Professional development, coaching, and consultancy

Category: School improvement

  • From Exercise Book to Operating System: Rethinking Teaching and Learning Strategy in the Age of AI

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    Walk into any classroom and you’ll find three things in play: content, activity, and communication. Teachers teach; students learn (we hope); materials are shared, discussed, and acted upon. Whether the medium is pen and paper or tablet and app, the essential task remains the same: to help students acquire knowledge, make sense of it, and use it meaningfully.

    The main strategies have not changed significantly, and for good reason, at least in my 20 years plus of teaching experience. What has changed is how our strategic thinking has evolved to accommodate new tools and new expectations.

    Originally devised as a thought experiment to help me better understand the impact of AI’s irruption into this space, this article explores that evolution, using a series of diagrams as a heuristic to help trace how schools are adapting their teaching and learning strategies to a digital and now AI-infused world.

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  • How Learning Really Happens: Unlocking the Power of Cognitive Science in the Classroom

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    What if we could teach more effectively by understanding how learning truly works? That was the guiding question behind a recent McGraw Hill webinar led by Dr Carl Hendrick, a teacher, researcher, and co-author of How Learning Happens. His talk, The Science of Learning meets Direct Instruction, offered a rich, practical distillation of decades of research into how pupils learn, and, just as crucially, how they forget.

    Hendrick walked us through six foundational insights from cognitive science that all teachers should know:

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  • Beyond the Device: Prompts to Guide a Digital Strategy that Puts Learning First

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    This downloadable resource is designed to help school leaders and digital strategy leads take a clear, structured approach to aligning technology use with teaching and learning priorities.

    Too often, digital strategies begin with devices and infrastructure. Instead, this guide starts with pedagogy, helping schools clarify their purpose, evaluate their current approach, and make informed decisions about what to sustain, adapt or improve.

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  • Ten Signs of a Truly Healthy School Culture — Not Just a High-Performing One

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    I find it peculiarly ironic that institutions devoted so passionately to the development of young minds can, all too easily, lose sight of the conditions that nurture the adults who run the place. We rightly worry about the mental health of our pupils, but the emotional climate for the grown-ups — teachers, leaders, support staff — is sometimes considered an afterthought. Something to think about during Wellbeing Week. And yet, if we want schools where children thrive, we must first pay attention to the ecosystems in which the adults grow.

    A healthy school is not merely one that performs well on paper. Nor is it defined by glossy prospectuses or glowing inspection reports. True health, like character, is revealed in the nooks and crannies of the place: in conversations, in interactions, in the choices about what is praised, permitted, and prioritised.

    So what does good look like?

    Here are ten signs you’re in a school where care, clarity, and coherence prevail — signs that you are in a place that cares about you.

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  • Beware the Octopus Head: Why Control Isn’t the Same as Leadership

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    While this reflection is grounded in school leadership (where I have worked and coached for many years) the dynamics described here echo more widely, across organisations, sectors and hierarchies. Wherever leadership is mythologised, we often reach for familiar archetypes: the lone hero, the bold reformer, the visionary outsider.

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