Teaching practice – 5 ways TDaPE changed the way I think about it
How thoughtful routines, coaching and collaboration can strengthen teaching practice and improve outcomes for both staff and pupils…
- by Kieran Mackle
- Creator of The Story of Mathematics, author & podcast host Visit website
Thinking Deeply about Primary Education began as a conversation and matured into something much more. It asks awkward questions, rejects tidy myths and treats teachers as professionals whose time and attention are precious. Working inside that culture has changed what I count as good teaching practice.
The shift has not been theatrical. It has been a steady tightening of routines that make teaching more reliable, less performative and more focused on students reaching genuine proficiency.
What follows are five ideas that now shape the way I plan, coach, and lead…
Coaching
Coaching is as much about logistics as it is about codification and knowledge of pedagogy.
For a long time I believed the engine of improvement was codification. Shared language, clear rubrics and explicit models of instruction allow us to name what works and to replicate it.
They still matter. Without a common vocabulary, coaching becomes guesswork and feedback collapses into personal taste.
Yet codification without logistics is theatre. Coaching thrives when the unglamorous details are solved. Do we have a quiet space at a predictable time? Are materials ready? Is there a short, specific focus? Will we capture the rehearsal so we can review it?
When logistics are right, pedagogy can breathe. Short, regular cycles beat heroic marathons. Twenty minutes once or twice a week with a single target and a planned micro-rehearsal moves teaching practice further than a monthly deep dive that tries to fix everything.
A calendar invitation that never moves is more valuable than a glossy coaching handbook that gathers dust.
Two-minute clips recorded on a phone and saved in a shared folder create a running record of progress and a bank of exemplars for new colleagues.
Knowledge of pedagogy points the way; sound logistics let you get there. If the surface is smooth, everyone travels further.
Pay it forward
The changes we make today pay it forward for tomorrow’s teacher.
Good teaching practice compounds. Every time we remove ambiguity from a unit, choose a cleaner example or rewrite a worked example to reveal a hidden structure, we place a deposit in the account of the next teacher.
Thinking Deeply about Primary Education (TDaPE) has trained me to optimise for the long term. Do the work today so that next term the novice teacher can stand on it.
That might mean annotating plans with exact phrasing, or adding a margin note that explains why a distractor is plausible and how to address it.
This mindset changes how I value time. Refining instead of reinventing can feel slower in the moment. In reality it buys back hours and raises the floor for everyone.
One well-designed sequence on aggregation, reduction and comparison prevents colleagues from rederiving the same logic. A crisp glossary stops years of drift between different uses of the equals sign. Model responses help subject leads calibrate expectations without endless moderation meetings.
The future teacher is often you, so what you bank today is time you get back later.
Get into a rhythm
Real learning takes place in the little and often.
Big training days feel productive and they have a place, especially when you launch a shared approach.
Most progress, though, comes in the small. Students learn in short episodes that are spaced and connected. Teachers do too.
TDaPE nudged me from one-off events to a steadier rhythm. A two-minute retrieval at the start of every mathematics lesson keeps last week’s content warm. A thirty-second micro explanation, rehearsed in advance, makes teaching cleaner at the point of delivery. A ten-minute curriculum clinic each week solves one real problem and captures one shared solution.
Little and often is not code for low challenge. It is a design principle that respects forgetting and the limits of working memory.
In multiplication, for example, fluency depends on earlier proficiency with factors, partitioning and place value. The answer is not a grand recap once a term. It is a steady return to prior ideas: one item from last half term, one from last week, one from yesterday.
In professional learning the same rule applies. Rehearse one questioning move, try it tomorrow, watch the two-minute clip after school, adjust and try again. After a few weeks you notice it is the rhythm, not the one-off heroics, that does the lifting.
Simplify things
Effective practice and leadership make life ‘easier’ for teachers.
Teaching is difficult, important work. It should not be needlessly hard. The best leaders I know are relentless simplifiers. They remove friction that does not improve learning and make the right thing the easy thing.
TDaPE has emboldened me to see ease as a legitimate aim. A well-sequenced curriculum with crystal clear examples lowers cognitive load for students and reduces decision fatigue for teachers.
Shared planning that includes model explanations and anticipated misconceptions is not spoonfeeding. It is professional generosity that frees teachers to focus on responsive teaching.
Ease comes from alignment. When curriculum, coaching, assessment and professional development point in the same direction, teachers experience less noise and more signal. One clear set of expectations, explained with reasons, beats a scatter of initiatives.
Leaders should obsess over how things work at 8.45am on a wet Tuesday. Do staff know where to find the right resources? Are the examples trustworthy? Has the photocopier queue been accounted for? Is cover arranged so that best practice can be seen in real classrooms rather than only heard about in staff meetings?
A simple check after a term: does the system feel lighter? Are more explanations crisp? Are misconceptions anticipated rather than discovered mid-lesson?
If yes, leadership is doing its job. We talk a lot about high expectations; we should talk just as much about removing friction.
Rely on others
Teachers are here for each other, so draw on that support.
If there is a single conviction that runs through TDaPE, it is that teaching is a collective endeavour. The job can feel solitary, yet nothing of consequence in education is achieved alone.
The podcast, conferences and informal networks exist because teachers are generous with their time and honest about their struggles. When we pool experience, we protect each other from dead ends and we spread the things that work.
Professionalism, not weakness
Drawing on support is an act of professionalism, not a confession of weakness. It looks like opening your classroom so a colleague can see the routine for partner talk and copy it. It’s sharing the draft of a unit before it is polished so others can improve it. It’s about leaders creating protected time for peer observation and making it normal to rehearse an explanation together.
Crucially, it also looks like asking for help early, because small problems left alone become big ones. The strongest form of teacher autonomy is interdependent, not isolated. You choose, but you choose with others in mind.
Thinking Deeply about Primary Education has not handed me a new ideology. It has given me better questions and tighter habits.
Is the coaching protected by logistics as well as guided by knowledge? Will today’s improvement serve tomorrow’s teacher? Have I built a cadence that makes learning stick? Does this plan make life easier where it counts? Who can help me, and whom can I help?
Keep returning to those questions and good teacher practice becomes less about heroics and more about design. That change is better for teachers, better for students, and far more likely to last.
Kieran Mackle is the creator of The Story of Mathematics, an EYFS and Primary mathematics curriculum designed to improve teacher practice and foreground coherence, conceptual understanding and mathematical depth. Rooted in rigorous sequencing and meaningful connections between ideas, the curriculum invites students and teachers alike into the unfolding narrative of mathematics as a subject that makes sense.
He is also the author of Tackling Misconceptions in Primary Mathematics and Thinking Deeply About Primary Mathematics, and the host of the Thinking Deeply About Primary Education podcast.
Join Kieran at TDaPE Cymru in Cardiff on 27th September 2025.
