Jargon buster: pedagogical terms

Know your dual coding from your cognitive load theory? Want to encourage evidence-based teaching in your school, but can’t remember your cognitive science? Remind yourself what these key terms in pedagogical theory mean and how to spot them in the classroom.

Last reviewed on 13 February 2024
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Contents
  1. Use evidence-based teaching to inform your decisions about how to teach
  2. How can I see if these strategies are being used?
  3. Download our cheat sheet with these terms
  4. Develop your knowledge and read more about these concepts

Use evidence-based teaching to inform your decisions about how to teach

Evidence-based teaching uses research about learning to inform practice – you can read more about this in this blog post from Catt Scutt.

The concepts in this article are based in cognitive science – understanding how the brain works to understand how we learn. You can use these concepts to improve learning, so pupils are more successful.

However, remember that how useful these concepts are can depend on your classroom context and the subject you're teaching.

It can help you achieve Ofsted's expectation of teaching

Inspectors will look at the extent to which your teaching is "designed to help learners to remember in the long term the content they have been taught" (see the 'implementation' section of ‘quality of education’ in the inspection framework).

Use this article as a continuing professional development (CPD) resource for