Adults are not immune to a fad. While we may scoff at Pokémon cards, fidget spinners and bottle flipping, we know in our hearts that we are as susceptible to the shiny, new “in” thing as any 14-year-old (indeed, Netflix shareholders rely upon it).

In education, this can sometimes mean that an idea takes hold in classrooms far in advance of the research that suggests how exactly it might work. It’s why Carol Dweck spends much of her time firefighting poor implementations of growth mindset, for example, and why Richard Mayer must be quite confused when he sees some of the things that claim to be multimedia learning.

It’s not wilfully poor translation that causes the problems; it is just excitement and a rush not to be left behind - a desire that comes from the way accountability pressure sets schools up against each other.

So it is with some trepidation that we bring you a list of things that some of our columnists and a few esteemed guests believe should be the next big thing in the next 12 months. We don’t want to start the next fad.

However, all those offering their views here focus not on a shiny bit of singular research, but on themes and trends that they think will be important because they would change education for the better. They want to start a discussion, not dictate change.

So, let’s start that discussion: here’s what they said.

Tutoring

Becky Francis, CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation

As the sector works to mitigate against the impact of school closures in the next school year and beyond, a core element of every approach will be supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of pupils, some of whom will have lost loved ones or suffered mental health issues because of the pandemic.

But another significant part of the plan has to be addressing the impact of school closures on attainment. While all children’s learning will have been affected by the prolonged gap in face-to-face teaching, it is disadvantaged pupils who will have lost out the most.

For the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), our primary focus is on providing support for schools to help those pupils who have been most affected. And if you look at the evidence, there is extensive research showing the impact of tutoring to support pupils who have fallen behind. That’s why we think tutoring can be an incredibly powerful tool for teachers this year.

However, access to tutoring is often limited to the schools and parents that can most afford it. It’s estimated that around 80 per cent of disadvantaged pupils currently don’t have access to quality tuition.

The National Tutoring Programme aims to support schools in addressing this. It will make high-quality tuition available to state-maintained primary and secondary schools, providing additional support to help pupils most disadvantaged by school closures.

In addressing the impact of the pandemic on learning, there will be no quick fixes. But ensuring that schools can access high-quality, evidence-based tuition over the next academic year will provide a powerful tool for success.

Textbooks

Christian Bokhove, associate professor in mathematics education at the University of Southampton

The most promising idea, theory or bit of research, as far as I can see, is actually something that is pretty normal in many countries around the world, including the one I grew up in, the Netherlands.

It’s textbooks.

The focus on curriculum design of the past few years means that a shift to well-sequenced, well-thought-out, low-cost, high-quality textbooks in secondary schools would be incredibly useful for teachers.

According to international comparisons, England currently does not have a lot of textbook use in schools. This is despite the fact that textbooks can be a great way to combine curriculum content and effective sequencing with sensible instructional practices - for example, the use of representations and varied practice. And there is convincing evidence that shows textbooks can work really well.

Ideally, there will be different “flavours” of textbooks that cater for different pedagogical leanings, so we wouldn’t be restricted by a one-size-fits-no-one approach.

Contrary to some beliefs, textbooks do not have to be a “corset” but can provide a good basis for departments to work from, with teachers using their craft knowledge to deliver a professional final touch.

Finding out what ‘really’ works - bringing mastery to research

John Dunlosky, professor and director of the Science of Learning and Education (SOLE) Centre in the department of psychological sciences at Kent State University, Ohio

A limitation with education research is that it often involves examining students’ learning in a single session, where we tend to compare two different techniques and then look at which is better after just a single use. Even if one technique is better, neither technique typically produces educationally relevant levels of performance.

Instead, I believe that the focus needs to be on mastery: finding out what techniques will help students to master and achieve the level of success you, the teacher, want them to achieve.

It’s difficult to explore mastery-orientated techniques in education research, because you have to actually have the goal of really educating children to a mastery level, which would require a great deal of time - it would require multiple sessions.

And not only do we want to know which techniques will take students to mastery, we also want to discover the techniques that do so most efficiently. For instance, we not only want our pupils to master fractions, but we also want them to do art work and to play, and to do other enjoyable things. They have a great deal to learn and to do, so figuring out how to help them learn efficiently - but also learn to mastery - is important.

I feel that if we could give education researchers more money and time to support multisession experiments, then it would be an important challenge to discover the most efficient ways to get children to mastery for the content that we, as teachers and educators, feel they need to master.

However, this wouldn’t be the end of it. Because a focus on mastery brings more questions to the discussion. Students probably don’t have time to master everything, so which content is worthy of mastery? And which content is OK for students to be just “introduced” to?

To do research on mastery would take a great deal of time because it takes time to master content. But we need to do it. Yes, we can find an intervention where we can show that pupils do 5 per cent better - but we need more than just 5 per cent improvement. We need them to master it.

Language and literacy skills across transition

Jessie Ricketts is director of the Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) research lab at Royal Holloway, University of London

From the beginning of primary school, there is an increasing expectation that pupils will use their language and literacy skills to learn independently. For many children, this sliding scale will align well with their needs - in short, increasing independence is delivered when they are ready for it.

However, the research is clear that there are always some who do not have what they need to access the curriculum, and this continues through secondary school and beyond. For example, Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) data shows that nearly 20 per cent of 15-year-olds struggle with very simple texts.

The early primary school system is geared towards identifying and supporting children who are struggling to establish their literacy skills. However, as children move into key stage 2 and beyond, the curriculum gradually shifts away from actively teaching basic language and literacy, and specialist support is more scarce.

My hope is that we will begin to build on the primary curriculum in secondary schools, ensuring that there is continuity of support and of the teaching of basic literacy and maths as children move through primary and transition into, and out of, secondary education.

What should this curriculum look like? This is where we need some caution. We don’t yet know what good literacy teaching - for example, the teaching of reading or grammar - looks like in secondary schools. To find out, we need research that brings teachers and researchers together.

There is a strong body of research on language and reading development in children, but research on adolescence is only emerging. The big issue is the gap between this research and practice. We, as researchers, need to draw on rich teacher knowledge and experience, working with them to translate science into education, and to provide an evidence base teachers can use.

You can read the research paper Reading and Oral Vocabulary Development in Early Adolescence and check out the website Language and Reading Acquisition to find out more (see bit.ly/LARAlab).

Ethical conduct

Megan Dixon is director of English/ co-director of the Aspirer Research School, in Cheshire, and a Tes columnist

It feels like a lot of things have come together to force education to pause this year.

Last year, we had the revelation of the extent of the gender pay gap, providing a reminder of the inequities of our profession. The Black Lives Matter protests once again highlighted persistent discrimination across our communities. School after school was vilified in the national press and across social media for making reasoned and reasonable decisions in order to support the communities they serve. And the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the extent of educational and societal inequality.

So the signs are there that it is time for the education community to think long and hard about developing a code of ethics and conduct. Although these have been mooted before, and a code for ethical leadership was developed by Carolyn Roberts and colleagues, I do not think this goes far enough.

I believe we need a code that applies to all in the profession, and that sits alongside and supports the frameworks for learning that are being established - such as the Early Career Framework.

We need a code of ethics that explains the fundamentals of what it means to be a teacher in this country, developed by, with and on behalf of the profession, exploring and illustrating how our day-to-day conduct exemplifies the ethical principles of respect, competence, responsibility and integrity.

We need to decide what it is we want our profession to be and how we wish to be judged. If we are intent on being evidence-based, we need to ensure that everyone has the tools to use the evidence effectively. If we, as schools, wish to be considered as places of strength and support for our communities, we need to ensure that we all behave with the professional empathy and kindness this role demands. If we wish to be considered open, honest, transparent, just and fair, we need to develop the systems and processes that enable us to do so.

The Covid-19 pandemic has uncovered both the best and the worst of our profession. It has become increasingly clear that how we conduct ourselves is as important as the decisions we make.

A new way of looking at teacher development

Dylan Wiliam, emeritus professor of educational assessment at University College London

There is a big focus in education on trying to get the next big thing, and what often happens is that people get a confused or partial view of something. And as a consequence, we get these pendulums: growth mindset is the next big thing ... and then growth mindset is the new learning styles.

A lot of these things don’t have much impact - in education, it is really hard to find anything that has a big impact. So, I could speculate about what it is that people will get obsessed about, but I don’t think any of those things are going to help.

For example, social and emotional learning will be big in the coming year, but the real problem is that people aren’t particularly clear on what they mean by that.

Do you mean wellbeing and social and emotional learning as a focus in its own right? Or do you mean social and emotional aspects of learning as a way of improving academic learning? People will pretend it is the first, and then do the second.

There is no doubt that in Britain we’ve had too much focus on test scores, and I think people will try to use social and emotional wellbeing as a way of improving test scores.

I think the next big thing for teachers should be a professional developmental structure for new teachers, whereby in the first three years they are classed as a beginning teacher. They have a 50 per cent timetable, and have a mentor who does intensive coaching with them.

Once they finish being a beginning teacher, they then would have total control over their CPD. So a school leader would come into their classroom and ask them: what would you like feedback on?

And the way you would move from being a beginning teacher to an established teacher would be when you can do a critique of your own lesson. Once you can correctly identify what was weak about your lesson, then you are regarded as a fully qualified teacher. If you can’t do that yet, then you need more coaching.

It’s similar to the Singaporean model, but I see very little prospect of it happening, because people will be reluctant to give up the current “scoring” model.

The search for the next big thing is part of the problem. People don’t want to hear that the next big thing was the last big thing. We just need to create an environment where every teacher improves. Not because they’re not good enough, but because they can be even better.

The next big thing is that there is no next big thing.

Professional control

Jared Cooney Horvath is an educational neuroscientist at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and a Tes columnist

Most professions adhere to strong elements of “professional control” : the ability of practitioners to drive and dictate best practice within their own field.

Unfortunately, teaching has long been plagued by outside voices attempting to wrest away pedagogical decisions from teachers. Parents, politicians, academics - it seems everyone has an idea of what constitutes “good teaching”.

Over the past decade, the focus on evidence-based practice has put the job of defining good teaching in the hands of researchers and statisticians, who (by and large) have never spent a day in their lives actually teaching.

Luckily, I think the profession is catching on to this fact and starting to push back. Through teacher networks and professional organisations, we are seeing professional control once again being claimed by teachers themselves.

This is what I see as the next big thing: once teachers join forces, define what evidence is meaningful for them and develop a way to systematically document their impact on this novel definition of evidence, we will see teacher agency return to the fore and the profession once again attain the power to effectively stand up against outside forces.

A shift to the what - away from the how and the why

Mark Enser is a research lead and head of geography at Heathfield Community College, in East Sussex, and a Tes columnist

In the past decade, we have started to value pupils learning our subjects over simply doing activities, and this is very welcome.

I think the next step we will see is a better appreciation for what pupils are actually learning and ensuring that they are developing deep and powerful disciplinary knowledge, as discussed in the work of Michael Young.

This will be important as it moves us further still from the culture of learnification that Gert Biesta, professor of public education at the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland, warns about. Learnification describes a situation in which we are so concerned with the importance of learning that we forget to ask what they are learning, from whom and to what end.

Grainne Hallahan is the senior content writer at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 28 August 2020 issue under the headline “What will be big in teaching this year?”