welsh-language versions of the Early Years and Teaching and Learning toolkits, launched today, and available via Hwb, will give schools and early years settings access to evidence from over 2,500 high-quality education studies, summarised to support the decision-making of time poor teachers and leaders.
The launch of the bilingual toolkits is part of a partnership to improve evidence use across the system in Wales to support its education equity strategy.
Together, the Toolkits cover 40 different approaches to teaching and learning that schools and early years settings might use. Approaches range from feedback, metacognition and self-regulation, to behaviour interventions, and repeating a year. Each approach is summarised in terms of:
- Its average impact on attainment
- The strength of the evidence supporting it; and
- Its cost.
The Toolkit does not make definitive claims as to what will work to improve outcomes in schools and settings. Rather, it provides a summary of the findings of academic research about which approaches might be promising and which approaches run the risk of harming the outcomes of children. The Toolkit aims to make evidence accessible to teachers, written in plain language and free to access for everyone. For example, rather than needing to read the 155 research papers on delivering feedback in schools, teachers can quickly have access to a summary that gives an objective overview of the evidence and provide clear insights in how to deliver the approach.
Each strand includes an implementation section that offers guidance about the practical realities of introducing an approach. This aims to support school leaders to put new approaches to work in the classroom. The ‘behind the average’ section discusses the differential impacts of approaches for different ages or in different subjects. This gives schools more insight into the nuances of the evidence.
Providing the Toolkits bilingually makes them accessible to many more teachers and leaders. The accompanying Welsh-language guide to the Toolkits gives more information on how teachers can mobilise this resource in their school planning.