Our Professional Development Curriculum

From September 2025 we’re launching a set of updates to our curriculum based on the most recent research available, and from our experience with working 1000s of schools. This article revisits what we believe great teaching is and also provides detail on what we've changed and why. We know these updates will support teachers, coaches and leaders in schools but, as with all things at Steplab, the content is fully customisable so you can edit it to make it work specifically for your context.

We believe great teaching happens when teachers can consistently:

1. 1.
   Create culture – establish routines, environment, and behaviour for learning
2. 2.
   Secure attention – gain and maintain students’ focus
3. 3.
   Optimise communication – present ideas clearly and manageably
4. 4.
   Drive thought – challenge students to think hard
5. 5.
   Gather and give feedback – assess learning and respond appropriately
6. 6.
   Ensure consolidation – support retention of learning

These six universal teaching problems affect every teacher in every subject, setting or phase. Tackling them effectively improves learning.

This framework is grounded in the research about how learning happens and illustrated in the Simple Model of Teaching (from Steplab founder Josh’s book Responsive Coaching). 

Our Simple Model of Teaching supports great PD in 3 key ways:

1. 1.
   It helps teachers make better sense of their practice.

Without structure, PD often jumps between techniques, leaving teachers with disconnected strategies that are hard to apply. Organising PD around universal teaching problems helps teachers develop mental models that support more flexible, responsive practice. As Mary Kennedy explains, PD should help teachers understand why something works - not just what to do - so they can apply it with judgement and nuance. 

1. 2.
   It helps diagnose what to focus on next.

Teaching improves in small increments - through practising granular, evidence-informed action steps that break down the complex task of teaching.

The Simple Model of Teaching lays out the order in which to work through these steps - starting with creating culture, then securing attention and so on - so that each step builds on solid foundations. The strands work like a diagnostic chain:

Strand - the universal teaching problem ↓Goal – a focus area to develop over time ↓Step – small, targeted actions you use in the classroom

1. 3.
   It creates a shared language for great teaching.

Clear, memorable terms like ‘Drive thought’ make it easier to understand our goals in the classroom and how to achieve them, unlocking more focused, productive conversations about how to improve. 

We have made 3 key changes to the curriculum:

1. 1.
   New strand: ‘Create culture’ - Classroom culture - routines, environment and behaviour - is the foundation of great teaching.  We’ve moved several relevant goals and steps from ‘Secure attention’ to the new ‘Create culture’ strand, making it easier to focus first on building the conditions for learning.
   
   This move also clarifies purpose: these steps aren’t just about attention, but about shaping a culture that nurtures motivation, belonging and readiness to learn. 
2. 2.
   Combined goal: Clear and memorable explanations - We’ve merged ‘Give clear explanations’ and ‘Give memorable explanations’ to reflect the reality that clarity and memorability go hand in hand. 
3. 3.
   Refined language - We’ve also renamed several goals to emphasise why teachers do them:

• 1.
  ‘Gather responses’ → ‘Check for understanding’. 
• 2.
  ‘Establish and reinforce expectations’ → ‘Reinforce positive behaviours’
• 3.
  ‘Respond to behaviour’ → ‘Respond to negative behaviour’
• 4.
  ‘Give detailed explanations’ → ‘Explain for deeper understanding’
• 5.
  ‘Use generative learning strategies’ → ‘Build metacognition’

Over the coming months, we’ll expand the curriculum, with new goals and steps in areas like building belonging, planning for interleaving,  and teaching for mastery. Specialist curricula for different phases and more diverse settings are also in development.

Thanks for being part of the journey - and we hope these updates help you get even more out of Steplab.

As always, we’d love to hear from you. If you’re using Steplab and have feedback or ideas for future content, just get in touch: [email protected].

Want to dive deeper? Book a Steplab demo to find out how Steplab can support PD at your school.