Adaptive Teaching: Train the trainer

Adaptive Teaching: Train the trainer will build your adaptive teaching expertise and how to:​

• Deploy a more effective, evidence-informed professional development offer in the domain of adaptive teaching.​
• Design adaptive teaching professional development resources specific to your context.​
• Evaluate the impact of implementing adaptive teaching professional development in your school.

This programme is delivered online over 18 weeks where you will engage in:​

​​Two half-day online conferences on adaptive teaching and how to design training for educators.​

Three sense-making twilight sessions to help you plan, facilitate and evaluate adaptive teaching professional development training in your setting.

A webinar that looks in detail at what effective adaptive teaching practice looks like in the classroom.

You’ll also get 10 evidence summaries that explore different areas of adaptive teaching practices, alongside professional development resources that can be adapted to your context.

Develop and refine your expertise in the domain of adaptive teaching from the latest research including:​

• The design and delivery of effective formative assessment approaches.
• The effective provision of feedback to pupils​.
• How teachers can adapt their teaching in a responsive way based on the needs of all pupils.

Receive bespoke support on how to evaluate the impact of the training you provide.

• Deepen your leaders expertise in adaptive teaching and widen their impact using a train-the-trainer model.​
• Help teachers to better meet the needs of their pupils in the classroom, particularly those with SEND.​
• Be confident that training in your school is high quality, engaging and draws on the latest evidence-informed approaches.
• Align your teachers’ knowledge and practice with the evidence-informed approaches and language used across the Early Career and National Professional Qualification frameworks.

Our programme, Adaptive Teaching: Train the trainer, is designed to help you introduce a sustainable model of teacher development around adaptive teaching in your school.

It helps you to better understand the wide range of adaptive teaching practices, from the lesson preparation stage, to responding to barriers to learning during lessons, to making adaptations following lessons. It also supports you to develop the expertise of your teaching staff to teach adaptively at a whole-class level.

Adaptive teaching is effective because it helps teachers to adapt their teaching to the diverse needs of all pupils. Whether that is anticipating barriers to learning when preparing lessons, responding to pupils’ needs in real time using formative assessment, or checking to see whether the adaptations they’ve made have worked. By making small, purposeful adjustments, such as providing extra scaffolding or adapting explanations, teachers can keep lessons accessible whilst maintaining high expectations for every pupil.

When embedded across a school, a well-tailored professional development offer can build a shared language and consistent approach to adaptive teaching, benefiting both pupils and staff. This inclusive practice supports better outcomes for the range of needs of all pupils, including for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or from disadvantaged backgrounds.

For Jade Pearce, Head of Education at Affinity Learning Partnership, adaptive teaching is “when teachers adapt their instruction and the way in which they're teaching to meet the needs of all learners.”

“It's not differentiation under a new term,” says Jade. Instead, it’s about “having the same high expectations of all learners.” With adaptive teaching, “everyone accesses the same curriculum, content and tasks”.

However, this does not replace the need for wider, specialist SEND provision in a school; there will always be some pupils that need more specialist or targeted interventions. “It's not the big changes that we might make for pupils who are working so far below age-related expectations that they can't access the same content as their peers. It's the smaller changes that we make to keep the lesson flowing.”

Key characteristics of adaptive teaching include having high expectations for all pupils, with teachers adapting their teaching approaches based on pupils’ needs, making subtle, responsive adaptations during lessons.

It involves teachers anticipating and planning in advance where pupils might struggle or excel and adjusting their teaching accordingly, without lowering the level of challenge. It is evidence-informed, inclusive, and focused on helping every pupil access the same curriculum and learning opportunities.

To achieve these benefits across a staff body, our programme also supports leaders to work towards a consistent, school-wide approach to adaptive teaching, through planning and implementing professional development that is tailored to the needs and context of each school.

To get more information on this topic visit our latest blog.