Across Australia, an increasing focus on “evidence-based teaching” is driving policy at both system and classroom levels. Explicit teaching, feedback, assessment, high expectations, and collaboration – widely identified by education departments as “evidence-based” best practice – are seen as ways to improve student achievement, increasing equity, and producing calmer, more productive classrooms.
While simply providing teachers with information, evidence, frameworks, or policies is rarely enough. However, engaging teachers in powerful professional development that offers clear processes for integrating evidence-based practices into their day-to-day teaching can have a lasting impact. One such example is Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR) professional development which has demonstrated positive, long-term effects on practice. At its core sits the Quality Teaching (QT) Model.
Keep reading to learn how the QT Model and QTR can strengthen some of the most popular evidence-based teaching practices used in classrooms every day.
Explicit teaching
Explicit teaching involves teachers clearly explaining, demonstrating and modelling to students why they are learning something, what their learning goals are, how it connects to what they already know, what they are expected to do, how to do it, and what success looks like.
It builds on research showing that students learn more effectively when teachers give clear instructions, model thinking processes, ask pertinent questions, and check understanding before moving on.
How does QT strengthen explicit teaching?
Explicit teaching strategies align closely with the three dimensions of the QT Model, which provide clear guidance for teachers that ensures quality learning experiences for students.
Focusing on Intellectual Quality promotes deep understanding of important knowledge, which students can demonstrate through practise, questioning, and responding to feedback.
Attending to Quality Learning Environment ensures teachers provide tasks that offer suitable challenge, where students not only understand what they are to do, and how to do it, but the level of quality required for success.
Addressing the Significance dimension ensures that learning connects not only to what students already know and can do, but also to their lives and the wider world – making learning more meaningful.
Elements such as Deep Knowledge, Deep Understanding, and Explicit Quality Criteria help teachers unpack students’ learning goals and why that learning matters.
Elements such as Explicit Quality Criteria, High Expectations, and Students’ Self-Regulation support teachers to explain and model what’s expected of students.
Elements such as Background Knowledge and Knowledge Integration guide teachers on how to sequence and connect learning to prior lessons and across curriculum areas.
QTR strengthens explicit teaching by providing teachers with opportunities to get into one another’s classrooms to observe these strategies in action, and to collaboratively and respectfully discuss how pedagogy can be enhanced.
High expectations and equity
When teachers communicate ambitious yet achievable expectations, students become more motivated, engaged, and successful in their learning.
While high expectations are important for all students, they can be especially important for students from diverse equity backgrounds. For example, for students who experience educational disadvantage – such as those from low SES communities, those in regional, rural, and remote schools, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students – high expectations can play a powerful role in countering inequity and opening up stronger learning pathways and possibilities.
How does QT promote high expectations and equity
The QT element High Expectations encourages teachers to communicate to all members of the class that they can engage in challenging work. Expectations are high when students take conceptual, physical, and/or performance-based risks in their learning.
The QT Model further reinforces high expectations by guiding teachers to provide rigorous, meaningful learning experiences that treat all students as enthusiastic and capable learners.
The elements within the Intellectual Quality dimension inform high expectations drawing attention to intellectual rigour and challenge.
Specific elements within the Quality Learning Environment and Significance dimensions, such as Engagement, Social Support, and Inclusivity, emphasise the importance of ALL students participating in work that is challenging for them.
High expectations can manifest in the design of high-quality tasks. In relation to equity, our research shows that when teachers design higher quality tasks, students produce higher quality work and equity gaps narrow.
In addition, our randomised controlled trials of QTR found not only overall improvement in students’ mathematics and reading achievement compared with the control groups, but even greater gains among students experiencing educational disadvantage.
Classroom management and wellbeing
Classroom management is the deliberate use of strategies, routines, and relationships by teachers to create a safe, orderly, and supportive learning environment that maximises student engagement and learning. It involves proactively establishing expectations and responding effectively to student behaviour to promote positive and productive classroom interaction.
At school, wellbeing comes from creating safe spaces, nurturing positive relationships that foster a strong sense of belonging, and helping students develop social and emotional skills. When students feel safe, connected, and supported, they’re more likely to engage in meaningful learning.
How does QT strengthen classroom management and promote student wellbeing?
Holistically, the QT Model draws attention to how teachers can make learning relevant to individual students and the world beyond the classroom, while reinforcing meaningful investment in the substance of the lesson. Furthermore, our research demonstrates that high levels of Intellectual Quality promote greater student engagement in learning – reducing the need for teacher intervention.
The QT Model promotes student wellbeing by emphasising positive, respectful classroom relationships and inclusive practices that support students’ sense of belonging and safety – enabling students to participate fully and feel valued in their learning.
QT elements – Engagement, Student Self-Regulation, Social Support, and Student Direction – focus attention on teaching practice that helps students feel supported and capable of taking responsibility for their learning.
By engaging with all three dimensions of the QT Model—Intellectual Quality, Quality Learning Environment, and Significance—teachers develop an approach to behaviour and wellbeing that is grounded in strong pedagogy.
Assessment and effective feedback
Assessment plays a crucial role in providing teachers with the information they need to monitor student progress, guide future instruction, and evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching. Assessment is most effective when it is aligned with important concepts and knowledge, and enables students to demonstrate, through a range of means, what they understand.
Effective feedback is also a powerful driver of student achievement. Feedback helps students to improve their understanding and is most effective when it is focused, timely, and students are provided with opportunities to act on it.
How does QT strengthen assessment practice and feedback?
The QT Model provides a powerful, evidence-based framework that can strengthen formative and summative assessment design. Its clear conceptual structure and shared language help teachers design assessment tasks that are rigorous, purposeful, and aligned with high-quality learning intentions. Using the QT Model enhances opportunities to generate high-quality data on student learning, enabling teachers to evaluate progress, refine instructional strategies, and improve the overall impact of their teaching.
QT Assessment Rounds involve professional learning communities of teachers using the QT Model to code and discuss the quality of both formative and summative tasks. The coding of tasks using the Assessment Practice Guide assists teachers to refine task design and enhance task quality – strengthening schoolwide consistency.
The Assessment Practice Guide provides teachers with four fundamental questions in relation to designing and refining assessment tasks:
What do you want the students to learn?
Why does the learning matter?
What are you going to get the students to do (or to produce)?
How well do you expect them to do it?
The QT Model also highlights the importance of creating safe, supportive classrooms where students can confidently engage with feedback (including peer-to-peer feedback) and use it to guide next steps in their learning.
QT elements – Deep Understanding, Substantive Communication, Explicit Quality Criteria, High Expectations, and Social Support – contribute to ensuring feedback is effective, specific and timely.
Collaboration
When teachers work towards common goals, share evidence-based strategies, observe each other’s lessons, and solve challenges together, the impact can be felt in both teaching quality and student learning. However, it is critical that collaboration is purposeful and productive. Unstructured or contrived collaboration among teachers can be seen as a waste of teachers’ time.
How does QT strengthen collaboration?
QTR strengthens collaboration by providing a supportive, structured process for rich and respectful collegial discussion of teaching practice, grounded in the shared language of the QT Model. QTR is conducted by teachers in their schools without external input and can be adapted to suit the specific school context. To ensure the process remains impactful on practice, we provide a set of Essential Features and Norms that should be present in every Round.
The Essential Features and Norms include:
- full participation in all aspects of the Round to demonstrate respect to the teacher being observed and respect for the QTR process,
- observation of entire lessons,
- teaching regular lessons to ensure coding and discussion is focused on everyday practice,
- individual coding and analysis (including by the teacher who taught the lesson),
- sustained time to engage in the coding discussion, and
- following a turn-taking protocol during the coding discussion to actively value each PLC member’s perspective and flatten power hierarchies.
QTR addresses common barriers to effective collaboration by creating a safe, respectful environment where teachers can examine everyday teaching, test ideas, and refine practice with clarity and purpose.
QTR transforms teacher collaboration into high-impact professional learning that deepens shared understanding, builds collective efficacy, and directly lifts student achievement.
Achieve better educational outcomes for all
Evidence-based teaching is an important way for schools to provide equitable access to quality teaching and learning to enhance student outcomes. But teachers need structured approaches to implementing, embedding, and strengthening evidence-based strategies in their day-to-day practice.
The QT Model offers schools a coherent and evidence-based instructional framework that can sit at the heart of any improvement agenda, while QTR provides a structured approach to professional growth for teachers, with robust evidence showing positive effects on classroom practice, teacher efficacy, and wellbeing. Crucially, QTR enhances student engagement, increases student achievement, and reduces equity gaps. Together, the QT Model and QTR empower educators to align their practice with national and state priorities, strengthen teaching quality, and deliver the kinds of rich, challenging, and supportive learning experiences that help all students thrive.
