From classroom to publishing: explicit teaching insights

In one of my first years of teaching, I was about half an hour into a lesson where my students were writing fractions with the same denominator to be able to compare, add and subtract them. My teaching mentor had asked a student, ‘Brandon, what are you learning?’ and Brandon’s response was ‘Fractions’. When queried further, he was not able to articulate what he was doing, or why.

This event sparked my curiosity, leading me to consider the effectiveness of my teaching strategies and in particular, explicit teaching strategies, in a new way. I learned that explicit and effective teaching begins with both the teacher and students knowing and understanding the purpose of learning (learning intention) and being able to describe what success looks like (success criteria), then ensuring that all learning is linked to the success criteria to improve student outcomes.

On that day, and without knowing it, Brandon and my teaching mentor put explicit teaching at the centre of my teaching and educational publishing career.

The role of explicit teaching throughout my career

I spent my teaching career in regional schools with passion projects focused on helping underperforming students in years 7-10 to develop core numeracy skills, enabling VCE Mathematics and Chemistry students to excel and coordinating student leadership opportunities and programs.

Early in my career, I developed an interest in understanding curriculum changes in both the 7-10 syllabus and new study designs for VCE subjects. To have a solid understanding of the new curriculum and be able to teach the content well, our department worked diligently to break down standards and content descriptions into lesson objectives, helping us to understand the progression of learning required and building a foundation for explicit teaching.

During these periods of curriculum change and planning, John Hattie released Visible Learning. This book had a significant impact on my teaching style, as it did with many educators, opening the door for time-poor teachers to explore effective methods for teaching and learning.

The Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (which in 2024 was superseded by the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0) has explicit teaching at its core. Over time, I have seen more and more schools adopting this model to develop their own pedagogical models, templates and other whole school initiatives to ensure learning intentions and success criteria are explicitly stated in every classroom across the school, and there are strategies in place for both guided and independent learning phases.

In the beginning of any pedagogical shift, I believe there is always going to be a good deal of trial and error with the strategies used. For example, teachers trying to reduce the extraneous load might be experimenting with chunking or exploring the worked example effect or the modality effect and trying to piece these principles together effectively, which will look very different with different cohorts and abilities. I admire all teachers who continually evaluate their own teaching and show dedication to finding the models that work best for their unique cohorts.

Impacts and outcomes of explicit teaching for students with diverse needs

Recent studies by the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) and the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland (UQ) found that students who experience explicit teaching strategies make greater learning gains than students who do not experience these practices and this continues in the long term. These gains occurred regardless of ongoing teaching styles, demonstrating long lasting benefits of exposure to explicit teaching strategies.

Explicit teaching strategies can be used to support all learners, having positive impact when teaching students with a diverse range of learning needs.

In a multi-tiered system of support, the first tier is where our teachers are responding to the diverse learning needs within their classrooms using the most effective pedagogical practices to teach all students.In my personal experience, I often found that routine, consistent lesson structure and that cathartic feeling we all get when completing a goal supported more positive student behaviour, which was particularly evident in my more challenging classes. This, in turn, helped me to more easily identify students who need additional support.

The second tier of the multi-tiered system of support is where intervention is used to support some of the students needing additional support, generally in smaller groups. This might look like diagnostic assessment with targeted teaching and learning activities to address skills gaps and address misconceptions. This intervention is supplementary to the evidence-based teaching delivered to all students in the first tier.

Based on the outcomes from the second tier, more intensive interventions can be used to meet the learning needs of individual students in a third tier of support.

Best practice and practical tips for teachers

My advice for anyone looking to adopt explicit teaching practices is to start off small, with easy-to-implement strategies. We know that not every resource will come jam-packed with strategies to support the most effective pedagogical practices. Pick one explicit teaching strategy that aligns to the pedagogical framework at your school and start to apply it consistently.

This might be as simple as aligning and chunking teaching and learning to success criteria or creating a guided practice phase aligned to each success criteria in your lesson where the teacher and students complete the ‘we do’ phase of the Gradual Release of Responsibility model with a try-it-yourself version of a worked example from a trusted source, and some related skills questions.

If you don’t have access to auto-correcting questions to gauge student readiness for independent practice, try using a self-reflection approach in the guided practice phase to support students who need extra support before they move on to independent practice.

I think the biggest misconception that I see portrayed, is that by using explicit teaching strategies we are supporting learners to be dependent on teachers. I would argue that as teachers we need to build students up from novice learners with explicit teaching strategies, teaching learners to set and achieve goals, successfully demonstrate learning and progression through connected and more complex concepts — giving them the confidence and strategies to learn independently.

Final thoughts 

Having made the move from teaching to education publishing over a decade ago, the most rewarding part of my job today is working with teachers and students from all over Australia to create resources that enable teachers to apply best practice strategies more easily. 

The feedback we receive in focus groups and from market feedback directly impacts the pedagogical design and features of our resources. Often hearing about challenges implementing best practice strategies, our goal at Pearson is to create resources that facilitate the most effective pedagogical practices to ensure that teachers and learners using our resources have the best possible chance of success. 

I know that explicit teaching will continue to be a passion project of mine, and I hope reading this encourages you to continue your journey exploring and implementing effective teaching strategies to continue to improve learning outcomes.