It is the role of our influential Advisory Board to ensure that everything we do is focused on the ultimate aim of improving teaching and learning, and subsequently student outcomes.
These reports set out the research, theory and thinking behind the Great Teaching Toolkit, why we do what we do, and how it can make a difference in schools.
Chair of the Advisory Board
Dr Mick Walker is a former Director of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) and Executive Director of Education at the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), where he was accountable for National Curriculum assessments and prior to the formation of Ofqual, responsible for monitoring vocational and general qualification awarding organisations. He was an adviser to the DfE Expert Group on Assessment, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Commission on Assessment, the DfE Independent Teacher Workload Review Group, the Joint Council for Qualifications Independent Malpractice Commission and the Pearson Review on the Future of Qualifications & Assessment in England.
Mick is the President and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors. He has acted as an Associate Director of AQA, an Adviser to the Welsh and Pakistan Governments and PwC and chairs the Assessment Committee of the Institute of Directors. He has a PhD in educational assessment and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Chartered College of Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Leeds.
Having spent over 48 years in the education system as a teacher and government advisor, Mick is passionate about education and training, and aligning the aims of national high-volume assessment and testing systems with the aims and realities of everyday teaching and learning in schools, colleges and the workplace to benefit society and to support each individual learner to reach their true potential.
Dylan Wiliam is Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London.
After a first degree in mathematics and physics, and one year teaching in a private school, he taught in inner-city schools in London for seven years.
In 1984 he joined Chelsea College, University of London, which later merged with King’s College London. From 1996 to 2001 he was the Dean of the School of Education at King’s, and from 2001 to 2003, Assistant Principal of the College. In 2003 he moved to the USA, as Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. From 2006 to 2010 he was Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London.
Over the last 15 years, his academic work has focused on the use of assessment to support learning (sometimes called formative assessment). He now works with groups of teachers all over the world on developing formative assessment practices.
Heather is a Professor in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her primary work focuses on teacher and teaching quality, and the effects of policies aimed at improving both. She is also known for developing instruments for measuring teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) and the mathematical quality of instruction (MQI) within classrooms.
Hill is a co-investigator on the National Center for Research on Policy and Practice, a U.S.-based project dedicated to investigating how research is used in school districts’ instructional decision-making. She co-directed the National Center for Teacher Effectiveness and was also principal investigator of a five-year study examining the effects of Marilyn Burns Math Solutions professional development on teaching and learning. Her other interests include knowledge use within the public sector and the role that language plays in the implementation of public policy.
She has served as section chairs for the American Educational Research Association and Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness conferences, and on the editorial boards of Journal of Research in Mathematics Education and the American Educational Research Journal. She is the coauthor, with David K. Cohen, of Learning policy: When state education reform works (Yale Press, 2001).
John Hattie taught in a middle and high school, then completed his PhD in measurement and statistics at OISE (U Toronto), and joined academia. He was taught at New England, Western Australia, North Carolina, Auckland, and now is Emeritus Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He also is Chair of the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leaders, which is a Federal Government owned body aimed at improving the quality of teachers, school leaders, and initial teacher education across Australia.
His areas of interest are measurement models and their applications to educational problems, and models of teaching and learning. He has published and presented over 1000 papers and supervised 200 theses students, and 50 books—including 18 on Visible Learning. He works to ensure that evidence is robust but, more importantly, robustly interpreted and implemented in our schools and classes.
Dr Simon Camby is the Group Chief Education Officer at Cognita, the global schools group with over 100 schools in 17 countries. Alongside this role, Simon is an Honorary Lecturer at University College London, where he teaches on the MBA (International) Education programme. This includes teaching on modules, supervising MBA dissertation students and supervising several doctoral candidates. Simon is also a non-executive director on the board of the Independent Schools Inspectorate in the UK.
Simon has extensive experience as a teacher and Headteacher/Principal. He served as Chief Executive of a multi-academy trust and worked at the Council of International Schools (CIS) in the role of Director of School Evaluation and Development. Simon is constantly curious about leadership in education and leadership of pedagogy. He has a wealth of global experience supporting leaders with school improvement.
Simon is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and was awarded a doctorate from the UCL Institute of Education for his work on adaptive leadership in international education.
Ben is Head of the Department for Empirical Educational Research at the Institute for Educational Analysis (IBBW) in Germany and Extraordinary Professor at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology at the University of Tübingen.
His research focuses on teaching quality, teachers’ professional competence, and students’ individual development within classrooms. He has a special interest in measurement issues, particularly regarding the question of how to best assess teaching quality.
An important part of his work is the dissemination of his research in school practice. He works closely together with school leaders and teachers in professional development programs and workshops.
Ben is principal investigator of a research project on adaptive teaching founded by the German Bosch Foundation. He’s currently working on several projects of how to bring research-based knowledge into everyday school practice.
Leora Cruddas, CBE is Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, the national organisation and sector body for school trusts in England. She has advised successive governments and sits on several DfE Advisory Bodies. She was recently the vice chair of the Head Teacher Standards Review Group, a member of the external advisory group for the Schools White Paper and SEND Green Paper and has also been invited to sit on the Regulatory and Commissioning Review.
Prior to founding CST, she was Director of Policy and Public Relations for the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL). Leora has six years of experience as a Director of Education in two London Local Authorities.
Leora is Visiting Professor at UCL Institute of Education; she was a CBE in the New Year’s Honours, 2022.
Lisa is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Bright Futures Educational Trust. She has over 25 years’ experience in education from teacher to leader and has held a number of Trust Executive Leadership Director-level roles. Lisa is a National Leader of Education (NLE) designated by the DfE and she is also an effective School Improvement Partner (SIP) for other schools/MATS. As an executive leader, Lisa works closely with our schools, providing leadership of our Trust School Improvement Strategy, providing support and challenge to our Principles and central trust leaders. Lisa also leads on Risk and Assurance across the Trust and leads our Partnership and Communications Strategy.
Lisa’s particular areas of expertise and passion are school transformation/school turnaround, school improvement, teacher development, change leadership, wellbeing and partnership working. Lisa has had a number of Non-Executive Governance roles and is currently Chair of a Trust Board. Lisa enjoys contributing to the wider system and is a champion of collaboration and whole system working.
Edward Wright is Physics Teacher and Deputy Head at Eltham College in London. He has been involved in using evidence and evaluation techniques to assess the efficacy of various initiatives run in his school, leading to the completion of a Masters in Science Education from King’s College London and a Masters in Educational Leadership and School Improvement from the University of Cambridge. In particular, he is focused on using assessment data appropriately and meaningfully to have a positive impact on all students, not just those at the upper and lower ends of the ability or achievement scales.
Edward has spoken on the use of assessment data generated by the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring‘s computer adaptive assessment systems. As both a classroom teacher and Senior Leader, Edward brings the best available research evidence and evaluation techniques into his school; he was one of the first teachers to use the Education Endowment Foundation’s DIY Evaluation Guide. He brings to the Advisory Board a keen understanding of the daily life of schools; he ensures that we consider the practicalities of developing teachers’ use of research and evaluation techniques, grounding our work from development to implementation.
Janice began her career in a Special Measures all-boys school in Manchester and was given the challenge of introducing Drama across the curriculum. Through her work over eight years she led the Performing Arts Department and ensured that Drama was fully embedded in the school with excellent results. She learnt there the importance of trusting and investing in staff and this has stayed with her through 9 years as a Curriculum Deputy in two schools before becoming Head Teacher at Falinge Park High School, Rochdale in 2015.
Janice is Chair of the NW1 Maths Hub with NCETM, represents Secondary Heads on Complex Safeguarding Matters and Safeguarding boards, and is a Local Leader of Education.
John Tomsett was a teacher for 33 years and a headteacher for eighteen. He was Headteacher at Huntington School, York, a leading EEF Research School, where the EEF-funded RISE Project (Research-leads Improving Students’ Education) was piloted, in conjunction with Stuart Kime and Rob Coe.
John has gathered a legion of followers on Twitter, and his blog, This much I know…, has proved a huge hit in the world of education as a result of its pragmatic experience from a lifetime of teaching.
He has published eight books about education, teaching, and curriculum. John is currently working on his next book with Mary Myatt on curriculum and SEND. John is now engaged in supporting the next generation of school leaders and teachers.
He co-founded The Headteachers’ Roundtable think-tank and is a popular speaker on school leadership. He is a strong advocate of evidence-informed teaching, and brings practical knowledge from the coalface of school leadership to the Advisory Board.
Robert is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the interrelationships of forgetting, remembering and learning in the functional architecture of how humans learn and remember, and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction, practice, and training. He has served as President or Chair of multiple scientific organisations, including the Association for Psychological Science, and he is the recipient of multiple awards and honours, including UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Service to Psychological Science Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr Morgan Polikoff is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. He researches curriculum, standards, assessment, and accountability policies, as well as public opinion on education policy issues.
In 2021, Morgan authored Beyond Standards, synthesizing decades of research on the failures of the standards movement in American education and offering a path forward toward more effective instructional reform. He currently co-directs the education module of the nationally representative, longitudinal Understanding America Study, which has been tracking the impact of COVID on American families’ educational experiences.
He has received the Early Career Award and the Outstanding Public Communication of Research Award from the American Educational Research Association. His research has been supported by over $16 million in grants from government and foundation sources.
Dr Zid Mancenido is the Senior Manager, Research and Evaluation of the Australian Education Research Organisation where he leads a team of practitioners, researchers, and policy analysts to generate high-quality evidence, make high-quality evidence accessible, and enhance the use of evidence in Australian education.
Having started his career as a high school social sciences teacher in Canberra, Australia, his personal research focuses on issues related to teacher recruitment and teacher education, with a particular interest in problems of research design, measurement, and evaluation.
Zid holds a Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) degree from the Australian National University and a Master of Teaching (Secondary) from the University of Melbourne. He also holds a Masters degree in Education Policy and Management and a PhD in Education Policy from Harvard. He also concurrently holds an appointment as a Lecturer on Education at Harvard teaching courses in education policy and general pedagogy.
Benjamin Nagengast is a Full Professor of Educational Psychology at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology. His research interests include:
Quantitative methods (randomized controlled field trials,
causality, latent variable models, multi-level modelling)
Educational Effectiveness
Evaluation of interventions and educational situations
Motivation and academic self-concept
Benjamin Nagengast is Vice Director of the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network which is funded within the framework of the Excellence Initiative via the German Research Foundation. Within LEAD, he is head of the LEADing Research Center.
Dr Lisa Bardach is an Assistant Professor at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology (University of Tübingen, Germany). Her research program centers on better understanding and promoting children’s and adolescents’ positive development at school in multiple domains, such as their motivation, learning and academic achievement, personality, self-beliefs, and socio-emotional development. She is also interested in exploiting the potential of digital technologies as tools to foster students’ positive development in different domains.
Previously, Lisa worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of York, UK. She obtained her PhD in Psychology at the University of Vienna in Austria and received two awards for her dissertation (Dissertation Award 2020 of the Austrian Association for Psychology and Doc Award 2019 for outstanding doctoral theses of the University of Vienna awarded across all disciplines). In 2020 she furthermore received the Elsevier Scopus Early Career UK Researcher Award. In 2021 she received the Mensa Award for Excellence in Research. Currently, her research is funded by the Jacobs Foundation, the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction, the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, and the German Research Foundation.
Toby was the Chief Executive of Ormiston Academies Trust, a group of over 42 schools, where the team doubled the number of schools and raised education standards. Toby has also recently retired from being the CEO of the AQA. AQA is the largest exam board in the UK with several subsidiaries and an international exam board. He has previously worked as director of the UK government’s Department for Education’s Innovation Unit. An experienced headteacher of schools Toby was also a founding director and Deputy CEO of the government’s National College for School Leadership. This trained around 20,000 school leaders a year and Toby’s teams established Government programmes that still exist today such as Teaching schools and National Leaders of Education. Toby is now a senior advisor and non-executive to a number of organisations such as AQA; Zen Educate; Thomas’s School group and is chair of the Teaching Awards and CATS global Schools. He is a member of LEAD multi Academy Trust and Chair of the Academy Council for AET’s Ryde Academy.
Dr Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel is an expert in applying findings from cognitive science to education and an enthusiastic science communicator. She obtained her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Mannheim and pursued postdoc positions at York University in Toronto and the Center for Integrative Research in Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE) at Washington University in St. Louis. She was a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Dundee for four years before joining the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow where she is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology.
Her expertise focuses on learning and memory phenomena that allow implementation to educational settings to offer teachers and students a wide range of strategies that promote long-term retention. Carolina engages heavily in scholarly outreach and science communication; she is a member of the Learning Scientists and founded the Teaching Innovation & Learning Enhancement (TILE) Network. TILE brings different disciplines and sectors together to discuss how to overcome prevailing issues in education with research-based approaches.
