Turn a training day into a classroom change

A training day starts a change but cannot make it

To turn a training day into a classroom change, choose one small thing to do differently. Try it in the same class for about five weeks, and judge it by what pupils do. The certificate proves you were in the room. The change, and the evidence around it, shows what you did with the time.

This matters most when you are asked to show development rather than describe it: at appraisal, in an application, or in a coaching conversation. A list of courses tells a reader what you were offered. A short account of a change, the evidence you gathered and what happened to pupils tells them how you work.

What a one-off course usually leaves out

The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance report on effective professional development, published in 2021, sets out 14 mechanisms in four groups. The groups are building knowledge, motivating staff, developing teaching techniques and embedding practice.

The report describes early, tentative evidence that effective programmes are more likely to include at least one mechanism from each of the four groups. It calls this a balanced design.

Embedding practice is the group that most obviously needs your own classroom. It includes prompts and cues, action planning, encouraging self-monitoring and repeating a technique in the same situation until it becomes habit. A well designed course can model and rehearse a technique. It cannot repeat the technique in your own lessons, week after week.

One-off courses tend to lean on the first two groups. Prompts, action planning and repetition in your own classroom are the parts most likely to be missing. If the early evidence holds, a course on its own is only part of a programme, and the rest is yours to build.

Start from a reflection and narrow it to one moment

Most development starts with a broad reflection: an observation note, a comment from a coach, a priority in an assessment report. "Involve more pupils in discussion" is a fair reflection. It is not yet something you can do on Tuesday.

Narrow it in three steps. Pick one class. Pick one moment in the lesson where the reflection applies. Then write what you will do differently in that moment, in words a colleague could watch for.

Take a science teacher in her third year. A colleague's observation note and her own reflection agree: her questions go to the same few confident pupils. She picks her Year 8 class and the five minutes of questioning that open each lesson. Her change: she gives thirty seconds of thinking time, then asks pupils by name from a list rather than taking hands.

• It happens in a lesson you already teach every week.
• Someone watching for ten minutes could see whether you did it.
• It takes no more than a few minutes of the lesson.
• It names something pupils will do differently.

Write the plan with context, frequency, duration and intensity

The same report treats action planning as one of the mechanisms that embed practice. It suggests a plan should say in which situation you will use the technique, how often, for how long and how intensively. A plan that names the class, the moment and the number of weeks is easier to keep than a good intention.

The science teacher writes: in every Year 8 lesson for five weeks, during the opening questions, I give thirty seconds of thinking time and then ask at least eight pupils by name. She puts a small mark on the first slide of each lesson as a prompt. That mark is a cue, another of the embedding mechanisms.

Agree the plan with someone if you can: a coach, a mentor or a colleague in the same department. Setting and agreeing goals is one of the report's motivating mechanisms, and a colleague who knows the plan will ask about it.

Gather classroom evidence you will actually keep

Evidence only helps if gathering it survives a busy week. Aim for two minutes a lesson, recorded in the same place each time. Collect the same evidence for two or three lessons before you start, under your old habit, so you have something to compare against. The science teacher ticks on her seating plan who answers, and sets one written exit question at the end of each lesson.

• A tally on your seating plan of who spoke, before and after the change.
• One exit question per lesson, marked the same way throughout.
• Two or three pieces of pupil work on the same kind of task, from before and after.
• A short note when the plan did not happen, and why.
• A ten-minute visit from a colleague who watches for that one moment and nothing else.

Judge whether it helped pupils, honestly

After five weeks, put the before and after evidence side by side. Ask three questions. Did I do what I planned, most of the time? Did pupils do something differently? Is the difference big enough to be worth the minutes it costs?

Be fair to yourself in both directions. A new routine often looks better simply because you are paying attention to it. A routine that looks flat in week two may need more time. If you missed the plan in half your lessons, the evidence says little about the technique and a lot about the plan.

The science teacher's ticks spread from one side of the seating plan to most of the room. On her exit questions, the quieter pupils start giving reasons rather than single words, which her baseline lessons did not show. She keeps the routine, then checks the seating plan again three weeks later to see whether it has held once the novelty has worn off.

Then write it up in four lines: the reflection, the change, the evidence and the decision to keep, adjust or drop it.

A scenario-based report can supply the starting reflection. The OTO Assess Teacher Development Assessment sets out strengths, reflection questions and development priorities from how you would act in 80 realistic situations. It describes choices in scenarios, so your classroom evidence decides what is true. If your school has assigned it, start at https://assess.otovios.com/assess/faq.