Teaching Sprints – Using Scientific Method to Improve Teaching

Teaching Sprints is a team-based process for enabling the continuous development of teacher professional practices which was developed by Dr Simon Breakspear, currently a Research Fellow with the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of New South Wales. The Teaching Sprints method is designed to support teacher teams to define highly specific areas of student learning to improve, design evidence-informed strategies, and to collect evidence to check their impact. Through engaging in these ‘Sprints’, teachers have an authentic opportunity to improve their practice, while lifting student outcomes. This process draws on the seminal research in effective teacher learning and expertise development (Cordingley et al. 2015; Deans for Impact, 2015; Timperley et al. 2007).

Prior to the international COVID-19 pandemic, all teaching staff at The King’s School were briefed by Bronwyn Jones from the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education on the application of the ‘Teaching Sprints’ methodology for improving teaching performance. This was followed by an expression of interest from nearly 20 teachers at King’s to trial the method during the 2020 academic year. The outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent restrictions placed on schools made the roll out difficult, but the School has committed to revisiting the initiative again in 2021. The simplest explanation of a teaching sprint is that it consists of three phases. The first being the ‘Prepare’ phase. During ‘Prepare’, teams engage in a deep dialogue about their practice and consider relevant research to identify a precise focus for improvement work. They then go into the ‘Sprint’ phase, where they test out their new learning through short, manageable cycles of teaching in the classroom. A Teaching Sprint ends with explicit ‘Review’, involving the analysis of impact evidence and consideration of how to transfer new pedagogical knowledge and skills into future practice.

Shannon O’Dwyer (Deputy Head – Academic) from the Preparatory School is leading a team of teachers using Teaching Sprints, as they re-envisage their Primary Years Programme with the International Baccalaureate in 2021. The Teaching Sprints method will be one of the primary intervention strategies the School employs as it seeks to raise student learning and teacher performance in the coming years. King’s also has several Departments from the Senior School trialling Teaching Sprints in 2021.

”The simplest explanation of a teaching sprint is that it consists of three phases. The ‘Prepare’, ‘Sprint’, ‘Review’ phases.”

Dean Dudley Director of The King’s Institute