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Session 2. What Good Teaching Looks Like Here: A Shared Framework
Objective. Build a short shared framework of observable features of good teaching from existing evidence-based frameworks, test it for clarity and fairness, and avoid turning it into a one-style checklist.
A framework is easy to write and hard to use well. The same one-page picture can help a team talk about teaching or be turned into a checklist that frightens everyone. This lesson goes deeper than the key ideas: how frameworks go wrong in practice, and how to fit evidence from other countries to 45-minute lessons, large classes and state textbooks. The aim is a page your teachers recognise as describing good teaching they already do, and want to do more of.
Key ideas
Why a leader needs a shared picture
- Without a shared picture each observer uses private taste. One deputy likes quiet rows, another likes noisy groups, and teachers guess. A teacher who gets opposite advice from two leaders learns only to hide.
- A framework also protects the leader. When a hard conversation comes, you can point to something agreed in advance, not to your opinion.
- Its job is narrow: it names what you will look for and talk about. It is not a lesson template and not a marking scheme.
Borrow from evidence, do not invent or copy
- Several open frameworks describe good teaching. The Danielson Framework for Teaching groups practice into four domains: planning and preparation, learning environments, learning experiences and principled teaching. Rosenshine's ten principles of instruction (review, small steps, questions, models, guided practice, checking understanding and more) come from cognitive science, studies of expert teachers and cognitive supports. The World Bank Teach tool was designed for low- and middle-income countries and looks at teaching quality, including the classroom culture and the socioemotional skills.
- Coe and colleagues (Sutton Trust, 2014) reviewed the research on what makes great teaching and weigh how strong the evidence is for each element. Use them as a menu of evidence, not a law. Take what fits 45-minute lessons in your classrooms and your state textbooks.
- Pick the overlap. When two or three frameworks agree on something (clear purpose, checking understanding, practice, a calm climate), start there.
Writing descriptors an observer can actually see
- Test every line with three questions. Can I see it in 15 minutes? Is it about what pupils do or say, not about the teacher's personality? Does it allow more than one way to teach? 'Pupils can explain the aim' passes. 'Teacher is enthusiastic' and 'group work every lesson' do not.
- For each element write three short parts: what we would see pupils doing; what a teacher might do to get there (examples, not requirements); and what is not required. The third part protects teachers who teach well in a different way.
- Five or six elements are enough. A list of twenty cannot be remembered, so it becomes a checklist, and a checklist gets ticked rather than discussed.
Co-building, testing and keeping it alive
- Draft it with at least three teachers of different subjects and ages, including one who is not an easy supporter. Ask the draft's critics what a good teacher they know would fail under it. Revise until nobody can name her.
- Then test reliability: two leaders read the same short lesson description, each lists only facts and sorts them under the elements. If they disagree on what a line means, rewrite the line, not the observers.
- Review the framework once a year with teachers and pupils' work in hand. A framework that never changes is either perfect or ignored, and it is rarely perfect.
From evidence to a page you can use
Three ways a framework goes wrong
The first is the checklist: elements are ticked, not discussed, so observers hunt for the items and teachers perform them. The second is the template: a useful idea, such as a clear lesson shape, is fixed to equal times and every lesson begins to look the same. The third is the score: levels like 'developing' and 'secure' become numbers, the numbers are averaged and soon they appear in a file.
Guard against all three with small habits. Use the framework to start a conversation, never to finish it. Write levels, if you use any, as words about pupils ('seen with a few pupils', 'seen with most pupils'), not as scores. Never add up elements. And ask teachers once a year, on paper, where the framework has made them teach worse, because it will have done so somewhere.
Fitting borrowed evidence to your own classrooms
Frameworks from other countries describe practices that work under other conditions. Check each element against your own: lessons of 45 minutes, 30 or more pupils, one state textbook, pupils learning in Uzbek or Russian, and often limited space and materials. Rosenshine's idea of regular review fits a five-minute retrieval at the start. Checking understanding across a large class works with paper answers, not with a device.
Then try, do not decree. Ask two teachers to test one element for two weeks and bring back what pupils did differently. Keep what they can see and describe; remove what nobody can observe. The World Bank's Teach tool shows the scale of this task: it was built and tested for low- and middle-income countries, and still needs observers who are trained and checked. A school-sized version is smaller, but the same care applies.
Examples from the classroom
Sorting fourteen statements
Scene. Methodist Nargiza in Bukhara gives eight deputy heads and teachers fourteen statements about good lessons. Pairs mark each as observable and about pupils, a style, or too vague. Everyone agrees on 'pupils recall earlier learning' and 'teacher checks all pupils understand'. Pairs split about 'group work in every lesson': three call it observable, four call it a method that must not be required. After ten minutes the room agrees it is a method.
Insight. Sorting statements by observability separates what we want pupils to experience from the methods that deliver it.
The lecturer who stays
Scene. In a school near Fergana, Jasur, a Grade 10 physics teacher, teaches mostly by clear explanation and then written problems. The first draft framework demanded pair work in every lesson. At the review, a teacher from the Grade 5 team asked, 'Would Jasur pass this?' The group added a 'not required' line: 'No particular method is required if pupils think and answer.' Jasur stayed on the framework team.
Insight. A 'not required' line protects excellent teachers who work in a different way.
Two deputies, one lesson
Scene. Two deputy heads in Samarkand read the same one-paragraph description of a Grade 7 lesson. Of ten facts listed, only six matched. One had written 'pupils engaged'; the other 'pupils copied the board for 12 minutes'. The group agreed 'engaged' was not a fact and rewrote the line as 'pupils write, talk or answer in at least half of the time'. The next test matched nine of ten facts.
Insight. Disagreement points to an unclear line; repair the line, not the observers.
Common pitfalls
- Copying a famous framework without checking it against your own lessons, pupils and textbooks.
- Writing twenty elements so that nobody can remember them and the list becomes a checklist.
- Turning levels into numbers that are averaged and then used for ranking.
- Writing the framework alone and expecting teachers to accept it.
Sort, Choose and Test: Our One-Page Framework
- Part A (45 min). In trios open the Activity Kit: 14 candidate statements. Mark each O (observable and about pupils), S (a style or tool that should not be required) or V (too vague to see). Check your answers against the key, then argue for or against the first six O statements.
- Choose six elements for your school (not more). For each write the three parts in the template: pupils doing, teacher might do, not required.
- Part B (30 min). Two leaders read lesson description A in the Kit, list only facts (no adjectives) and sort them under your elements. Compare. Count the facts you both listed and the facts only one listed.
- Rewrite the two lines where you read the same fact differently. Then ask: which good teacher I know would fail this framework? If you can name her, change it.
- Alone (5 min): write your leadership task from the Kit and the three teachers you will co-write the framework with.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which elements did all groups choose, and which did only one group choose? What does the overlap tell you about what leaders in your region value?
- Where did two leaders read the same fact differently, and what did that show about the wording?
- Which style or tool did you find hardest to leave out of the framework (for example group work or visual aids) and why?
Reflect
- If a new teacher asked 'what do you look for in my lesson?', how would you answer today, in three sentences?
- Which of your own favourite teaching habits would you most like to see in the framework, and is it evidence or taste?
- Who are the three teachers whose different views would make the framework fairer?
Try it tomorrow
- Choose one candidate element and write its three parts: pupils do, teacher might, not required.
- Ask one teacher who teaches very differently from you whether she could meet that element in her own way.
- Test one line with a second observer on the same short lesson description and note whether your fact lists match.
Further reading and links
A shared framework is short, built with teachers from evidence, written as what pupils do, protective of different teaching styles and tested so that two observers see the same facts.