Educational best practices for transforming teaching

Every school talks about “best practices,” but few can clearly define what that means in a teacher’s day-to-day work. An educational best practice isn’t an isolated trick or a passing teaching fad. It’s an intentional, evidence-based, repeatable action that demonstrably improves student learning.

When a school can’t distinguish what actually works from what merely looks modern, it wastes its scarcest resource—classroom time—and frustrates teachers who work hard without seeing results.

In this guide, you’ll explore the concept in depth, learn to distinguish an effective practice from a nice-looking activity, and find examples you can use at different grade levels. You’ll also learn about teaching methods, classroom management techniques, ways to assess what matters, and how to turn one-off initiatives into schoolwide culture. The goal is for you to finish with something you can use in your next class—not just more theory to file away.

What you’ll find in this guide

Rather than disconnected theory, you’ll get objective criteria for recognizing a best practice; a comparison of isolated and institutionalized practices; examples by grade level; explanations and step-by-step guides to key active learning strategies; low-cost, high-impact classroom management techniques; ways to assess what really matters; principles of inclusion; guidance on using technology thoughtfully; and, finally, a roadmap for making it all part of your school’s culture. Along the way, you’ll also find common mistakes to avoid—because knowing what not to do can save more time than knowing what to do.

What are educational best practices?

Educational best practices are teaching and instructional management strategies that produce positive, measurable learning outcomes when applied consistently. The term has three essential elements: intentionality, a strong foundation, and replicability.

Intentionality means the action has a clear, explicit learning objective. Before class, the teacher can answer the question, “What will my students be able to do by the end that they couldn’t do before?” Without that clarity, any activity can become a way to pass the time: it may fill the period, but it won’t necessarily lead to learning.

A strong foundation means the practice is supported by research or sound teaching principles—not just intuition or habit. Teachers don’t need to be researchers, but they should understand, in plain language, why a strategy is likely to work. When teachers understand the mechanism behind a technique, they can adapt it when the context changes—and the context always changes.

Replicability means the practice can be described, shared, and used by other teachers in similar settings. An approach that works only in the hands of one brilliant teacher, and that no one else can explain or repeat, may be admirable, but it isn’t yet a best practice in the institutional sense. It’s individual talent—and talent can’t be distributed by decree.

The difference between just any activity and a best practice comes down to these three criteria. Showing a fun video in class may capture students’ attention, but it becomes a best practice only when it’s tied to a learning objective, the teacher understands why it works, and the teacher can explain to a colleague how to achieve the same results. Without those pillars, it’s improvisation; with them, it’s professional practice. That distinction separates schools that rely on occasional inspiration from those that build consistent results.

How to identify an educational best practice

Not every creative idea is a best practice, and not every best practice seems innovative. Some of the most effective practices are actually subtle and nearly invisible to outside observers. To evaluate a strategy objectively, ask yourself a set of questions before putting it into practice.

First, does the action have a defined learning objective? If the answer is “to make class more fun” or “because students like it,” there’s no instructional objective yet—at most, it’s a way to manage the classroom atmosphere. Second, is there a way to determine its effect on students? A practice that can’t be evaluated is an act of faith, and serious education can’t rely on faith alone. Third, does it respect the diversity of the class, or does it work only for the students who would learn either way? Fourth, can it be sustained over time without requiring a heroic, one-time effort?

That last point deserves special attention. A best practice that works only when a teacher triples their workload, stays up until the early hours, and sacrifices their own health isn’t sustainable and is unlikely to become part of the school’s culture. Sustainability is as important a measure of quality as effectiveness because education is a marathon, not a sprint. Practices that burn teachers out have a short shelf life.

One often-overlooked point is the difference between an isolated practice and an institutionalized one. Understanding that distinction separates schools with “good teachers” from schools that are good institutions—and it matters because good teachers retire, move away, or resign, while a good institution remains.

Isolated practice vs. institutionalized practice

Criterion	Isolated practice	Institutionalized practice
Who sustains it	One specific teacher	The school as a system
What happens if that person leaves	The practice is lost	The practice continues
Documentation	Informal, in the teacher’s head	Documented and shared
Reach	One class	Multiple classes and grade levels
Impact assessment	Individual perception	Indicators are tracked
What it depends on	Individual talent	Processes and culture
Main risk	Loss of knowledge	Meaningless bureaucracy

A mature school aims to move best practices from the left column to the right without stifling the spontaneity that inspired them. It’s a delicate balance: too much institutionalization can create bureaucracy and stifle creativity, while too little leaves everything vulnerable to staff turnover. The path forward involves documentation, peer sharing, and follow-up—topics we’ll revisit in the section on institutionalization.

Examples of best practices by grade level

Early childhood education

At this stage, children learn through movement, play, and interactions with adults and peers. Structured group discussions and predictable routines help children develop language, listening skills, and emotional self-regulation. Predictability isn’t boring for young children: knowing what comes next helps them feel secure, and security is a prerequisite for learning.

Activity centers—reading, building, pretend play, and art—let each child make choices and explore at their own pace, while respecting developmental differences that are substantial and perfectly normal at this age. Documenting development in portfolios of photos, projects, and children’s comments turns informal observation into concrete instructional documentation. It’s useful both when talking with families and when planning instruction. A good portfolio tells the story of a child’s learning; it doesn’t just display cute projects.

Elementary school

This is where evidence-based literacy practices come in, with phonological awareness taught systematically and progressively rather than left to chance. Reading aloud to students every day—even for a short time—builds vocabulary, models fluency, and, perhaps most importantly, shows children that reading is enjoyable, not just a school assignment.

Error logs, in which students revisit and correct their own mistakes with guidance, shift the meaning of errors from “failure” to “part of learning.” That shift is powerful: a child who learns to examine mistakes without shame develops a much healthier relationship with schoolwork. Another valuable practice at this stage is using contextualized math problems that make math concrete and meaningful through situations children can picture.

Middle school

As students become more independent and their thinking grows more abstract, interdisciplinary projects become more valuable. They explore a single topic across different subject areas, showing students that knowledge isn’t divided into separate boxes. Structured debates with clear time limits and rules for making arguments build critical thinking and the ability to support a position with evidence—an increasingly rare and valuable skill.

Teaching students to ask good questions, not just answer them, is another high-impact practice at this stage. Adolescents have plenty of curiosity; channeling it into questions they can investigate turns that energy into learning.

High school

With greater independence and important decisions about the future ahead, project-based learning, the flipped classroom, and rubrics shared in advance become especially valuable. Connecting course content to real-world problems—a project on neighborhood sanitation, an analysis of student election data, or the creation of a simple business plan—boosts engagement and shows students the social and practical value of what they learn.

At this stage, it’s also essential to connect course content to students’ life goals. When teenagers see how what they study relates to who they want to become, effort feels less like an obligation and more like a choice. Practices that connect the curriculum to future plans can reduce dropout rates and improve performance because they address a root cause of disengagement: the feeling that none of it matters.

Active learning strategies: The engine behind best practices

Active learning strategies make students active participants in their own learning rather than passive recipients of information. They don’t replace effective direct instruction—which still has a role, especially when introducing new concepts—but complement it by shifting some of the cognitive work to the people who need to learn. The principle behind them is simple and well established: students learn more by doing, discussing, explaining, and applying than by just listening.

Problem-based learning starts with a challenging, realistic situation that has no obvious answer and requires students to use course content to solve it. Instead of presenting the theory and then assigning exercises, the teacher reverses the order: first comes the problem, and the need to solve it creates a reason to learn the content. The process typically includes presenting the problem, identifying what students already know, determining what they need to learn, investigating, and finally developing and presenting a solution.

The flipped classroom moves students’ first exposure to the content outside class, through reading or video, and reserves valuable class time for the harder work: applying ideas, discussing, making mistakes, and asking questions with the teacher there to help. The logic is sound: students need the teacher most not when they first hear an explanation, but when they try to use what they’ve learned and get stuck. Flipping the classroom puts the expert right where the difficulty arises.

Peer learning uses student-to-student explanations to reinforce learning, since teaching is one of the deepest ways to learn. When students have to explain a concept to a classmate, they must organize their thinking and uncover gaps in their understanding. When done well, this practice benefits both students: the one explaining reinforces their understanding, while the one listening learns in language that feels more familiar.

Gamification, when done well, uses game elements—goals, visible progress, challenges, and levels—to sustain motivation over time. The key is not to let competition replace the learning objective. Effective gamification celebrates individual progress and collaboration. Poorly designed gamification turns class into a race that the strongest students always win and everyone else gives up on.

The most common mistake with active learning strategies is adopting them because they’re new—as a passing fad. The right question is never “Which method is more modern?” but “Which strategy best serves this objective, with this class, at this moment?” A clear lecture can be much more effective than a poorly structured project. The method serves the objective, never the other way around.

Classroom management techniques that support learning

Teaching methods work only when built on a strong foundation of classroom management. A brilliant project on paper won’t help if students are distracted, time is lost to chaotic transitions, or half the class sits silently unnoticed. Several widely studied techniques, popularized by research on effective teaching, can make an immediate difference and cost almost nothing to implement.

Intentionally pausing after asking a question—a technique called wait time—dramatically improves the quality of responses. Most teachers wait less than a second before calling on someone or answering the question themselves, which favors only the quickest students. Waiting a few seconds gives everyone’s brain a chance to process and formulate an answer. The silence that may feel uncomfortable is actually thinking time.

Calling on specific students instead of taking only volunteers keeps the whole class engaged because anyone might be called on at any time. It changes students’ approach: if they can’t hide, they may as well think. When done thoughtfully and without embarrassing anyone, this is one of the most effective ways to include students who would normally stay on the sidelines.

Circulating around the room while students work lets teachers check for understanding in real time, before misunderstandings take hold and spread. A teacher who circulates notices the student who’s stuck, the group that misunderstood the directions, and the pair that finished early and has nothing to do. This simple movement makes the classroom a monitored, responsive space.

Starting class with a short task already on the board, for students to complete as soon as they arrive, turns the first few minutes—usually lost to chatting and settling in—into learning time. This opening routine creates predictability and signals that time in this classroom is valuable and used with purpose.

Formative assessment: How to know if a practice worked

You can recognize a best practice by its results, and results need to be observed. That’s where formative assessment comes in: assessment that takes place during the learning process so teachers can adjust instruction, rather than simply assign a grade at the end. Formative assessment answers a question every teacher should ask regularly: “Are my students learning what I think they’re learning?”

Exit tickets, where each student answers a key question in 30 seconds at the end of class, give teachers an immediate snapshot of who understood what. A quick review of the responses helps teachers plan the next class based on real data rather than assumptions. If half the class missed the central concept, it doesn’t make sense to move on; it’s time to review it.

Quick checks for understanding throughout a lesson—asking a student a question, using a hand signal, or having students write a brief response—keep teachers from moving on while part of the class is lost. These checks take very little time and offer a great deal in return because they prevent small gaps from accumulating until they become impossible to overcome.

Descriptive feedback—feedback that identifies what’s working, what needs improvement, and how to improve—teaches much more than a grade alone. A grade tells students where they are; good feedback shows them how to move forward. The difference between “70%” and “Your introduction is clear, but the argument in your second paragraph needs a specific example” is the difference between judging and teaching.

It’s important to understand that formative assessment doesn’t compete with summative assessment—the test, report card, or final grade. It makes summative assessment fairer because students have had several chances to adjust along the way before the final evaluation. When assessment happens only at the end, there’s no time to fix the mistakes that are uncovered. When assessment happens throughout the process, mistakes become opportunities. Reducing assessment to a final test is like weighing a cake only after it’s baked without ever tasting the batter.

Inclusion and equity as measures of quality

A practice is truly good only if it works for the real diversity in the classroom, not just for the “average student” who doesn’t actually exist. Every class includes students with different learning speeds, backgrounds, needs, and starting points. Ignoring that means designing instruction for an imaginary audience.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a simple, powerful principle inspired by architecture: just as a ramp works for wheelchair users as well as older adults, parents with strollers, and delivery workers, well-designed instruction works for everyone when it offers multiple pathways. In practice, this means providing multiple ways to represent content, multiple ways for students to show what they’ve learned, and multiple ways to engage them.

Offering multiple ways to represent content means not relying on a single channel: provide material in text and audio, use images and diagrams as well as words, and explain ideas in more than one way. Allowing multiple ways to demonstrate learning means accepting that one student may show what they’ve learned in writing, another verbally, and another through a hands-on project. Varying engagement means recognizing that what motivates one student may leave another indifferent, so it helps to diversify activities and allow for choice.

One point that often causes confusion needs to be clear: inclusion doesn’t mean lowering expectations. On the contrary, it means maintaining high expectations for everyone while expanding the pathways that help each student reach them. Lowering expectations for students who struggle under the guise of “helping” is a subtle way of giving up on them. True inclusion means believing that all students can learn and designing instruction to make that possible.

Technology in service of learning

Technology is a means, never an end. A digital tool becomes a best practice when it solves an instructional problem that would be difficult to solve without it—not when it’s used just to look modern or check an institutional box. The question guiding every decision about technology is simple: Does this improve learning, or just add another layer of distraction and work?

Some uses are genuinely valuable. Adaptive platforms adjust exercises to each student’s level, offering the right challenge at the right time—not so easy that it’s boring, or so hard that it’s paralyzing. Real-time response tools give teachers an instant snapshot of the class, helping them identify in seconds who got a particular concept right and who missed it. Tools that automate grading for objective questions free up teachers to focus on what can’t be replaced: human feedback, conversation, and guidance.

The risk is using technology as decoration: adding it to impress people without changing anything essential about learning. Replacing the whiteboard with a screen showing the same text isn’t innovation; it’s the same method on a different surface. A good use of technology is one you’d miss if it were removed because it was solving a real problem. If the lesson would work just as well without the tool, the tool was window dressing.

How to institutionalize best practices

Isolated practices depend on individual talent; institutionalized practices become part of a school’s culture. This may be the most difficult and important transition in instructional leadership because it involves turning the knowledge of specific individuals into a shared school resource. The transition involves four interconnected steps.

First, document the practice. Describe it in a simple, consistent format—objective, steps, materials needed, and observed outcomes—so another teacher can understand and use it. The documentation doesn’t have to be academic or lengthy; it needs to be clear and honest, including what didn’t work. Practices that live only in the memory of the people who created them disappear when those people leave.

Second, create opportunities for peer sharing. Set up regular, structured times for teachers to share what worked and what didn’t, without judgment and with genuine curiosity. This kind of sharing helps combat teacher isolation, which is still common in many schools where each teacher closes the classroom door and figures everything out alone. When sharing becomes routine, good ideas no longer stay in one classroom; they circulate throughout the school.

Third, track progress with indicators—not to monitor or punish teachers, but to understand what’s working and where to invest. Indicators can be simple: assessment results, attendance, observed engagement, or progress in specific classes. The goal is to replace vague impressions with evidence, even if it’s modest, to guide decisions.

Fourth, provide institutional support. School leaders need to protect time for collaborative planning, recognize contributors, and ensure continuity despite staff turnover. Without this final step, any initiative can wear down and disappear with the first change in staff or leadership. Institutional support is what separates a project that lasts one semester from a culture that lasts for decades.

Examples of the impact

Schools that have systematically adopted formative assessment routines often report fewer students reaching the final test without mastering the content. That’s simply because teachers identify and address problems along the way, rather than discovering them only at the end. The logic is intuitive: when you measure learning throughout the process, you have time to intervene.

Similarly, school districts that invest in regular opportunities for teachers to share ideas find that effective practices spread beyond a single classroom and throughout the institution. One teacher discovers a better way to teach fractions and shares it; before long, it becomes a resource everyone can use. What these cases have in common isn’t the adoption of a miracle teaching method, but the patient discipline of documenting, sharing, and tracking progress—the least glamorous and most important part of instructional work.

Frequently asked questions about educational best practices

What are educational best practices? They’re intentional, evidence-based, and replicable teaching and instructional management strategies that demonstrably improve student learning. A clear objective, a sound foundation, and the ability for other teachers to use the strategy in similar settings distinguish a best practice from just any activity.

What are some examples of classroom best practices? Examples include formative assessment with exit tickets, the flipped classroom, structured debate, daily read-alouds in elementary school, rubrics shared in advance, and intentional wait time after questions. It’s best to start with one and master it before adding others.

What’s the difference between an active learning strategy and a best practice? An active learning strategy is an approach that makes students active participants; a best practice is the broader concept of any effective, replicable action. Any well-implemented active learning strategy can become a best practice, but some best practices aren’t active learning strategies, such as classroom management techniques, feedback routines, or a well-structured lecture.

How can I tell if a practice is working? Use formative assessment: observe whether students are actually learning during the process. Simple tools such as quick checks for understanding and exit tickets provide immediate evidence

Educational best practices: A complete guide to transforming teaching