Adaptive teaching is about the decisions teachers make to ensure their pupils access the curriculum and learn. Those expert decisions involve teachers anticipating, assessing and adapting in their classroom with confident judgement. Of course, teachers’ decision-making is limited by what leaders prioritise, mandate, and what structures they dictate.
Leaders must make adaptive decisions too. They anticipate, assess and make adaptations at a cohort level, with the aim of establishing calm, purposeful classrooms and some flexibility of structures. As a result, adaptive teaching decisions nest themselves in adaptive, or not so adaptive, schools.
What might be the leadership structures and decision-making that may stunt the teacher’s ability to adapt?
When might a pursuit of systems and structures establish strong foundations, but also have the potential of putting a ceiling on teachers’ skills and judgement in their classrooms?
There are five common areas that may come with practical trade-offs and may potentially limit effective adaptive teaching:
- Fixed pupil groupings.
Student groupings need a whole host of pragmatic decisions based on room spaces, timetable machinations, and attainment implications. We need to pick a structure that works and it isn’t viable to have endless flexibility when you have a big school to run.
Whether we have setting by ability or mixed attainment is a big question. The identity of pupils (‘I’m top set maths’) can quickly become fixed and teachers can tacitly make assumptions of what the group can do that obscures what individual pupils can do.
Setting might give the ability that pupils are so similar that adaptive approaches simply aren't needed. Conversely, mixed attainment groupings may see teachers struggle to support such a perceived range of needs, that they doggedly stick to the lesson plan and feel making adaptations is not viable.
Groupings rarely shift - for practical reasons - but also because attitudes form about pupils' ability. It can see ‘weak groups’ or 'SEND groups' have a narrowed curriculum, without each pupil being the same or needing the same level of support. It can end up limiting exposure to more demanding curricula, texts or tasks, thereby stunting meaningful adaptations that may challenge a once struggle pupil to catch up with their peers.
- Central lesson planning.
Teachers are typically too busy and overworked. Developing central curricula is a practical and purposeful approach to mitigating workload and supporting both teacher knowledge and planning. It offers the prize of 'consistency' wedded to clarity about what has been taught or upcoming assessments.
But we recognise that teachers become under pressure to meet the curriculum timelines (‘we need to finish the unit by next Thursday’), and so meaningful adaptations - such as reteaching an explanation that wasn't understood - get pushed out. There is sometimes a tacit pressure to stick to the PowerPoint or the booklet.
Not only that, but teachers who have not planned the curriculum may not anticipate where pupils will struggle. Consistency could - in its most limited guise - stop teachers reading the room in front of them and making important adaptations to the centrally planned resource or lesson structure.
- Prescribed lesson structures.
Pupils benefit from consistent routines. When teachers, across year groups in primary, or departments in secondary school or college, share similar teaching strategies, then pupils begin to internalise those routines and can learn more efficiently as a result. There may be common activities that start lessons, such as ‘Do Now’ activities’, that prove useful, establishing order and familiar learning routines too.
But the same routines and common structures can easily become constraints if over-applied without scope for professional judgement. A balance of structure and flexibility is required if we are to promote the teacher judgement needed to adapt in each lesson because pupils are struggling. The ready-made lesson plan that mandates a common starter may rob the teacher of some vital creative judgements that fit their subject, their class, and the reality of having missed half the last lesson because of a school trip.
Prescription and planning can raise the floor, but just as easy fix limits on good teachers.
- Inflexible assessment.
Organising pupil assessments needs an effective architecture, often with a common timeline and spreadsheet. Consistent timelines along comparisons across year groups, or entire trusts of schools and colleges.
But...
The half-termly data drop pushes lesson sequences to finish so that teachers can update the spreadsheet. To keep the assessment data manageable, we often supplant the useful diagnostic information teachers should be thinking about and using to adapt their future lessons. The ‘real’ assessment may not support adaptive teaching in the ways that we plan and think.
Once more the structures that make things work could end up limiting the teacher judgements and decisions we need to have genuinely inclusive classrooms.
- Teaching assistant employment.
Teaching assistants (TA) are typically deployed to support high need pupils and help them catch up and keep up with their peers. But so much of the evidence from practice sees the ‘velcro teaching assistant’ that may inadvertently limit the success of pupils if we are not careful.
Though the evidence states that working relationship between TAs and teachers should ensure “all pupils have access to high-quality teaching with their class teacher”, the reality is the responsibility for some pupils shifts, so that the TA catches them up and keep them up and teacher judgements are minimised.
Our SEND system can promote additional TA support for high need pupils in cases where it is wholly necessary, but it may limit the capacity of a school to deploy teaching assistants flexibly too.
Many of these barriers I’ve characterised are also the foundations of how we effectively manage big schools or colleges.
There is simply not the capacity for infinite adaptations and personalisation for every pupil. But flexibility and promoting teacher professional judgement needs to be considered with each decision.
There is a common thread where systems that are necessary for consistency and school effectiveness could become a limiting factor for teacher improvement and quality.
It is a delicate balance, tantamount to a Goldilocks principle: aim to secure consistency and quality, along with scope for intelligent adaptations too.
Keith Sawyer’s phrase ‘disciplined improvisation’ captures that artful tricky balance that leaders and teachers are always trying to balance and cohere:
“The challenge facing every teacher and every school is to find the balance between creativity and structure that will optimise student learning.”
Keith Sawyer, ‘Structure and improvisation in creative teaching’
It makes me mindful of the popular leadership guidance about when to be ‘tight’ and when to be ‘loose’. In the schools that I see as being inclusive and getting strong outcomes for all pupils, this balancing act is present and carefully developed sustained.
They are adaptive schools. Consistency of strong routines prove key, whilst intelligent adaptations from teachers, and teams, are cultivated too.
In my view, with the right balance of disciplined improvisation, schools and collages can overcome the barriers to adaptive teaching. Teachers can see their judgement and professionalism privileged and every pupil can go on to thrive.
Related reading:
- My recent blog on 'Refining adaptive teaching: Anticipate, assess, adapt', explores the practical realities of my 3As approach to adaptive teaching. READ MORE HERE.
- In my blog, 'The oversimplification trap', I argue we may be oversimplifying teacher professional learning. This extends to lesson plans and curriculum planning with too little professional time to reflect and adapt. READ MORE HERE.
Literacy can be the most powerful inclusion strategy for many pupils. In my upcoming Teachology masterclass - both online and in-person - on the 4th December, I explore how literacy and SEND intersect every day and in every lesson. For schools writing their Inclusive Mainstream plan, this may be a timely support. FIND OUT MORE.
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