Abstract

This chapter is a discussion of educational practice. It focuses upon the strategies that teachers use to plan and organise the ways in which teaching, learning and assessment (TLA) will take place whatever their ‘classroom’ might look like. It also considers programme planning cycles and the role of student voice within this cycle. We begin to explore how teachers can use observations and formative and summative evaluation to inform curriculum planning, curriculum development and the improvement of practice during and at the end of the planning cycle. We extend this discussion in Chapter 15. Practical strategies for planning and case study examples will be used to explore key issues. For example, we draw attention to the need to be flexible in our planning to allow for changes in response to learners’ needs and evidence from practice, which emerges during a lesson. We emphasise the need to ensure that curriculum and lesson planning is pedagogically sound and never rigid, overly bureaucratic or instrumental. We point to the importance of well developed curriculum and lesson plans which allow room for creative teaching, interpretation and the exercise of educational judgement.