It’s an ethos that principal Trinity Hook says has driven the Newcastle primary school’s recent improvement agenda to make explicit instruction the bedrock of all teachers’ practice.

Having now steered her team through the typically bumpy initial implementation phases, Hook credits the expertise and guidance provided by AERO as instrumental to the success of their shift.

Hook said school leadership were initially aware that explicit instruction was a “fabulous” means of teaching students to master new content and skills effectively – the question was how to actually make it happen, consistently, across all year levels.

Some 40 per cent of Mount Hutton’s students have disability, and 80 per cent of families come from a low SES background.

“We knew our school had some complexity, and we wanted to make sure that the practices that we were putting in place really did meet the needs of all our students,” Hook reflects.

“We really made sure that we chose something that was research-backed, but I think one of the challenges was that our staff were at a board range of stages in their career.”

Keen to properly assess the ‘enablers and barriers’ that might impact the rollout, Hook surveyed teachers before launching in.

“[The data] showed us that our enablers were that our staff believed that it was better to implement explicit instruction rather than keep things the way they were, which was still quality teaching, but it wasn’t consistent across the school.

“So that showed early on they had the buy-in, and this was an appropriate thing for us to do.”

Teachers were taken through a staged implementation to ensure they had the confidence and practical resources to nail each step.

The main barriers teachers flagged were around resourcing, time and their own instructional knowledge, Hook adds.

“That allowed us to make sure we had much more professional learning around deepening knowledge early on, before we expected that practice to happen in the classroom,” she says.

Hook urges other school leaders not to skip this first step when looking to spearhead whole-school change.

“I know often as a leadership team it can be much easier to just make assumptions about what we think might get in the way, or what we think is going to work well,” she says.

Another factor to consider was the varying levels of teaching knowledge and experience amongst her staff – while some were in their first year out of university, the school’s longest-serving teacher had been there for 30 years.

“We couldn’t just provide the same professional learning to everyone, because some already knew [how to use the pedagogy] and some didn’t, so it was really about tailoring the [learning] and support that we were going to provide to match our current knowledge and experience in our staff – that took a lot of thought around how we do that successfully,” Hook says.

Working with an AERO coach for one day a week, teachers were taken through a staged implementation to ensure they had the confidence and practical resources to nail each step.

“We really took it slowly, even though some of them had experience … and had a really flexible fortnightly support timetable – every single teacher was given support.

“And we were really conscious of measuring each staff’s need and adjusting that timetable as we went,” Hook shares.

Providing teachers with additional release time to observe each others’ practice or sit in on a demonstration lesson “really made an impact” too, Hook says.

Hook says she's noticed a growing collective responsibility amongst her staff to improve each other’s practice.

Since explicit instruction hit the school’s classrooms in a big way, the principal has noticed a string of positives.

“We pop into classrooms all the time, there’s definitely an increase in (teachers’) confidence in using the methods, and certainly consistency with that across the school – the content is different, but the way it’s delivered is the same,” she says proudly.

Collaborative practices are also booming Hook reports, with teachers’ eagerly co-creating resources and reflecting on each other’s lessons.

“One of the things I’ve really noticed is that collective responsibility for each other’s practice, they’re not isolated teachers in their own classroom…”

Students are reaping the benefits, with an uptick in engagement and academic prowess evident across the school.

“You can really see that they’ve got this confidence that they can work with the content they’re being given, because they’ve got their success criteria up on the board and they’re really broken down into small steps – they know exactly what they need to do.

“And there’s that smile on their face when they achieve a goal…” Hook says.

While some education academics and commentators have raised alarm over the NSW education department’s recent announcement that all schools will focus on the explicit teaching of a knowledge-rich curriculum, Hook believes the move is “fabulous”.

“Our strategic improvement plan really sits alongside their plan around having explicit teaching embedded in our practice,” she says.

“It doesn’t mean that all of our lessons are structured that way, there’s certainly lessons that allow creativity…

“But if we can get the explicit teaching practices really working strongly, then those kids can use those skills and transfer them to the more creative things as well.

“Explicit teaching is not a new thing … but I think refocusing attention on it as a pedagogy is quite refreshing.”

AERO has just released five new ‘explainers’ and a discussion paper exploring the insights learned from working with Mount Hutton and other schools in their bid to strengthen evidence- based practice.

“It’s not enough to simply know about effective practices,” AERO CEO Dr Jenny Donovan, says.

“The ‘how’ of implementation is just as important as the ‘what’…”

Donovan says the school partnerships are revealing “what it takes to move research about what works best in education off websites and into the practice of classroom teachers”. 

“We already know what works; and now we have some insights about how to help make it happen in our schools,” she adds. 

Hook, for one, is sold.

“I’m really very proud of my team and all my teaching staff … you can see them talking enthusiastically about [the instruction] in their collaboration time, and it’s really impacting their teaching.

“We’re really excited that we’re on this journey and we’ve put lots of things in place to make sure that it’s sustainable over time.”