Exploring Learning

This reflection draws on established research in curriculum design, instructional leadership, feedback, and school improvement, as well as my ongoing doctoral study in curriculum and learning sciences. It is written from a leadership perspective and informed by sustained engagement with departments, teams, and classrooms throughout this half term. The intention is to make visible the research-informed rationale underpinning current and future priorities for teaching, learning, and collaboration. A Shift in Perspective This half term, my work has taken me away from classrooms and more into meetings. I have spent sustained time with several Heads of Department in strategic planning discussions, in departmental meetings focused on implementation, and in conversations with teachers and parents regarding learning, assessment, and progress. While this is a different vantage point from earlier reflections grounded in classroom observation, it has provided an additional and highly valuable per...

One of the most common barriers I hear when supporting teams in curriculum planning is that decisions cannot be made until everyone is in the same room at the same time. The assumption underlying this is understandable: collaboration means being together, and we value the perspectives all our team members bring. But in a busy school environment, where multiple staff commitments often collide, waiting for perfect attendance is not only unrealistic, it is professionally paralysing. More importantly, it prevents us from doing what matters most: ensuring that students experience coherent, challenging, and conceptually aligned learning. Over the past few weeks, I have found myself returning to the same observation again and again. While many teams are strengthening their Stage 1 planning, identifying the conceptual understandings, knowledge, and skills from our updated written curriculum, there is a noticeable disconnect when they move into Stage 2. Sometimes this is even omitted, and they...

One of the most common frustrations I hear teachers express is, “I have taught them this already.” This observation is valid and deeply felt, but it requires a shift in perspective. Cognitive psychology and brain-based learning research offer a clear explanation: students filter out far more than they filter in , and teaching does not automatically lead to learning. The opening chapters of Learning That Sticks  (Goodwin, 2020) outline the scale of this filtering problem. Our sensory systems relay 11 million bits of information per second , yet the brain can consciously process only around 120 bits per second . This means that “our brains simply cannot squeeze 180 bits of information into a 120-bit mental pipe (Levitin, 2015).” Much of what is said in a classroom, therefore, never makes it past the sensory register. In a world where students receive “the equivalent of 174 newspapers of information every day,” the brain is constantly working to “separate the trivial from the importa...

Feedback has long been recognised as one of the most significant factors influencing student achievement. Quantitative evidence, particularly from large-scale meta-analyses, consistently demonstrates that feedback interventions produce some of the highest effect sizes of any educational practice (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Wisniewski, Zierer, & Hattie, 2020). Yet, these same studies reveal a wide variation in outcomes, with some forms of feedback accelerating learning substantially, while others appear ineffective, or even detrimental. This paradox highlights a crucial challenge for educators: the mere presence of feedback is insufficient. Its impact depends on how clearly it communicates goals, how effectively it guides students’ next steps, and whether learners possess the capacity to interpret and apply it. This capacity is increasingly described as feedback literacy; the skills and dispositions students require to make sense of, use, and seek feedback to improve their learni...

One of the patterns that continues to emerge in my classroom visits is the distinction between students’ ability to explain what they are doing and their ability to explain what they are learning . This is not a deficit in the learners themselves, but rather a reminder that clarity is not simply about tasks; it is about making the purpose of learning visible. Fisher and Frey (2021) remind us that clarity of goals, instruction, and success criteria is one of the strongest accelerators of learning. When students articulate not only what they are doing, but why it matters, we see the shift from compliance to ownership. This challenge of articulation, of moving beyond task to learning, has been mirrored in the professional learning experiences across our school this week. Clarity in the Maths Work Over two days with our maths consultant, we engaged deeply with how we design lessons that bring conceptual clarity to the surface. The conversations touched on the same themes I have noticed i...

In the evolving landscape of education, schools must respond to the growing complexity of factors, including rapid technological changes, shifting pedagogical expectations, and diverse student needs. These demands call for increasingly adaptive leadership models. Distributed leadership is a compelling approach, shifting leadership from hierarchical structures to a shared responsibility that leverages the expertise of multiple stakeholders. International schools offer a vibrant context for this, as their structural and pedagogical complexity, paired with diverse student populations, requires consistently agile and inclusive leadership. Middle leaders, in particular, are well-positioned to enact this vision by fostering collaboration in curriculum and assessment planning, as they straddle leadership while remaining firmly rooted at the chalkface.  This review examines how middle leaders in international schools can enact distributed leadership as a foundation for collaborative practi...