At Sutton SCITT, a small-scale ITT provider in a South London borough known for the range and performance of its schools, we proudly provide a highly personalised and supportive training programme tailored to individual developmental needs.
In recent years, a key focus has been enabling trainees to connect learning between the different elements of our programme: Professional Studies delivered by the central SCITT team, Subject Studies delivered by hub leads, and the support provided in partner schools by our mentors.
Over the past year, I carried out a research study into the impact of intensive practice on our programme, seeking to evaluate the benefits it affords and any further gains to be made by refining our approach.
Like all providers, we were notified by the DfE in 2022 of the revised requirements for ITTE programmes to include intensive practice. With minimal guidance on how this might look in practice, our thinking was influenced by Grossman, who articulated how intensive practice techniques from other professions might be transferred to ITTE to help trainees develop core practices, defined as strategies, routines and moves that can be unpacked and learned by teachers.[1] Grossman emphasised the use of varied representations of practice to decompose complex processes into their constituent parts, before providing trainees with opportunities to approximate these practices, enacting them in supportive environments under controlled conditions. Such approximations offer unique benefits, including the opportunity to pause midstream for specific and targeted feedback.[2]
Still, we had more questions than answers at that stage. What elements of pedagogy should intensive practice target, and in what order? What should intensive practice look like in these areas? How would this granular focus on core practices fit into our existing programme? And how would we implement intensive practice in a consistent, co-ordinated manner across our training programme, including mentors in our partner schools?
Despite these unknowns, we saw potential for intensive practice to move trainees beyond just acquiring knowledge for teaching to learning how to use that knowledge in practice, first in a supportive low-stakes environment before application to real classrooms. Getting ahead of the curve, we submitted a suite of sample materials to the DfE that year, then carried out two pilot rounds of intensive practice in History and English in 2023-24 before embedding intensive practice across all subjects in 2024-25.
What took shape became the Intensive Training and Practice (ITaP) element of our programme. We selected four areas of practice to focus on: behaviour, scaffolding, retrieval and questioning. In each of the first two training phases, two ITaPs are enacted, each in its own dedicated training week and accompanied by a mentor/trainee guidebook containing mentor meeting prompts, directed reading, questions to facilitate reflection and a relevant glossary, since the ability to decompose practice depends upon the existence of a language and structure for describing practice.[3]In the third training phase, trainees revisit one ITaP theme in need of further development.
Each ITaP week begins with a Professional Studies day delivered by the central SCITT team introducing trainees to the key principles and scholarship underpinning the ITaP, before analysing and enacting its core practices in cross-curricular peer groups.
The subsequent Subject Studies day builds on this as subject hub leads guide trainees in decomposing subject-specific representations of the core practices, including videos, modelling, accompanied learning walks, worked examples, templates and transcripts. Trainees then enact these practices in different forms of approximation, receiving feedback in the moment.
A further day is allocated for trainees to attend one of four ITaP host schools to observe the core practices in a different context and across a variety of subjects, then analyse their observations with a lead mentor.
Mentors are integral to the success of the ITaP week. They are supported by the provision of written guidance including synopses of scholarship, prompts for discussion with trainees and subject-specific suggestions for application of the core practices. Trainees then carry out a focused observation of their mentor enacting these practices in the classroom. A dedicated mentor meeting follows, where mentor and trainee decompose their observations then co-plan part of a lesson in which the trainee will enact the core practices with a class. A key element here is the collaborative scripting between mentor and trainee which prepares them to implement the strategies. The mentor then observes the trainee in action and debriefs them before trainees complete a reflection. The mentor provides the trainee with further feedback on the ITaP as the placement proceeds, before mentor and subject hub lead assess whether the trainee understands and can apply the core practices.
In my research, I observed hub leads in four academic disciplines delivering Subject Studies sessions. I tracked six secondary and two primary trainees, observing them during placements, and conducted interviews with their mentors. The following points were noteworthy:
- All Subject Studies sessions delivered the required elements of intensive practice, but the most effective sessions implemented multiple short loops of representation, decomposition and approximation of core practices. These loops were completed in an hour or less and broke complex processes into granular elements, with trainees receiving immediate feedback ‘in the moment’. This enabled a truly low-stakes environment with ongoing support for trainees. For example, in a loop lasting just 20 minutes, one hub lead analysed different styles of retrieval question, before trainees prepared their own multiple-choice questions, which they delivered to their peers, during which the hub lead evaluated strengths and weaknesses of trainees’ distractor statements.
- All hub leads used their own teacher modelling as a form of approximation for trainees, but the most effective modelling occurred where hub leads stepped out of the teacher role to deconstruct what had been modelled, drawing trainees’ attention to the core practices. For example, one hub lead modelled the teaching of a grammatical construction, before stepping out of role to deconstruct the rationale behind their decisions alongside possible challenges and necessary adaptations.
- Without exception, mentors greatly valued the opportunity afforded by the ITaP for dedicated practice on clearly defined elements of pedagogy. Mentors consistently agreed with the four chosen focus areas of the ITaP, viewing them as essential for development of trainees’ practice. Literature guidance and mentor meeting prompts provided were universally viewed as helpful. Several mentors identified the importance of revisiting the ITaP throughout the teaching practice to ensure the focus is not lost after the initial ITaP week.
- Both mentors and trainees viewed collaborative scripting as useful preparation for enacting core practices, but scripting is a skill which mentors find particularly challenging. Mentors may be reluctant to script if they perceive it as imposing their way of doing things on a trainee. The best scripting occurs where mentors have a deep understanding of the core strategies and perceive themselves as experts guiding a novice to develop their pedagogical processes.
- To evaluate the impact of the ITaPs on trainees’ progress, I used trainees’ written reflections alongside formative comments and summative judgements of mentors and hub leads, in addition to interviews with trainees and mentors. The evidence demonstrates that for many of our trainees, the ITaPs have facilitated progress over time, most notably in the following areas.
- Nearly all trainees articulated their knowledge and understanding of the core practices with precision. This was clearly visible in trainees’ written reflections, which deployed specialist terminology relevant to each ITaP to analyse their strategies and rationale in a forensic manner.
- Where application of core practices was less successful, trainees adopted a critical but constructive approach in their reflections, pinpointing weaknesses in their delivery and suggesting their own remedies for future practice. The strongest of these tailored adjustments to specific classes or needs.
- Broadly speaking, trainees’ comments on how they applied the core practices were sharper in written reflections during the ITaP than in interviews conducted later in their placement. This may lend weight to mentors’ comments on the need to maintain focus on the ITaP through the duration of the teaching practice.
- Trainees were able to move beyond the common misconceptions and challenges associated with the four ITaP areas. One good example of this came from a mentor who noted their trainee’s understanding of retrieval had shifted from associating it predominantly with an initial ‘Do Now’ task to a more holistic view of retrieval and its role in other parts of the lesson as a vehicle for linking new knowledge to prior learning thus building robust schemata.
- In the case of the trainee at risk of making below expected progress during their second placement, the fundamental issue was that the trainee was not implementing strategies taught in the first two ITaPs. This was also visible in the trainee’s reflections and their mentor’s assessments during these early ITaPs.
Conclusions
Providers embarked on developing intensive practice with limited guidance and initial concerns about how to integrate it into their programmes. Contrary to reservations, and in reflection on our programme, it is clear intensive practice adds significant value to the training, the greatest benefit of which has been the improved proficiency of trainees in the core practices identified. Going forward, we will secure further gains, predominantly to tracking and assessment rather than delivery. Integrating assessment of trainees’ progress on the ITaP into the profile will reduce mentor workload and inform subsequent action planning. Likewise, embedding ITaP references into lesson plan proformas will compel trainees to focus on these elements and empower mentors to review them during lesson feedback. Using assessment data from the first two ITaPs to target trainees requiring additional support with intervention in January will help to set them up for their second placement. Meanwhile, further dissemination of good practice among hub leads on embedding short loops of intensive practice, and among mentors on impactful collaborative scripting, will build on existing strengths thus securing continued excellence in the delivery of our ITaP components.
As a SCITT, our journey on intensive practice has convinced us of the contribution it can make to our trainees, most notably in the development of those processes which are fundamental to all successful classroom practitioners.
Stuart Godman is Hub Lead for Secondary History at Sutton SCITT.
[1] Grossman, P. (ed.), (2018), Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p.4
[2] Grossman, P. (ed.), (2018), Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p.10
[3] Grossman, P. (ed.), (2018), Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p.9