Books in the In Action series series

Written under the guidance, and thoroughly reviewed by the originator of CLT, John Sweller, this practical guide summarises over 30 years of research in this field into clear and easily understandable terms.

How do you embed excellence into schools' everyday practices, not as an incidental or an accident, but as an actual ethic? Like the original book, this book is not a manual but what it offers is a thorough analysis of the Ethic of Excellence toolkit strategies, which can be applied across all ages and phases. The examination is placed within a framework of relevant research and is aimed at corroborating Berger's strategies and ethics, as they apply to classroom practice. The book is written with the full support, and the ethical guidance of the author of 'An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students', Ron Berger. Each chapter exemplifies the active ingredients for each of the key principles and underpins them with evidence-informed practice and practical examples, from across the curriculum. The book offers case studies and insights from senior leaders and teachers on what excellence looks like, within their contexts. Whilst school improvement is never finished, the book offers a manual for identifying Berger's principles of excellence. Through focused and evidence-informed offering, it considers how to make excellence as an ethic permanent across any school and any curriculum.

Written under the guidance and with the support of Dylan Wiliam, Kate Jones writes about five formative assessment strategies in action in the classroom, with a foreword from Professor John Hattie. Building on the highly successful work of Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy, ideas are shared and misconceptions with formative assessment are addressed with lots of practical advice. Formative assessment in action focuses on five evidence-informed strategies that the teacher can use to support their learners to make progress. Formative assessment can help both the teacher and student understand what needs to be learned and how this can be achieved. During the learning process, formative assessment can identify students' progress as well as highlighting gaps in their knowledge and understanding, therefore giving the teacher useful insight as to what feedback and instruction can be provided to continue to move learners forward. Formative assessment takes place during the learning process. It continually informs the teacher and student as to how learning can move forward as it is happening. This is different to summative assessment, which focuses on the evaluation of student learning at the end of the process. There's a range of case studies from different subjects and key stages to show how formative assessment can be embedded across a curriculum successfully.

Generative Learning in Action helps to answer the question: which activities can students carry out to create meaningful learning? It considers how teachers can implement the eight strategies for generative learning set out in the work of Fiorella and Mayer in their seminal 2015 work Learning as a Generative Activity.