Responsive teaching: The art of instructional agility

The lesson that looked perfect

It was a lesson that went exactly how I had planned. Students were answering questions confidently, highlighting their ability to identify coastal hard and soft engineering. The pace was good; behaviour was excellent, and above all, students were completing lots of work. There were no concerns about progress; if anything, it appeared as though progress had come easily.

The following lesson, however, told a different story…

I returned to the concept through a retrieval task, asking students to do two things:

1. Identify the coastal management strategy
2. Explain how it reduced flooding and erosion

It was evident that students had understood the surface-level knowledge but had not grasped the more complex ideas involved in explaining how these strategies would reduce flooding or erosion.

For example, students were very confident when identifying specific coastal management strategies using images provided, e.g., groynes, sea walls, etc. However, when students were asked to apply their knowledge to explain further how the strategies would reduce erosion or coastal flooding, the knowledge was lacking.

The lesson that I thought had worked hadn’t worked in the way I had assumed.

This isn’t an unusual experience; it happens tens of thousands of times up and down the country every single day. We often leave lessons feeling secure in what pupils know and don’t know, only to have misconceptions exposed later during the learning sequence. Quite often, we misjudge student confidence and hard work with progress, creating an illusion of understanding.

For a large proportion of my career, I attributed this to students having poor memory retention. Over time, however, I began to realise something more uncomfortable: what I had interpreted as learning was often performance. Students would be busy writing notes or answering the questions, quite often in silence. My inexperience led me to read this as evidence of quality learning and progress, when actually I had little understanding of what students understood beyond surface-level knowledge.

Seeing the problem more clearly

My journey into formative assessment certainly helped to improve how I checked for understanding and identified what students know and don’t know.

Mini-whiteboards, cold calling, and hinge questions changed what I could see in the classroom. Instead of the same individuals running the room, I could now see patterns of thinking across the whole class. Misconceptions were more obvious, and uncertainty was now visible in the moment. For the first time, I felt I had access to reliable evidence about what students know and don’t know.

But problems remained.

I could now see student thinking more clearly, but what I continued to notice was that their understanding was often incomplete. Despite students choosing correct answers, explanations lacked depth or clarity. When the class was split in response, I lacked the knowledge of how to proceed by taking care of one group without stifling the other. Lastly, when most were wrong, I often found myself just repeating explanations rather than diagnosing and treating the underlying issues.

The missing step

Much of the discourse around formative assessment focuses on how we elicit evidence of learning. This does matter, but it is only part of the process.

Formative assessment improves learning not just because of the questions, but because of the alterations to teaching in response to what the questions reveal.

This is the missing step, and one of the most difficult aspects of teaching. We are explicitly taught how to gather the information, but less so on what to do with it. This is where instructional agility and responsive teaching become essential.

Responsive teaching: Responding to live data in the classroom

When eliciting student understanding, responses tend to fall into three broad patterns, each requiring a different instructional response.

1. When most students are correct
2. When the class is split
3. When most students are incorrect

1. When most students are correct

After observing hundreds of lessons, I found that most teachers would move on when students answered correctly. However, when providing feedback on a drop-in, I would focus on how the member of staff knew the learning was secure.

At this point, it was my hope that staff would move on from checking answers to strengthening understanding.

Teachers can do the following:

• Ask students to further explain why their answer is correct
• Increase the level of complexity of the question (ask students to evaluate)
• Model explicitly what a strong explanation looks like

Every student answering a question correctly is great; however, it does not mean learning is complete. It is an invitation to get students to think more deeply.

2. When the class is split

This is one of the most powerful moments in a lesson. It tells us we have competing mental models in the room. Some students have grasped the concept, while others are not quite there.

Teachers can do the following:

• Compare the reasoning behind different answers
• Surface misconceptions explicitly
• Remodel the explanation in a different way

This occurred during a Year 10 GCSE Geography lesson on the causes of uneven development. Student responses were split between colonial history and natural resources. Instead of revealing the answer, I asked students to justify each viewpoint, then I altered the task and asked students to rank each factor. This moved the thinking from just identifying factors to evaluating the causes. This allowed students to apply their knowledge further.

Formative assessment has its greatest impact here, as teachers can adapt instruction precisely to what students need.

3. When most students are incorrect

This provides us with a clear signal that the explanation has not landed. At this point, allowing students to practice or continuing the lesson will only embed and reinforce their misconceptions.

Teachers can do the following:

• Stop independent practice
• Diagnose the source of difficulty, e.g., an issue with a keyword, command word, or process
• Model the thinking process step by step

An example here came when viewing how groynes reduce longshore drift and, in turn, help reduce erosion and coastal flooding. I explicitly walked students through the process of longshore drift, and then added groynes into the mix. I continued with my explicit step-by-step instruction, explaining how the groynes act as a barrier to halt longshore drift, thus building the beach up further and helping to reduce erosion and the risk of coastal flooding.

The focus here should shift from checking understanding to diagnosing the issues and rebuilding understanding.

The real skill in teaching

Strategies used to elicit student understanding, such as mini whiteboards, are powerful because they help make learning visible. The real skill, however, is not asking the question but deciding what to do with the answer.

As expert teachers, we don’t just check understanding; we should be interpreting patterns and adapting instruction in real time. This is the essence of responsive teaching: being instructionally agile.

Formative assessment only becomes formative when it changes teaching.

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The simplest way to reflect on our practice is through the idea that if we are not prepared to change the plan, we should not be asking the question. The impact of formative assessment does not come from the question itself; it comes from what happens next.

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