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TLRP’s ten principles for effective pedagogy:
rationale, development, evidence, argument and impact
Mary James [a]* and Andrew Pollard [b]
[a] Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK; [b] Department of Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme worked for ten years to improve outcomes for learners across the United Kingdom. Individual projects within the Programme focused on different research questions and utilised a range of methods and theoretical resources. Across-programme thematic seminar series and task groups enabled emerging findings to be analysed, synthesised and communicated to wider audiences. One outcome of this activity was the development of ten ‘evidence-informed’ principles, which engaged with diverse forms of evidence, whilst acknowledging that ‘users’ would need to judge how best to implement such principles in their particular contexts. Synopses of these principles were published in posters and booklets, from 2006, but the evidence and reasoning underpinning them has not been fully explained. This contribution attempts to fill this gap. It provides a justification for the production of the TLRP principles and describes the iterative process by which they were developed. It clusters the ten principles in four broad areas that reflect the multilayered nature of innovation in pedagogy: (1) educational values and purposes; (2) curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; (3) personal and social processes and relationships; (4) teachers and policies. It elaborates the argument and evidence for each principle, drawing not only on findings from projects but, crucially, the thematic initiatives that began the synthetic work. There is also an attempt, though by no means comprehensive, to relate TLRP insights
to research and scholarship beyond the Programme’s school-focused work in order to ground them in a wider literature: to work in other sectors of education; and to the broader literature that has accumulated internationally and over time. Finally, the five years since the principles were first published provides some evidence of impact. Although direct impact on learner outcomes cannot be measured, it is possible to provide an account of take-up by mediating agencies and others. The piece has been prepared as a contribution to international dialogue on effective teaching and learning and to provide a focus for scholarly comment, sharing of expertise and knowledge accumulation.
Keywords: TLRP; educational values and principles; curriculum; knowledge; pedagogy; assessment; relationships; teacher learning; educational policy; educational research.
*Corresponding author: Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 8PQ, UK. Email: mej1002@cam.ac.uk
scientific tradition of pedagogic thought and practice in Europe with the more instrumental approach to teaching that he found in England. Here, he argued, the development of teaching was dominated by a concern with the individual differences between learners and groups of learners, and how to respond to them. In contrast, as Simon put it:
To develop effective pedagogy means starting from the opposite standpoint, from what children have in common as members of the human species; to establish the general principles of teaching and, in the light of these, to determine what modifications of practice are necessary to meet specific individual needs. (p. 131)
This argument can be chased through at two main levels. It has implications for forms of institutional provision – and Simon was a strong supporter of the comprehensive principle. It also has implications for teaching and learning practices and the way the highly contentious phrase, ‘what works’, is understood.
The TLRP, which has supported more than 100 projects, fellowships, thematic groups and capacity building initiatives, focused primarily on the second of these two levels: on teaching and learning in authentic settings inside and outside of schools and other institutions, through the life course. The specific findings of TLRP’s projects are described in research briefings, articles, books, websites and other media. Its cross- programme thematic work is published in a series of commentaries on contemporary
policy issues, as well as in special issues of journals, research reviews for external bodies, and in briefing papers for direct communications with policy makers. 2
A major ambition of the Programme, for both analytic and impact purposes, has been to try to produce an evidence-informed statement of ‘general principles’ of teaching and learning, just as Simon advocated. The basic view is that a great deal is actually known about pedagogy, both in the UK and internationally, but that the synthesis, communication and implementation of such knowledge are far weaker than they should be.
Why general ‘principles’ are an important outcome of TLRP?
The diverse nature of TLRP’s projects, which focused on different research questions in different contexts, sometimes using different methods and theoretical perspectives, did not permit formal quantitative meta-analysis rendering aggregated effect sizes of interventions as indicators of ‘what works’. However, each project engaged with existing research in its own particular field or sub-field and built on this to take knowledge forward cumulatively. Through the mechanisms for knowledge exchange set up by TLRP, and drawing on their own particular networks and resources, research teams also developed thinking in dialogue with other researchers and users. In this way new insights were located in intellectual and political context through social processes.^3
(^2) Details of these outputs can be found on the TLRP website at: http://www.tlrp.org/pub/index.html https://bei.leeds.ac.uk/freesearch/TLRP/BEISearch.html and via the British Education Index at (Accessed 17th (^) May 2011)
(^3) See James, 2006, for a detailed example drawing on the experience of one large project.
1), and the outputs that were beginning to emerge from individual TLRP projects and cross-Programme thematic work. This model had a long gestation and can, in an early form, be found in a sociological analysis of classroom coping strategies (Pollard, 1982). However, it was simplified to its key elements to provide an analytic framework to structure cross-Programme discussion and analysis.
[Figure 1 near here]
The majority of projects that were funded in the early phases of TLRP commissioning were focused on the school sector and these were considered first.^4 However, many of the thematic initiatives went wider than the school sector. These were attempts to review findings across TLRP in relation to specific key ideas^5 and to relate these insights to research and scholarship beyond TLRP in order to ground them in a wider literature. This review has a similar ambition: to provide a synoptic overview of what TLRP’s schools projects discovered about effective pedagogy but to relate this to TLRP’s work in other sectors of education, and to the broader literature that has accumulated internationally and over time. This is a grand ambition and has necessitated selection and précis in order to produce a digest that is digestible.
The schools projects and the thematic work reviewed here are listed in the Appendix. The codes allocated to such projects (P1-P21) and to thematic work (T1-T17) are used as a referencing system, unless a particular output needs to be cited. Other publications are accessible by following the web links given in the Appendix. Other
(^4) By the conclusion of the programme the balance had shifted and, by 2009, only approximately one third of projects had focused on schools. The majority researched further and highereducation, workplace and adult learning. (^5) See http://www.tlrp.org/themes/index.html (Accessed 17th May 2011)
TLRP investments are sometimes also referred to using standard referencing conventions and are not listed in the appendix. All TLRP work is accessible via www.tlrp.org.
The way in which the TLRP Directors’ Team tackled the analytical and synthetic task is best described as ‘narrative review’. One piece of thematic work (T12), led by Torrance and Sebba, was explicitly directed towards promoting a better understanding of the nature and roles of reviews of research. A typology of reviews was developed, which distinguished between reviews for academic and scholarly purposes and those for practice and policy purposes The iterative review that the TLRP carried out was intended to serve both sets of purposes and attempts to address multiple audiences, albeit in rather different forms of presentation - an example of ‘commitment to “multi-vocalism” in review processes’ (Torrance and Sebba, 2007, p.3).
In terms of the classification developed by this thematic group, the present contribution cannot claim to be either a ‘definitive’ review of the ‘state of knowledge’ in the whole field, or a ‘systematic’ review intended to produce ‘conclusive, generalisable, politically defensible knowledge for action’. Although the evidence base is extensive, and reaches beyond TLRP, teaching and learning has too many dimensions for a single review to be definitive. Furthermore, evaluative exclusion and inclusion criteria were not strictly applied as expected in systematic reviews. In some senses this was not felt to be necessary because almost all the projects in TLRP’s portfolio, funded in the ‘generic phase’ to 2009, were evaluated as ‘Good’ or
and used in the documentation of other agencies, although not always with clear attribution (see, for example, DCSF, 2008, p.6).
The meeting at the Treasury convinced the TLRP Directors’ Team of the need to publish something along similar lines for a general audience. So, in March 2006, it published Improving teaching and learning in schools as the second in its series of commentaries (James and Pollard, 2006). Initially written in response to the Schools White Paper, which later became the Education and Inspections Act 2006, this commentary argued that no amount of structural reform, such as the creation of different types of schools, would obviate the need for serious attention to the quality of relationships and pedagogic processes in classroom if standards of education were genuinely to improve. Included in the commentary was the first version of the TLRP’s ten ‘evidence-informed principles for effective teaching and learning’, presented graphically on an ellipse to indicate that they represent no firm linear hierarchy. However, the sequence had a logic which helped with deciding an order when elaborated in text: beginning with pedagogical aims, and the way these are expressed in classroom practice, and extending to the conditions needed for effective pedagogy in the structures and cultures of schooling and the wider environment, including social and educational policy, locally and nationally. The relationship between elements was likened to the ripples when a pebble is thrown into a pond (James and Pollard, 2006, p. 5).
Educational innovation, even that which is primarily classroom-focused, almost always involves changes at several levels, which makes researching it similarly multilayered. However, by examining the evidence against the categories, and the
categories against the evidence, the themes of interest were eventually reduced to four main clusters (see James & Pollard, 2008):
- Educational values and purposes
- Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment
- Personal and social processes and relationships
- Teachers and policies
TLRP’s ten principles were grouped under these headings (as they are in the Evidence section below). In most publications they are described as principles of effective teaching and learning. But here, as indicated in the title of this contribution, the term pedagogy is preferred for four main reasons. First, the audience for this contribution will be familiar with the term and not regard it as academic jargon. Second, the term is now more widely used by UK practitioners and policy makers, and it is used across most sectors of education and training, which was not the case when TLRP was set up. Third, and most importantly, ‘pedagogy’ expresses the contingent relationship between teaching and learning (see the quotation from Simon above) and does not treat teaching as something that can be considered separately from an understanding of how learners learn. Fourth, as TLRP researchers themselves pointed out, the work of the programme, certainly as it pertained to schools, focused more clearly on the implications for teaching of what we know about learning, than it did on developing new knowledge about learning per se.
In an article reflecting further on the question that Brian Simon posed in 1981, Robin Alexander (2004, p. 11) defines pedagogy as follows:
- and in a further Commentary on professionalism and pedagogy (Pollard, 2010).^10
In the discussion that follows, this later version of the ten principles is used. There are two reasons for this decision. First, although contexts for learning vary, the common features in how people learn across the life course makes the validity of a shared set of principles sufficient to be worthy of serious consideration. Second, the majority of school projects had findings related to the importance of the learning of teachers as a condition for effective support of the learning of their pupils. Teachers are adult learners in the workplace and therefore the principles needed to apply to their learning too.
From 2005 to the present, discussions between researchers, practitioners, policy makers and other ‘user’ groups, have been a principal means of developing, refining and validating both the synthesis of research and the principles that arise from it. If these principles are valued as a way to accumulate and organise knowledge, with potential for further progressive development and use within public debates, then such discussion and iterative development will need to continue. This development, by its very nature, continues.
(^10) Professionalism and Pedagogy: a contemporary opportunity , published with the General Teaching Council for England, is available at: (Accessed 17th (^) May 2011) http://www.tlrp.org/pub/commentaries.html
Argument and evidence
In this main section, the thinking underlying the articulation of particular principles is rehearsed and informing evidence from TLRP is outlined. The discussion is organised under the four headings given above. The aim is to identify the insights that TLRP researchers shared, and those on which they differed, and to tease out some of the underlying reasons for synergies or tensions. Some illustrative evidence from individual projects is included although projects or thematic initiatives, as entities, are more fully described elsewhere. Brief outlines are also available in audits of schools projects that have been written for other purposes (e.g. James and Pollard, 2009; Pollard, 2010).
Educational values and purposes (principle 1)
In the early days of the TLRP, a core objective was expressed as a need to investigate those teaching and learning practices that are most efficient and effective in enhancing the achievements of learners.^11 Given the policy context in the schools sector at the time, there was an assumption that projects would provide evidence of gains in pupil attainment. This created difficulties for some project teams. First, properly validated standard measures did not exist for some of the outcomes that projects had been funded to research e.g. learning how to learn capability. Second, causal relationships were difficult to establish in authentic settings where variables interact in uncontrollable ways. Third, most research projects depended on the co- (^11) The evidence for this can be found in the Annual and End of Award Reports of the first Programme Director, Charles Desforges (1999-2002). Accessible at: http://www.tlrp.org/manage/progrep.html (Accessed 17th (^) May 2011)
the gaps is the normative gap. The values that inform policy can be investigated empirically, but empirical investigation alone cannot tell us what we ought to do. However, other forms of disciplined enquiry can address these normative questions. As Bridges (2009, p.3) summarises:
We should be more explicit about the educational and wider political values which frame policy and practice, and be more ready to subject these to careful scholarly, as well as democratic, scrutiny and criticism. The fact that ideology, normativity and educational values and principles are central to policy does not mean that scholarly endeavour has no work to do in these areas. The academy has enormous resources – in political science, social theory, ethics and philosophy – which can be brought to bear on this dimension of policy formation, and we should not be coy about using them.
Another thematic group (T2), which was convened earlier in the life of TLRP, examined how the first 30 projects to be funded (12 from the schools sector) used theoretical resources and empirical evidence to identify the learning outcomes of most interest in their specific context. Initial analysis of project documentation enabled seven categories of outcome to be identified:
- Attainments – often school curriculum based (literacy, numeracy, science) or measures of basic competence in the workplace.
- Understanding - of ideas, concepts, processes
- Cognitive and creative – imaginative construction of meaning, arts or performance
- Using – how to practice, manipulate, behave, engage in process or systems
- Higher order learning – advanced thinking, reasoning, metacognition
- Dispositions – attitudes, perceptions, motivations
- Membership, inclusion, self-worth – affinity towards, and readiness to participate and contribute to, groups; building social and substantive identities. (James & Brown, 2005, p.11)
BOX 1
Evidence from school projects
Many individual projects were interested in developing and researching achievements in several of these areas. For example, the Group Work projects (P6, P12) investigated motivation, attitudes, social-emotional relationships, and classroom behaviour as well as academic outcomes. The Thinking Skills project (P5) researched the broader learning goals of metacognition and self-regulation, and showed a positive relationship with academic attainment and effort, although the effect needed time to build and was not uniform across all learner groups (McGuinness et al, 2006). Similarly the Learning How to Learn project (P13) investigated learning practices and strategies, alongside more conventional academic outcomes defined by national test results (James, et al, 2007). In an early years project on learning and ICT (P1), enhanced learning dispositions and confidence were found to be crucial to building knowledge and skill (Stephen and Plowman, 2008). The development of dispositions was also prominent in the longitudinal projects on the formation of learning identities (P21). And, two projects (P10, P15) investigated the benefits of consulting pupils in
Is one thing to ‘adopt a broad conception of worthwhile learning outcomes’ for lifelong and life-wide learning; it is quite another to know whether ends are achieved. Dispositions and capabilities developed during the years of compulsory schooling can be enhanced or undermined by the opportunities and constraints experienced in later life.
In 2003 the Labour Government in England published its Every Child Matters agenda which highlighted the importance of five outcomes of the education system: being healthy; staying safe; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; and achieving economic well-being. The UK Government also funded a Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning (WBL), which similarly viewed learning as a potential benefit to the individual, the family, the community and the nation. However, there is a tension between meeting these broad-ranging objectives, with which few disagree, and focusing on the basic skills and qualifications that have been the major thrust of contemporary policy. At the 2006 TLRP conference, where the ten principles were debated with researchers, a participant from the WBL Centre pointed out that although its longitudinal analysis of UK birth cohort studies provide much evidence of people’s lives from birth to adulthood, ‘these data sets do not have rich data on the experience of school. It would be useful to develop better integration between these approaches’. This must surely be a challenge for future researchers if we are to move from description of patterns in educational trajectories to better explanations of why they occur.
Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (principles 2, 3, 4 and 5)
Conceptions of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, and the interactions among them, lie at the heart of schooling. There has always been debate about what a whole curriculum should consist of, how it should be organised, what constitutes valued knowledge in a subject or field, how such knowledge can be represented and communicated to learners, and how learners’ knowledge, understanding and skills can be detected and evaluated. These debates have involved curriculum developers, subject specialists, cognitive psychologists and assessment experts. However, in the 1970s, the intervention of a group of British sociologists (Young, 1971), of which Basil Bernstein was the foremost, introduced a powerful new element into the debate. They argued that knowledge, and hence curricula, are socially constructed and contested. This influenced a major shift in the way curricula were viewed. It appeared to undermine objectivity and led to some post-modernist claims that any knowledge, or form of curriculum organisation, is as valuable (or not) as any other, and the greatest need is to engage in rigorous critique of the political control they exercise. At its most extreme, this relativism seemed to undermine any Enlightenment notion that progress in education is possible because consensus on goals and means, undistorted by power relations, was thought to be unattainable.
TLRP’s commitment to work ‘to improve outcomes for learners’ implied a belief that educational progress is possible. It never shared the extreme relativism of some post- modernists although it has tried to be inclusive of a wide range of theoretical perspectives within its activities. Pollard (2005, p.3) viewed the Programme as a potential vehicle for ‘creative mediation’ and drew explicitly on an appeal to the
