How Schools Get Teaching Right: The Case for Creating Core Principles for Your School
For the past three years, I’ve worked alongside leaders at the British International School (BIS) in Hanoi to define what great teaching looks like in their context. I recently caught up with Stephanie Millar (Deputy Head of Secondary) and Gemma Archer (Assistant Head of Secondary) to reflect on how schools can move beyond generic advice to create core teaching principles that are clear, actionable and built for your school. Here are some key ideas that came out of our discussion.
There’s no shortage of advice on great teaching—research, meta-analyses and cognitive science offer plenty of insights (See great sources below). The challenge isn’t a lack of information—there is actually too much. That’s where I come in.
I help schools define what great teaching looks like in their context—not as a generic checklist or dense policies, but as a manageable, memorable set of guiding principles rooted in evidence and tailored to their students’ needs.
Some examples of what I mean by ‘guiding principles’:
Assessment for Learning – Using assessment as a tool to inform teaching and learning, ensuring students receive timely feedback and opportunities to improve.
Questioning – Encouraging deeper thinking through structured questioning techniques that promote discussion, reasoning, and elaboration.
Adaptive Teaching – Adjusting teaching strategies based on student needs, ensuring all learners experience appropriate levels of challenge and support.
Oracy – Embedding structured talk and discussion into lessons to develop students' ability to articulate and explore ideas effectively.
Metacognition – Teaching students to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning, helping them become more independent and reflective learners.
Adapting to Your School Context
When Stephanie Miller first arrived at her new school in Hanoi, teachers were being observed, but no one could clearly articulate what ‘great’ teaching looked like in their context. Everyone knew they wanted classroom talk or oracy, but what was that exactly, how did they facilitate that at BIS Hanoi? In Stephanie’s previous school near London, she had to create structures to help students talk less. Now, she was faced with the opposite challenge—getting students to speak more. “The tools I had were different and needed to be shaped in a different way,” she reflected.
Developing guiding principles isn’t an off-the-shelf process—it takes time and lots of reiteration. BIS Hanoi worked carefully to get the wording right, ensuring their ‘Statements of Excellence’ (the name they have given the principles) reflected both their educational philosophy and practical classroom needs. They chose to put ‘A Place to Belong’ in the center, because it feeds into all aspects of teaching. The school built their understanding progressively, refining their approach based on feedback. As Gemma put it, "When we did the big review (half way through) … we looked at trends in our data—what skills were still gaps for our students, where did we still see passivity in the classroom. The principles evolved because of what we were actually seeing, not just what we believed should work."
Nevertheless, the principles must be evidence-informed and able to withstand change. I was reminded of something Patrice Henry, principal at Business Technology Early College High School (BTECH) in New York, emphasized to me recently: strong guiding principles must be resilient against political shifts and changing initiatives. Education policies come and go, but great teaching principles remain constant.
From Knowing to Doing
A common pitfall with guiding principles is that they become a list rather than a lived practice. The Hanoi team realized that having clear statements wasn’t enough—teachers needed concrete examples of what these principles looked like in action. For example, what does powerful questioning sound like or how do you structure oracy so that students feel confident sharing ideas in English, Maths and Science, etc. We developed self-audits and identified exemplifications to make the principles visible in classrooms.
To ensure clarity and consistency, BIS Hanoi started by focusing on the principle called ‘Learning Process.’ I provided foundational training on the science of learning—including working memory, retrieval practice, and cognitive load. Before rolling out training to teachers, I worked with leadership to align messaging to their context and ensure leadership understood the concepts. They also worked extensively on the principle, A Place to Belong, recognizing that a strong sense of community and engagement is essential before tackling more specific instructional strategies. Oracy became our next key focus, with exemplification centered on structured talk and discussion techniques.
Modeling Best Practice: Professional Development That Works
Stephanie and Gemma explained that at their school, leadership doesn’t just advocate for guiding principles—they model them in professional development. When delivering training, they use the same strategies embedded in their principles, such as retrieval practice, wait time, scaffolding, and checking for understanding. This ensures that teacher training aligns with the very practices they promote as best for student learning. As Stephanie put it, 'We plan our PD like we plan lessons—probably more thoroughly.'
To further reinforce these principles, leaders went on learning walks, pairing up to visit classrooms and identify both strong examples and areas for improvement. For instance:
In one class, the teacher consistently followed questions with prompts like “Can you give an example?” or “Can you add to what [another student] said?”
In another class, a lack of structured questioning with students calling out meant only the most confident students participated, while others remained passive. On the surface, all students appeared engaged, but in reality, deeper learning was happening in the first classroom. As Chris Newman, then Headteacher, put it: “Great teaching must be both intentional and consistent across all classrooms.”
The Impact on Students
What’s great to see is that these principles of teaching are filtering down to the people we serve—the students. As Gemma put it: “We’ve unveiled a different type of good student. Before, success meant memorizing and scoring well on exams. Now, students understand that learning is about effort, struggle and progress.” Instead of simply aiming for correct answers, students are developing metacognitive awareness—they know what they need to do, but they’re also learning how to do it.
A Call to Action
If your school doesn’t have a set of guiding principles, now is the time to start the conversation.
Contextualize – Adapt evidence-informed principles to your school’s culture and challenges.
Be Consistent – Integrate them into professional development and classroom practices.
Make Them Clear – Give teachers concrete examples, not just abstract statements.
Schools need both theory and application. Research provides the foundation, but its real power lies in how it informs everyday teaching practice. So, what are the core principles that define great teaching and learning in your school?
I’ll be back to explore other schools and their journeys. Next, we’ll take a look at Julian’s Primary School in London and how their teachers have used videos to share and exemplify good practice.
Some great resources for aligning your principles with educational evidence:
Great Teaching Toolkit Evidence Review evidence best 2020 by Evidence Based Education
Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know by Barak Rosenshine
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