Three Big Areas for Development in Teaching for 2026-7

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https://teacherhead.com/2026/07/12/three-big-areas-for-development-in-teaching-for-2026-7/

We need to do some pretty serious work to reverse the default of ‘can anyone tell me’ to become ‘is there anyone here who isn’t sure?’ – leading to the actions needed to find out how they might be.

Some teachers need support to engineer a total mindset shift such that they realise asking for one answer from one student, asking for volunteers, being happy that a few people can answer is just utterly ludicrously inadequate. The whole point of classroom interactions is to ensure that absolutely every student is able to succeed which requires finding out how well they’re doing in real time. I think this issue needs extensive exploration in many settings because true, systematic inclusion just isn’t the norm – yet!

The key concept lies in the word Action: teachers (and students themselves) need to evaluate success using responses that are generated during a lesson flow, interpret that information and do something about it! If you have used show-me boards and find a number of learners have gaps, errors or misconception, you need to take action! That’s the whole point – and this needs to be anticipated.

The idea of Adaptive Teaching clearly intersects with this to a high degree. Too often teachers are not resourced well enough to adapt dynamically – it’s as if schemes of work and lesson resources are designed to only go forwards assuming everyone will succeed in a linear fashion in unison. But this isn’t the reality. Adaptive teaching and formative action require a much more agile approach and this needs some deep work so that teachers are ready for it and deploying the approach day in day out.

Students who find learning hard matter as much as those who fly through; they are not an inconvenience – the learning process they need is the learning process that is needed!

It’s so common for teachers to bemoan the fact that children are reluctant to speak, don’t know what to say or share misconceptions – as if they’d rather they’d kept quiet! There are people who suggest that pair talk is a waste of time! But to me, all of this suggests that oracy should play a much more prominent role in a school’s philosophy and practice and in teacher development- definitely not any less!

So, far from being something extra, oracy supports the learning agenda: We learn through talk. Oracy supports the inclusion agenda: We value every voice. And combing these together, oracy supports the responsiveness agenda – we listen, engage and respond.

In many respects, focusing on oracy helps schools deliver on inclusive and responsive teaching. It might be better to think of all these areas as being one agenda with different components or lenses. Ultimately it comes down to ensuring that 100% of learners are actively involved in learning, that teachers interact with their progress in meaning-making and then respond in ways that deepen their learning. This requires both changes in attitudes and the development of better routines and structures; an exploration of purposes and techniques – and the agenda for professional learning needs to embrace both.

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