How can professional learning be more meaningful and impactful? This paper gives an overview of six phases of learning that everyone—including adults—goes through when learning something new. The learning model offers clarity and practical guidance for school and district staff who develop PL sessions, helping them design and sequence learning experiences that are more engaging and effective at addressing educators’ needs.

Effective principals do have an impact on student achievement and teacher efficacy. McREL’s analysis of research found that effective leadership isn’t dependent on natural-born personality or style. Instead, we found it’s about a set of 21 specific, learnable actions and behaviors that are significantly associated with higher levels of student achievement, teacher efficacy, and schoolwide success.

To improve student achievement, close gaps, and ensure equitable outcomes, there’s likely no better place to start than focusing on consistently providing Tier 1 “best first instruction” every day, in every classroom. Based on an extensive review of high-quality research studies, this paper presents 14 best first instruction strategies that are connected to higher levels of student learning.

Many principals and instructional coaches, and some teachers themselves, conduct classroom walkthroughs to gain insights on teaching, learning, and school improvement initiatives. There are different types of walkthroughs for different purposes, however. In this paper we describe the research on effective walkthroughs and how to match the right type of walkthrough to your school and classroom goals.

While district leaders and policymakers often focus on sweeping reforms, teachers can get big results with modest adjustments, managing their classrooms just a little differently. This paper introduces seven simple shifts from our Tilting Your Teaching book—research-based, practice-proven techniques every teacher can use to gain (or regain) student focus, engagement, and cooperation.

Before teachers can leverage the benefits of student engagement, they need to know what it is, where it comes from, and why it’s so hard to maintain as students age. Here we review the evidence, present McREL’s definition of student engagement, and provide strategies to assess and improve students’ engagement with academics and the entire school community.

Adopting, adapting, or creating an instructional model could be the key to boosting instructional consistency for all students while also encouraging teacher creativity. In this paper, we present an introduction to instructional models, explain how they differ from frameworks, and give advice on helping school teams cohere around an initiative that has a high likelihood of benefiting students.

Professional learning sessions can be a good starting point to share foundational practices with groups of teachers, but it should be followed up with individual plans of action and ongoing self-reflection to sustain and embed the learning in daily practices. This paper describes characteristics of effective PL and gives an overview of a self-reflection process teachers can use to drive their own professional growth.

Recent studies find that teacher performance, on average, improves dramatically during an educator’s first few years on the job and then continues to improve in subsequent years, albeit less dramatically. This paper makes a case for schools and districts to invest more into teachers’ career-long professional learning and describes how to develop, support, and advance educator expertise.

Knowing how memory works can help teachers deliver instruction in a way that helps students better learn, recall, and apply new knowledge. This paper describes a brain-science-based model for teaching and learning that can guide teachers’ instructional planning and increase their students’ interest in, and motivation for, learning. (48 words)