David Didau and his theories on teaching

David Didau quickly began gaining popularity in the world of teaching after starting his education blog, The Learning Spy. Over the ten years since his site’s launch, he has amassed an incredible 10,000 subscribers. His loyal followers enjoy reading regular posts on his opinions about mainstream education and his unique approach to teaching English.

On his blog, Didau openly shares a difficult time early on in his teaching career when he started a position in a school that soon went into special measures. Despite the professional challenges he faced, Didau’s teaching in the school was recognised as outstanding, and he was quickly promoted to a senior leadership role. It’s possible that this experience sparked Didau’s passion for promoting social justice and narrowing the advantage gap in schools, two of the main agendas at the heart of his work.

Didau not only has an influential presence online, but he also speaks publicly at international events, hosts training workshops, and is a successful author with several publications under his belt. His popular titles include ‘The Secret of Literacy: Making the implicit explicit’ and more recently ‘Making Meaning in English: Exploring the role of knowledge in the curriculum,’ which was published last year.

In his books, Didau challenges the status quo with arguments that are well-evidenced by current research in the fields of education and psychology. He continues to strive for a more progressive education system that is inclusive to all. His work has even led him to working directly with the Department of Education and Ofsted.

Influence from the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who was known for developing teaching principles such as scaffolding, the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and collaborative learning, can be seen throughout much of Didau’s theory on teaching. A pioneer of his time, Vygotsky broke away from traditional behaviourist thinking, which encouraged rote learning and repetition, and promoted new ways of viewing learning that focussed on the human at the centre of the learning process. He was an advocate of what later became known as the communicative approach which, today, is one of the most popular methods used in classroom teaching across the Western world.

Vygotsky acknowledged the importance of viewing every learner as an individual with a unique history and argued that ‘histories’ have a significant role in any classroom. This is something Didau also promotes, emphasising the importance of acknowledging learners’ backgrounds in the classroom. In his work, Didau asserts that a child’s socio-economic background has a significant impact on their progress in school, and he argues that learners from more affluent backgrounds are better primed for success in mass education. Consequently, Didau strongly believes that teaching should be based around what is most effective for disadvantaged learners and argues that this will work for all learners.

1. Time spent embedding classroom routines is always time spent well.
2. There is no one way to teach.
3. Differentiation is about getting every learner to do something difficult and providing them with the support they need to be successful.
4. The implicit should be made explicit. This means that learners’ attention is explicitly drawn to certain features in a text.
5. Skills such as reading should be taught and reviewed until they become second nature and learners can carry them out independently.

This can be as simple as a discussion in class that encourages learners to notice specific aspects of a text and question ‘why’ a writer has made certain choices and ‘what’ impact these choices have on the reader. Class discussions offer learners time to reflect on a piece of writing and develop their critical thinking skills.

Regular progress checks in the classroom are a great way not only to see how your learners are doing and whether your teaching has been effective, but also to motivate and encourage learners by visually demonstrating how much they have learnt.

Progress checks do not always need to be a formal test; lower-stakes options could involve keeping learning journals where students log their progress. The advantage of journals is that they help teachers see beyond the actual strengths and weaknesses a learner demonstrates in class and offer insight into a learners’ perceived strengths and weaknesses.

Didau advises that success should come before struggle; therefore, it’s a good idea to introduce an easy task before getting learners to do something more difficult. In practice, this means helping learners build up a mental representation of what success feels like before gradually making learning harder and encouraging more independent learning. This not only helps learners settle into an activity but also helps with building confidence and self-esteem so that learners feel ready to take on more challenging work.

Ensure that topics covered in class are reviewed regularly enough so that learners have sufficient opportunity to practise them, and they become automatic. You can decide whether a skill needs reviewing daily, weekly or even monthly and can integrate these reviews into progress checks.

Bedrock offers a range of curricula, including a GCSE English and a vocabulary curriculum. Bedrock promotes explicit learning by teaching students about different literary features and essential vocabulary needed to access the curriculum.

Bedrock’s learning curricula help teachers to establish routine in their classrooms by providing students with a range of sequenced activities that scaffold learning and promote learner autonomy. Throughout Bedrock’s literacy lessons, each learner works individually at a level-tailored to their needs and reviews topics until they are mastered.

Bedrock’s data-driven software means that teachers can regularly check their learners’ progress and quickly identify areas that need review. Bedrock offers classrooms a fun and engaging learning experience through the use of videos, authentic texts, and lots of interactive activities.