The Big Idea 💡
At The Academy, we believe that every teacher and coach should have a deep understanding of how learning happens. Our Learning and Teaching Principles ensure that every member of staff—teachers and coaches alike—has a solid grasp of the learning process and the teaching principles that underpin it.
A Closer Look 👀
As Tom Sherrington highlights in his blog “A Model for the Learning Process”, having a clear, shared model of how learning works helps teachers make better decisions about their practice. It provides clarity on what’s happening in students’ minds as they filter, encode, retrieve, and consolidate knowledge.
With a clear mental model of how students learn, teachers move beyond just using strategies like retrieval practice, scaffolding, and modelling as part of a tick-box lesson plan —they apply them with expert precision, responsive to real student needs.
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🎯 What about coaching?
But understanding learning isn’t just important for teachers—it’s equally vital for coaches, who support and develop teaching expertise. StepLab’s blog “Coaching and Diagnosis: Part 1” highlights the importance of identifying learning problems - defined as the fundamental challenges that teachers face around instruction, the classroom environment, behaviour management, curriculum design, and more.1
For a coach to identify a learning problem, they must have a deep understanding of what learning looks like—not just the strategies and teaching techniques being used in the classroom. Otherwise, coaching risks becoming a tick-box exercise, where strategies are merely observed rather than evaluated for their actual impact on student learning.
It is important to ensure that our coaches and teachers share the same deep understanding of learning and teaching principles. This leads to:
✅ A focus on diagnosing learning problems, not just checking for strategies
which leads to…
✅ High-quality coaching and feedback that goes beyond surface-level observations
which leads to…
✅ Coherent and impactful, research-backed teaching practices across subjects and year levels
which leads to…
✅ A school culture where teaching is intentional, expert, and deeply aligned with how students actually learn.
📝 More from WAGOLL Teaching
My latest posts from www.wagollteaching.com…
5 Triggers to Boost Classroom Engagement: Harnessing Dopamine and Cortisol for Learning ➡️ Understanding how dopamine and cortisol influence classroom engagement
Retrieval Practice: 7 Activities That Work in Primary ➡️ A handy list of retrieval activities for Primary children
In a bit,
Coops 😎
Enjoying this? Paid subscribers get bonus classroom and CPD resources every month.
Kennedy, 2016b