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Brilliant! As school leaders we live, eat and breathe school improvement. In Teaching Sprints, Simon and Bron give us a practical and effective way to make it happen. I wish they had written this 20 years ago when I was a principal.
It is evident that if we wish to make education systems significantly better, we need to focus simultaneously on transformation of education system and improvement of teaching. The art of sustainable educational change is to find small steps that would make big impact in teachers’ practice. Teaching Sprints is a book about that. It is a great resource for leaders and teachers who are looking for practical ideas that can improve what teachers do in schools every day.
Teaching Sprints are so successful because the core values privilege teacher need and student improvement above anything else. Sprints have transformed our approach to professional learning and teacher growth. We now have a truly authentic and impact driven model for our teachers to engage with.
Through Teaching Sprints, thousands of our teachers and leaders now have another, and arguably better, way of moving through a disciplined inquiry process - the intentional experimentation, the fast fails, the iterative improvement. It is these small shifts that have added up over hundreds of our schools to make improvement across a system. We now have more expert teachers who not only know the most impactful teaching strategies, but where and how to use them, for which students and at precisely the right time.
This book starts with a compelling proposition for anyone involved in teacher learning: “If it doesn’t work for teachers, it doesn’t work.” What Simon and Bronwyn outline is an evidence-based, field-tested, no-nonsense process to support teachers in continually improving their teaching practice. This is a timely and welcome addition to the teacher learning discourse.
Teaching Sprints has enabled our portfolio of schools/pre-schools to be involved in a consistent organisational process for developing teacher practice and collaboration. As a local Education Team, the impact of this approach has been clearly identified through the collection of evidence which is enhancing our overall Site Improvement focus.
Transformative. Timely. Teacher and research informed. Teaching Sprints provides us with the space for deliberate dialogue around two critical aspects of education; improving student outcomes and shifting pedagogical practice.
Teaching Sprints is a great process that allowed our team to have some engaging professional dialogue on our teaching practice. It gave us a safe space to reflect on research and share our learning.
The Teaching Sprints process has become embedded in our school’s practice. Teachers collaborate, using the three phases of a Teaching Sprint to research around best practice, implement, review, refine, and assess. Improvement in student learning outcomes is evident as a result of the focus on improving and refining teacher pedagogy.
As a school leader, I credit the role Teaching Sprints has had in shaping staff culture – it’s one of continual teacher improvement. Through Sprints, teachers at my school routinely improve their effectiveness while simultaneously building strong relational trust.
Teaching Sprints has enabled our teams of educators to refine and improve their teaching practice by engaging with research. The Sprints process fosters collaborative learning and has been a valuable form of professional development in creating lasting change. I like that teachers reflect on their current practice and then identify areas where they could improve their expertise. The change is evident in the conversations you hear in meetings where the first step is engaging with research to inform the decisions we make.
Our teachers are proof of the impact Teaching Sprints has on improving their practice and ensuring impact. Teachers meaningfully engage in Teaching Sprints because they know it works.
Among the greatest unresolved issues within schools is developing great models of implementation: Sprints is certainly one of the breakthroughs. This book can make major improvements in schools and classrooms, ironically by focusing on tiny shifts.
As a school principal, I’ve found Teaching Sprints to be the most effective way to facilitate teacher improvement. It is simple but powerful because it gives teachers a real sense of satisfaction. Through each Sprint, and sometimes in a short space of time, they see both personal improvement and improvement in their students.
As the world turns faster and with increasing uncertainty, we, as educators, need to be agile and excellent. We need to project our professionalism and do everything in our power to ensure that the system we deliver is worthy of our children and their futures. This book is brilliantly researched, incredibly pragmatic and, most importantly, profoundly important in helping us all to meet that challenge.
Teaching Sprints provides educators with a lens to think about and explore their practice in tangible ways. The clearly articulated process facilitates collaborative conversations among teams, with a focus on evidence informed decisions. The opportunity to practice, adjust and reflect supports teachers’ professional learning through ongoing intentional and incremental adjustments over time.
This book delivers exactly what teachers want – a structured, logical and achievable strategy to improve their classroom practice and reflect on evidence of impact.
For too long teachers have been asked to change practice outside of the context of the classroom and outside the realm of engagement with students. Here, Breakspear and Ryrie Jones provide a logical, sensible, and pragmatic approach that enables the busy teacher to improve in the classroom with kids. Start with best bets, practice makes progress, and focus on tiny shifts are the key ingredients to launching doable and long-lasting improvement. This is a brilliant book every teacher, coach, and leader should use as they seek to improve teaching and learning.
Teaching Sprints is an important book for anyone who works with teachers on practice improvement. Breakspear and Ryrie Jones provide a simple, flexible process for engaging small groups of teachers in developing their craft of teaching. Using simple, straightforward protocols, Teaching Sprints helps teachers to engage with relevant research, choose one small piece of their craft to change and make that shift to ultimately improve student learning outcomes. I can't wait to share this book with all teachers in my district!
Authors Breakspear & Ryrie Jones, informed and supported by fellow practitioners & researchers, deliver a powerful Guide for a profession committed to getting better at good work. The Teaching Sprints model is an ‘innovation lab in the school’; it is a rigorous, adaptive, and impactful approach to embedding professional learning. Teaching Sprints advocates iterative and sustainable improvement in collaborative professional practice - but it does much more - it demonstrates how to do it!
