Best Practice

Deliberate practice: What is it and why does it matter?

Deliberate practice is often ‘an overlooked servant’ when it comes to teacher development, but if we practise the right things, at the right time and in the right way then it is a key CPD tool. In this two-part article, Robbie Burns explains what it’s all about...


On the football pitch, in the surgery room, in the classroom, and in a thousand other places, you can work incredibly hard without getting very far. You could run all day in boots and shin pads but without skill, it is not the ball you will be chasing.

Likewise, without years of relentless training in a specialist field of medicine, surgical scissors and a scapula are no better than a knife and fork. And we know, in the classroom, being hard-working as a teacher is only a slice of the story of what it means to be effective.

Complex endeavours of all kinds, athletic or professional, require high-levels of skill. Teaching is no exception. Yet in education there is a lingering misconception that to “get better” at our craft, we must simply do more of it – and attend INSET.

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