Writing for The Telegraph Kevin Stannard of the Girls’ Day School Trust discussed the reaction new Sutton Trust research on teaching practices.

Beware Tweet-length summaries of sophisticated research. The recent report on what makes great teaching, sponsored by the Sutton Trust, loses a lot in being boiled down. It deserves to be read and digested in detail and in the round.

So far, rapid responses have ranged from celebration that the final nails have been driven into the coffin of progressive education (e.g. discovery learning has no basis in research), through the ‘shock, horror’ finding that setting by ability obstructs learning (the report is in fact rather more nuanced than the headline suggests), to the ‘No s*** Sherlock’ observation that the “quality of instruction” has a significant impact on student learning.

Much of Professor Coe’s report focuses on the challenge of defining what constitutes great teaching, and on how to promote it once identified.

Read the full article here.