Making effective adaptations: Insights from scenario-based professional learning

Have you ever made a classroom adaptation you weren’t sure was helpful?

Since July, 3,000 teachers across primary and secondary schools have answered this question whilst taking part in the EEF’s scenario-based training session on making effective adaptations – one of a set of ScenarioSpace training resources that were published alongside its Guide to Inclusive Teaching.

Based on the responses submitted so far, the message is clear: 98% of teachers say that they sometimes or often make adaptations they’re not sure support learning.

This finding reflects a key message from the EEF’s Guide: distinguishing between effective and ineffective adaptations is one of the most common challenges of inclusive teaching.
It also presents an opportunity for a rich professional discussion about what makes an adaptation effective versus ineffective. This is exactly what the EEF’s scenario-based training session is designed to promote.

In the session, teachers engage with a simple scenario that makes the challenge concrete: a teacher, Nadia, considers replacing a retrieval practice starter with one involving re-reading and underlining, in an attempt to help a pupil who often struggles to get started.

Judgements such as “Will this help?” or “What else could I try?” sit at the heart of inclusive teaching. So after considering some ideas from evidence, participating teachers are asked to suggest how Nadia might proceed – and then discuss these suggestions as a group.

From looking at teachers’ responses, we’ve found that the suggestions most commonly identified as helpful typically emphasise one of the following ideas:

• Effective adaptations support thinking rather than reducing it.
• Effective adaptations build on elements of high-quality teaching.
• Effective adaptations often look small.

We also ask teachers to identify any other barriers that can prevent them from making effective adaptations for their pupils. These wider challenges – including limited preparation time (mentioned by 41% of teachers) and understanding pupils’ needs (mentioned by 25%) – can provide a useful starting point for prompting teachers to consider questions such as:

• Which adaptations typically have the highest impact for the lowest effort?
• When is it worth preparing adaptations in advance, and when is it better to adapt responsively during the lesson?
• Which core practices are especially important for pupils with additional needs and reduce the need for individual adaptation?
• How will we know whether an adaptation is helping, and whether to continue, change or stop it?

Together, teachers’ responses within the session underline that the challenge of making effective adaptations is not an exceptional problem, but a core feature of teaching – and that for this reason, it is likely to be a particularly useful focus for professional learning.