Jane Burt, Assistant Headteacher, and Matthew Harper, Acting Headteacher at the British International School Abu Dhabi (BISAD), faced a familiar challenge: ensuring consistency in teaching practices across year groups and departments while giving teachers the autonomy to grow. With staff from many countries and diverse training backgrounds. The school needed a common language and agreed foundations for all to work from.

By adopting the Great Teaching Toolkit (GTT), BISAD began to tackle these challenges. The initial focus was on the Primary phase and Arabic teaching team and has since expanded to include the Secondary and Senior phases. The Teaching and Learning Team aims to foster meaningful learning. By building shared professional language, clearer expectations, and opportunities for teachers to reflect on their own practice.

BISAD is also a founding school of the Itqan: Teacher Excellence Program, which provides professional development in Arabic to enhance teaching quality.

Why the Great Teaching Toolkit?

The GTT provided a framework to bring consistency while supporting personal and meaningful teacher development. The 17 evidence-informed dimensions from the Model for Great Teaching offer a shared language and reference point for reflection, planning, and metacognitive growth.

“The fact that it’s all quality-assured, research-based evidence is important. We are using the 17 dimensions to reflect on where we can improve and plan forward. One key principle is enabling teachers to curate their own learning, and the Great Teaching Toolkit supports that. Video feedback helps staff become comfortable with peer observations and constructive reflection on their practice.”

Embedding the Toolkit into Practice

The school aligned the GTT with whole-school improvement priorities, giving teachers ‘managed autonomy’ to set individual goals under a shared framework. Key elements include:

• Video feedback to support teacher reflection and metacognition
• Student surveys to inform professional development
• Aligning CPD with relevant GTT dimensions

Strengthening Consistency

Across the whole school, the Great Teaching Toolkit has played a key role in helping teachers focus their development around clearly defined priorities. The video feedback tool has supported targeted work on improving questioning techniques, modelling writing, and increasing student engagement, aligned to each year group’s improvement plan.

This structured yet flexible approach has helped the team articulate their professional learning goals with greater confidence.

“Both Primary and Secondary have used the video feedback and they’ve used that in line with their year improvement plan target. So, for example, Year 5 looked at the questioning element and how they could develop questioning. Year 4 were looking at how they model writing, so their videos were focused on this element.

Whilst Year 1 were using the video tool to bring greater consistency to the teaching of Phonics and fidelity to the scheme in use. The Secondary Maths department focused on explaining and used the video feedback tool to see how well they were explaining.”

Building a Shared Language with teachers of Arabic

The Arabic teaching team benefits from the GTT’s shared professional language. Arabic-language courses will further support consistent planning, teaching, and reflective professional conversations.

Laying the Groundwork for Long-Term Impact

Early benefits include clearer alignment across teams, focused evidence-informed CPD, and empowered teachers taking ownership of their development.

“We are building a coaching culture where teachers reflect on their own practice, identify their development needs, and use the tools to address them independently. It’s about coaching the person, not the problem.”

By adopting the Great Teaching Toolkit, BISAD has established a shared language and foundations for all staff, supporting reflective practice, professional learning, and classroom impact across the school.

In addition, the GTT is fully aligned with the school’s performance management objectives and the whole-school improvement plan, which are further supported by department-level priorities. This creates a coherent, threaded approach that strengthens existing systems and ensures that teachers are working within a shared, evidence-informed professional language.

By embedding the framework into processes already familiar to staff. The school has been able to enhance consistency while maintaining a focus on individual growth. This alignment also complements the ongoing work to build a coaching culture across the school – a strand that staff increasingly recognise as central to reflective practice and professional development.

Join schools like the British International School Abu Dhabi in using a shared language to enhance professional learning and classroom impact.

Find out more here and explore how Itqan can support your Arabic-speaking educators.