Unlocking High-Quality Teaching

In an era defined by rapid innovation and constant change, it is tempting to focus on the latest trends or technologies that promise transformative change. However, refining existing teaching practices by closely examining the current realities of classrooms can be a powerful – and even potentially safer – approach to addressing stagnating student achievement, as seen across PISA participating countries. Further understanding the nature of teaching is critical, as no other factor within schools has a greater impact on students' academic success and overall achievement than the quality of teaching.

Teaching is inherently complex. Teachers need to navigate the complexity of the often unpredictable and sometimes chaotic realities of classrooms, where students have diverse needs and abilities, resources are limited, time is constrained, and numerous day-to-day challenges arise. They need a deep understanding of both content and pedagogical strategies informed by research, but also adaptability, creativity, and responsiveness. Teaching is a science, but so too an art and craft.

Understanding the fuller complexity of teaching is essential to the ongoing improvement of education systems. This report is grounded in a collaborative, iterative, and multi-stakeholder approach, integrating insights from experts on the best evidence available on high quality teaching and from over 150 schools on how practices are implemented. This work has been further enriched by the 50 countries and organisations participating in the Schools+ Network, representing diverse perspectives across policy, schools and research.

The report examines five teaching goals to high quality teaching and 20 practices that teachers draw upon to achieve them. These practices are relevant across different age groups, subjects, educational contexts, and pedagogical beliefs. While teaching is a dynamic whole that goes beyond any single practice, examining each practice separately and in detail allows for deeper insights into the complexity of their implementation.

Cognitive engagement centres on creating the conditions for students to put forth a sufficient and sustained effort to persist in understanding a complex idea or solving challenging, unstructured problems. To do so, teachers ensure appropriate levels of challenge, embed meaningful context and real-world connections, facilitate first-hand experiences, work with multiple approaches and representations, and nurture students’ metacognition. Cognitive engagement can seem enigmatic, as it is difficult to observe. Teachers must carefully consider where students are in their learning alongside the cognitive load of learning opportunities. They accordingly fluidly adapt their role in terms of scaffolding and stretching student thinking, all the while carefully attending to how they also support students’ ability to reflect on and manage their learning.

Quality subject content focuses on building a deep understanding of subjects – from the subject’s core ideas and skills to a critical eye of how to apply these. Teachers ensure quality subject content by crafting explanations and expositions, providing clear, accurate, and coherent contents, making connections, and interrogating the nature of the subject. Its complexity hinges upon understanding, on the one hand, how to look backwards to students’ prior learning to build sound, robust understanding that lasts, but also how to look outwards to ensure that connections and patterns in the subject matter are steadily built and enriched.

Social-emotional support focuses on nurturing a supportive classroom climate and building positive relationships that are conducive to learning. It is also though about furthering students’ social-emotional development, with teachers explicitly teaching social-emotional skills and providing opportunities for students to actively practise these skills. An area of rich if relatively recent attention, part of the complexity here lies in the new demands it places on teachers’ knowledge of social-emotional skills and how to support their development.

Teachers facilitate high-quality interactions in the classroom through questions and responses, organising opportunities for students to collaborate, and whole-class discussions. The complexity for teachers lies in establishing clear routines, balancing teacher and student agency, ensuring an equitable environment of interaction.

Formative assessment and feedback is the ongoing process of teachers carefully evaluating and guiding students’ progress through setting learning goals, diagnosing student learning, providing feedback, and adapting to student thinking. Teachers must be attentive to the complex demands of choosing the best timing for different practices and attending to individual needs in large and diverse classrooms, all the while ensuring that students have agency to also steer their learning.

The practices examined have shown a causal impact on students' cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. The best available evidence is stronger for classroom interaction and formative assessment practices rather than for cognitive engagement, quality subject content, and social-emotional support – partly because these areas are harder to conceptualise and measure. Further research is needed to understand what works, where, why, for whom, and under what conditions these practices can be most impactful.

A related challenge lies in translating research into classroom practice, which involves not only accessing but also interpreting it and re-evaluating established habits. Greater attention is needed not only on what has an impact but also on how, fostering a dynamic process where professional experience and scientific knowledge enrich one another.

Exploring the complexity of teaching offers valuable insights into ways to improve teaching quality. Some practices – such as ensuring appropriate levels of challenge or facilitating first-hand experiences – are more challenging to implement than others, like setting learning goals. These more challenging practices require opportunities for teacher reflection and thus call for a sustained, tailored approach to their refinement.

But, high quality teaching is not just about the teacher. Factors such as class size, curriculum design, and the wider school climate play a crucial role in shaping what type of practices the teacher can enact in the classroom. The environment can either support or hinder high-quality teaching. School leaders have a critical role in navigating these factors, helping to create conditions that can enable teachers to excel in their craft.