An evidence informed resource by Mark Anderson
Pedagogy First.
Technology Second.
Six evidence informed guides to teaching and learning, and the thinking behind them. 144 strategies to try, with or without technology, every one expanded in full.
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Technology should enhance teaching and learning, not dictate teaching and learning.
Mark Anderson
Why I made these
Why I made these.
When I work with schools, before I arrive, the pattern is familiar. Technology not making the impact it should be. Tools often chosen for their features rather than careful thinking about how they solve a problem or serve learning. Effort and budget spent, without much impact in the classroom.
What changes the picture is the order. Start with the pedagogy, work out what the learning or teaching actually needs, and then consider whether a technology helps. It sounds obvious, but it is the step most often skipped. When the schools I work with get this right, outcomes improve, for teachers and for students alike. That is the thread running through all six guides here.
A consommé takes far more work than opening a tin of soup, and the result looks deceptively simple. What reads as a single page of strategies in these infographics took a great deal of thinking and practice, refined into something you can use, like an edu-consommé, if you will.
Explore the ideas, and see if they’re right for your classroom.
The six guides
Six areas the evidence keeps returning to
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Retrieval Practice
The act of pulling knowledge out of memory does more for learning than putting it back in. This chapter is about making that effort happen, on purpose, again and again.
- The Testing Effect
- Spacing & Interleaving
- Desirable Difficulties
- Retrieval Formats
- Metacognition & Calibration
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Formative Assessment
“The term formative should apply not to the assessment but to the function that the evidence generated by the assessment actually serves.” Dylan Wiliam, Assessment: The Bridge between Teaching and Learning, 2013
- Clarify Learning Intentions
- Elicit Evidence of Learning
- Feedback That Moves Learning Forward
- Students as Learning Resources
- Students as Owners of Their Learning
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Feedback
Feedback is too often treated as another word for marking. It isn’t. Good feedback gives pupils information they can use to improve what they do next, and that is a far higher bar than writing a comment in the margin.
- What Feedback Is
- Timing & Frequency
- Source & Direction
- Feedback & the Learner
- Closing the Gap
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Questioning & Discussion
The questions a teacher asks, and the talk they allow to follow, shape what thinking happens in a room.
- The Quality of Questions
- Wait Time & Thinking Space
- Participation & Equity
- Dialogic Teaching & Discussion
- Student-Generated Questions
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Explanations & Modelling
Telling is not explaining, and showing is not modelling. This chapter is about helping teaching work framed around how attention and memory actually work.
- Structuring Explanations
- Managing Cognitive Load
- Multimedia & Dual Coding
- Modelling & Worked Examples
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Metacognition & Self-Regulation
Students who can orchestrate their own thinking processes consistently outperform those who cannot. This chapter explores how to cultivate that ability explicitly, ensuring self-regulation is a taught skill rather than a fortunate byproduct. It involves empowering learners to dissect the challenge, select the right cognitive tools, evaluate their ongoing progress, and pivot effectively when obstacles arise.
- Forethought & Planning
- Performance & Monitoring
- Self-Reflection & Evaluation
- Strategy Knowledge & Use
- Digital Cognition
The thread
Six guides, one argument.
Any of these 144 strategies will work on its own. They hang together because the same handful of ideas keeps turning up underneath them, whichever chapter you're in. If you only take five things from the whole thing, take these.
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Thinking is the thing being managed
Working memory is narrow and attention is finite. Nearly every strategy here is doing one of two jobs: making room for thinking, or making sure the thinking lands on what you want learned.
Runs through 05. Cognitive load 01. Desirable difficulties
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Effort in the right place beats comfort
Retrieval feels worse than rereading and works better. Feedback that asks a question is harder than feedback that corrects, and it teaches more. When a strategy feels inefficient in the lesson, that's often the point.
Runs through 01. The testing effect 03. Closing the gap
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The work belongs to the learner
If you supply the answer, the missing evidence, or the improved sentence, you have done the thinking. Every chapter has a version of this: the effort has to stay where the learning is meant to happen.
Runs through 03. Feedback and the learner 06. Strategy knowledge and use
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You cannot teach what you haven't checked
Listening isn't learning, a nod isn't understanding, and the students who signal confusion aren't the ones you most need to hear from. Every strategy that works assumes you know where the class actually is.
Runs through 02. Eliciting evidence 04. Participation and equity
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Scaffolds are meant to come down
Support that never fades produces students who can do it with you and not without you. Plan the withdrawal at the same time as you plan the help.
Runs through 05. Modelling and worked examples 06. Forethought and planning
Praise
What others say about this guide
Pedagogy should always be our North Star in education. Learning remains the core business of every classroom, for every student, in every context. Anderson's guide keeps this principle firmly in view, offering a rich collection of evidence-informed, pedagogy-first strategies that can be applied across classrooms, curricula and systems. Practical, thoughtful and rooted in what matters most, this is a must-read for educators who want technology, strategy and classroom practice to truly and impactfully serve learning.
These guides provide an elegant set of evidence-informed design principles. They offer learning experiences that are served by technology, not driven by it. From these first principles, the guide offers a rich and full menu of evidence-informed, easily navigable ideas, all beautifully organised and codified.
Mark has done the hard thinking, so the rest of us don't have to. Every strategy here starts with the learning and treats technology as something that has to genuinely add value that can be measured, which is exactly the order schools keep getting wrong.
This is an excellent and much needed resource for all school staff looking to use technology with care and purpose. It avoids gimmicks and trends, focusing instead on evidence-informed practice. Above all, it keeps the focus firmly where it belongs, on learners and learning.
This is a really strong, evidence-informed guide that keeps the focus exactly where it should be, on teaching and learning first. The strategies are practical and usable straight away, which makes it particularly helpful as we continue embedding digital across the curriculum in a purposeful and meaningful way.
This is another strong example of pedagogy led by purpose, grounded in cognitive science and focused on what genuinely supports learning rather than what is fashionable. It reflects a clear commitment to making thoughtful use of whatever tools are available, ensuring the right approach is chosen for the right activity at the right moment in time.
Each guide Mark has produced is perfect for any teacher to pick and use straight away. The use of evidence-informed pedagogy and practical classroom strategies provides a clear link before any discussion of technology. I will use this guide to support staff development, inspire classroom practice and support teachers to make purposeful decisions about when technology genuinely adds value.
I'm always on the lookout for resources that cut through the noise and get straight to what matters in the classroom. Mark's Pedagogy First guides are not tool or tech with learning theory bolted on; the pedagogy genuinely leads. Each guide distils a substantial body of research into strategies teachers can actually use on Monday morning. And as ever, Mark is generous with his sharing; no gatekeeping.
How to use this
How to use this guide.
This guide brings together the six Pedagogy First, Technology Second infographics shared through my blog, and adds the thinking behind them. You can download each individual infographic from Use this version to read, search, select from and support professional learning.
THE SIX GUIDES ONLINE Click or tap any guide to open it on the blog.
› Retrieval Practice & Memory › Formative Assessment › Feedback › Questioning & Discussion › Explanations & Modelling › Metacognition & Self-Regulation Start with the classroom need: choose the section that matches the problem you are trying to solve.1 Use the strategy pages as prompts: pick one or two ideas, try them deliberately, and adapt them to your context.2 Read the thinking pages for the why: use the evidence-informed ideas to support better professional judgement.3
- 6guides, one per area of practice
- 144strategies, each expanded in full
- 1to pick and try tomorrow morning
For staff development
Using this with your team
If you're taking this to a team rather than reading it on your own, here's how I'd actually run it, whether you've got twenty minutes in a briefing or a full INSET day.
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20 minutes, department meeting
One chapter, one strategy each
- Pick the chapter closest to your department's current priority.
- Everyone reads the infographic for five minutes and picks one strategy they don't already do.
- Round the table: which one, and what would you have to change to run it?
- Agree to try it twice before the next meeting. Nothing else.
- Open the next meeting by asking what happened, including what didn't work.
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An hour, twilight
The thinking, not just the tips
- Read the chapter's opening section together, the part on why these strategies.
- Discuss the idea underneath rather than the list: why does effortful retrieval beat rereading?
- In pairs, find two strategies in the chapter that share that mechanism.
- Each pair plans one into a specific lesson next week, with the checking built in.
- Set a date to look at what came back. Without that, nothing happens.
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A day, INSET
Across the six
- Morning: the five principles that run through all six guides, with staff finding examples of each in their own practice.
- Split into six groups, one chapter each, thirty minutes to become the department expert.
- Each group teaches their chapter back in ten minutes, using their own subject's examples.
- Afternoon: everyone commits to one strategy and one way of knowing whether it worked.
- Collect the commitments. Revisit them in six weeks, in public.
Everything on this site is free to use and share under Creative Commons for anything other than commercial use, so put the infographics in your slides, print them for the staffroom wall, put the chapters in your CPD library. No sign-up, no gate, no need to ask.
Take it with you
Download the guide and the infographics
Free to use and share under Creative Commons, for anything other than commercial use.
About Mark
Mark Anderson. Thirty years in education, and a leading voice on pedagogy and technology.
An award winning author, globally sought after keynote speaker, trainer and strategic consultant in education technology, AI and digital strategy. Mark works independently as ICT Evangelist and part time as Principal Education Consultant at NetSupport. He was the lead education and AI consultant on the BBC Bitesize Guide to AI.
He co-authored the Amazon chart topping The EdTech Playbook with Olly Lewis, and his earlier Perfect ICT Every Lesson topped the Amazon charts too. He is a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, an Independent Thinking Associate, a member of the BCS Schools and Colleges committee, and an Apple Distinguished Educator, Google Certified Innovator and Microsoft Certified Educator.
His blog won UK Education Blog of the Year, he co-founded the Digital Leader Network and the GESS award winning LearnLiveUAE, and he keynotes at the world's major education events, among them BETT and GESS.
That reach is built on decades in the classroom and in a range of middle and senior leadership roles, from head of department to senior leader, alongside a spell as a local authority lead teacher for computing and the teaching and learning lead on Clevedon School's pioneering one-to-one rollout. One idea runs through all of it: good teaching comes first, and technology only helps once the teaching is right.
Pedagogy first. Technology second. Always.