Best Practice

Four ideas for applying Rosenshine’s Principles

Pedagogy In the classroom Whole-school issues
Barak Rosenshine’s 10 Principles of Instruction may seem statements of the obvious, but are we really embracing them in our classroom and whole-school practices? Andy McHugh considers the principles and how they can help to improve the quality of your teaching

In recent months, Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction have caused an uproar, it seems. Research-interested teachers have brought Rosenshine into the vernacular and sparked a fierce debate.

Many in the staffroom will look at these 10 principles and will tell you, “but, we have always done it that way”. But the truth is, we have not. This lack of self-reflection is a problem and a major one at that.

For many teachers, the principles laid out by Rosenshine (2012) are a departure from what, in some quarters, is labelled as “progressive” – rather than “traditional” – teaching.

Progressive teaching methods have sought to minimise teacher-talk and allow students to discover knowledge, as opposed to the knowledge being “taught” to the students more directly. The progressive methodology has its place, of course, but when adopted as the main pedagogical approach of choice it is hugely flawed, as Rosenshine’s evidence suggests.

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