I was recently very lucky to be invited to attend ResearchED Dubai as an international speaker. It was a superb event from start to finish, brilliantly organised by Ben Cooper, Campbell Douglas and the team at GEMS Wellington Academy. These events are always a highlight, but this was my first time in Dubai. There’s a palpable appetite for research and evidence-informed practice in this region, testified by the hundreds of teachers and leaders who bought a ticket and gave up their Saturday to attend.
Massive kudos to Tom Bennett – I just love ResearchED. It’s an initiative I found incredibly useful and inspiring as a teacher, and it’s an honour to be able to contribute now as a speaker.
I delivered three sessions on the day, and I’m really grateful to everyone who came along and engaged so enthusiastically with the ideas that I shared. I’ve been inundated with requests for slides and resources, so here they are – all in one place.
Session 1 | Explaining, Modelling & Checking for Understanding
Three pillars of explicit teaching
Explicit teaching is one of the most reliably effective models of classroom instruction. Its impact is well-evidenced, particularly when students are learning new or complex material. The rationale is simple: students cannot learn what they do not understand – they can’t think about what they don’t know – and their understanding often depends on the quality of instruction.
I spoke about three core routines that underpin explicit teaching:
Giving an Explanation | Teachers need to explain new ideas clearly, concisely, and in a structured way. This means reducing ambiguity, establishing and building on prior knowledge, and sequencing information in manageable chunks that allow for systematic checks for understanding.
A big shout out here for Zach Groshell’s brilliant book Just Tell Them – Zach offers ultra-practical and well-informed advice about the conditions and characteristics of great explanations, which complement our WalkThrus approach really well.
Modelling | Modelling shows students how to think, not just what to do. Worked examples, combined with backward fading, reduce cognitive load while giving students access to expert thinking. The focus should be on modelling the process, not the product – making heuristics and cognitive scripts visible – prompting emulation, not replication (a big difference and a common challenge for teachers), so that students can gradually take more responsibility, building their expertise with support that fades over time.
3. Checking for Understanding
Learning is invisible. Teachers have to check regularly whether students have understood things, rather than just assuming that they have. This is the most important part of explaining things – it doesn’t matter how good your explanation is if it doesn’t lead to students successfully making meaning. Effective checking should be systematic and frequent, and ideally based on high participation and high think ratio. The aim is to surface and address misconceptions before they are consolidated, and to adapt teaching accordingly.
Here are the slides:
Session 2 | The Problem Of Enactment
Tackling the PD transfer gap
Professional development only matters if it changes what happens in the classroom. Teachers spend around 98% of their time alone with students, making their own instructional decisions. If PD doesn’t shape that time, it hasn’t really done its job.
Mary Kennedy (absolute legend of teacher development research!) describes this as the problem of enactment – the persistent gap between what teachers know and what they do. It’s not caused by resistance or incompetence, but by the real demands of classroom life. Even the best ideas can be overwhelmed by habit, complexity, or lack of time to rehearse and refine.
I suggest three research-informed ideas to help us design PD that transfers:
Build better mental models | If teachers can’t see what good looks like, they’re unlikely to recreate it. PD should focus on building strong, flexible mental models that guide in-the-moment decision-making. That means more than listing strategies – it means helping teachers understand when, how, and why to use them.
Use pedagogies that support transfer | Pam Grossman’s research helps bridge the gap between theory and practice. Representation of practice (e.g. video, modelling), decomposition (breaking down complex techniques), and approximation (structured rehearsal) all support transfer. These tools can be embedded within coaching cycles to make professional learning more robust and more usable.
Combine training with coaching | Training provides clarity. Coaching builds fluency. The two are not contradictory – they are both equally necessary. A functional dynamic in which one doesn’t really work without the other (I do get a bit fed up of people dismissing the role of training – it’s just so important). Joyce and Showers, writing in the 80s (a vintage decade, think ET and CD players) found that decent coaching was the missing ingredient for transfer. Without it, even well-delivered training has limited impact on classroom practice.
Here are the slides:
Teach Like You Mean It
Shifting from habitual to intentional practice
Teaching is unique in that every teacher enters the profession with an extensive apprenticeship of observation – pretty much 13 years spent watching their own teachers at work. These early experiences form stubborn initial frames of reference, which quickly evolve into habits. Habits can be efficient, but they also come at a cost. They limit awareness, reduce flexibility, and often go unexamined.
The aim of great PD isn’t to eliminate habit, but to refine it. Teaching becomes more effective when it shifts from automatic routines to deliberate, intentional actions grounded in a clear purpose. This means helping teachers act with precision and responsiveness, supported by well-developed mental models of classroom decision-making.
In our new book, Coaching WalkThrus, we suggest five characteristics of intentional teaching:
Purpose | Teachers need clarity about what they’re trying to achieve. This involves identifying specific learning problems and selecting actions that solve them. Purpose drives attention and ensures decisions are aligned to instructional goals.
Precision | Precision refers to the detailed execution of teaching routines: the subtle aspects of practice that determine whether a technique is effective in context. Intentional teachers zoom in on the granular mechanics that make an approach successful.
Awareness | Teaching is shaped by what teachers notice. Drawing on Charles Goodwin’s concept of professional vision, the goal is to support teachers to see the classroom differently, to interpret cues, make predictions, and act responsively. This is a cognitive skill that can be coached.
Commitment | Intentional practice requires conviction. Teachers must believe in the value of what they’re doing and be willing to persist. Coaching can strengthen this by aligning goals with values and encouraging sustained focus.
Fluency | Fluent teachers act with confidence and flexibility. Their decisions are informed by internalised mental models, built through modelling, rehearsal, feedback, and reflection. Fluency allows teachers to adapt without losing intentionality.
Moving from habitual to intentional practice is a long game. It requires coaching and a well-planned system of practical and social support.
Here are the slides:
I hope that these resources, and the ideas they carry, are useful to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts, or talk them through – get in touch via my LinkedIn page.
I’d also like to add a special thanks to the brilliant people that I got to hang out with in Dubai. These events are absolutely about the people that you get to speak to, listen to, learn from and admire. Thanks to Bruce Robertson, Jamie, Patrice Bain, Claire Gadsby, Amarbeer Singh, Tom Bennett, Erika Galea, Claire Badger, Rachel Ball, Toby Holland, and again to the organising team.
I’m excited to be speaking at ResearchED Bournemouth in the UK on 7th June 2025. It would be brilliant to see you there!
Matt
Coaching Case Notes 
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