By Stuart Kime
Durham Sixth Form Centre has been using the Great Teaching Toolkit to strengthen evidence-informed professional development across the college, giving teachers practical tools and research to continually refine their practice.
As a recognised Great Teaching Centre, the college has embedded the Toolkit into its approach to teaching and learning. Most recently, the Backwards Design technique supported the redesign of a course, empowering an Early Career Teacher to take ownership of curriculum planning while drawing on evidence-informed principles.
We spoke with a Head of Department about how the Great Teaching Toolkit has shaped their approach to curriculum design, collaboration and teacher development.
Backwards Design
I am Head of Department for Religious Studies and an ECT is teaching the A-Level course. Having been disappointed by the exam board, it was decided to change the specification.
We wanted to use this as an opportunity to rethink the structure, content and pedagogy and to give the teacher ownership of changes.
We explored the Great Teaching Toolkit’s Backwards Design technique, “where teachers start by identifying the desired learning outcomes and end goals; they then work backwards to design assessments and lessons that achieve those aims.” and decided to adopt this as a model for planning.
Planning backwards from intended outcomes to effective teaching
We started by setting out the outcomes we wanted to achieve: skills acquisition, content, timings mapped to assessment windows and teaching sequenced and planned to allow hard thinking, create coherent schema and opportunities for reinforcement and synoptic links.
Time was spent reflecting on what had and had not worked well in the previous incarnation and evolving this. Time was also spent on understanding the particular demands of the specification through the specification, textbooks, question papers, mark schemes and examiners’ reports.
With a clear sense of the outcomes to be achieved, we spent time planning the Programme of Study to most effectively reach the ends we had set out.
This process included drawing on the school’s T&L policy – itself based in Great Teaching Toolkit research and the Great Teaching Toolkit courses – to deliver content in ways that maximise opportunities to learn and require hard thinking.
Through the first year of the course it is intended that the planning documents are refined both by timings and by T&L processes. The whole process, designing backwards from intended outcomes through processes and research, has allowed the ECT to have a full ownership of the course and fostered teamwork and confidence.
Like this educator at Durham Sixth Form Centre your school can use evidence-informed planning to empower teachers, strengthen collaboration, and create learning that lasts.
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