We have developed a teaching and learning framework and playbook to support our teachers – the Coll way.

The Journey Toward Ako Tahi

Wellington College has been on a journey of strengthening: our teaching, our classroom management, and our collective knowledge in teaching and learning. We are a high-performing school with incredible teachers, and it would be easy to rest on our statistics of success. However, when we look more closely at individual stories, we find that not all students are meeting their potential – often for complex reasons, but with solutions we have the power to address.

Classrooms are delicate ecosystems. To thrive, ākonga require specific teaching and learning conditions. This raises an essential question: What are these ideal conditions, and how do we maintain them consistently?

To answer this, we must look to the Science of Learning.

In the graphic above, developed by Daniel Willingham, we see what is quite aptly named “Just about the simplest model of the mind possible.” It brings an awareness of how the brain learns and the influence of the learning environment.

Teaching has always been both an art and a craft, shaped by relationships, instinct, and experience. For generations, kaiako have drawn on professional wisdom to achieve the best outcomes. However, the world of education is now increasingly informed by research spanning cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Once we understand this theory, the challenge lies in its application. Used well, research does not replace the craft of teaching; it strengthens it. It provides a formal language for what great kaiako have long done intuitively, helping us refine our practices to meet the needs of all learners – not just those who find school easy. Through this research, we recognised the need for a unified teaching and learning framework.

Our Ako Tahi Framework

Ako Tahi, meaning to learn as one, is our shared teaching and learning approach at Wellington College. It provides a flexible framework underpinned by a broad research base and responsive to the needs of our students.

The framework is guided by two interconnected pathways:

• Te Ara Ako (The Path of Learning): Describes how students learn. This is where the Science of Learning lives. It focuses our knowledge on how to encode new information into long-term memory.

• Te Ara Whakaako (The Path of Teaching): Defines teaching that aligns with those learning processes.

Teachers are the experts who translate theory into practice. While the Science of Learning is not pedagogy in itself, Te Ara Whakaako defines the focus for our kaiako: building the conditions for learning, knowing what to teach, knowing how to teach it, and knowing when it has been learnt. This ensures that no learning is left to chance.

The Ako Tahi Playbook

Professor Russell Bishop asserts that one of the greatest contributors to inequitable outcomes is variability of practice. When rituals, routines, and language shift from room to room, the cognitive load on our students increases. By building greater consistency, we create a predictable environment where deep learning can take place. Strong relationships and high-quality teaching are not isolated strategies; they are interconnected and mutually reinforcing.

To that end, we developed our Ako Tahi Playbook – a powerful tool for aligning our practices and strengthening our pedagogy.

An instructional playbook is a practical, research-informed tool. It translates educational research into actionable strategies for classroom practice. Much like a coach’s playbook in sport, it equips educators with a clear and consistent set of strategies that supports equitable outcomes for all our students.

Our playbook was carefully designed to be ‘grab and go’: easy to read and easy to implement. It is now the touchstone for all our Professional Learning and Development (PLD). It contains a series of carefully curated, articulated, and designed practices – all led by a “front end” of research. This ensures that every strategy we use is a deliberate step toward helping our ākonga thrive.

We have been fortunate to engage in a variety of professional learning as a staff over the last few years, with experts including Dr Nina Hood, Dr Martyn Reynolds, Dr Mark Dowley, Dr Ray Swann, Professor Russell Bishop, and Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion. Much of what we had already explored through external and internal professional learning has been captured in our playbook, placing everything in one place. We launched this to our staff during our PLD in March, which resulted in the following feedback:

“It looks like a really good resource and will help align teaching and standards across the school. The design is nice and makes the topics digestible. I really like the folder design and this will make adding/replacing content very easy.”

“I love it. Well presented in a really accessible user friendly way. Thank you for the thought you have put into this to collect evidence based teaching pedagogy. I love that it has collected all the ‘gold’ from our professional development and put it in one place.”

“It looks great. Very visual. This helps as it is not just writing which can make all the information overwhelming. Very user friendly. I like that each section have a list of the research that back up what’s presented and the Qr codes for more resources so we can go deeper in the sections we want/ need the most. It’s great for us but it’s going to be amazing for new teachers. Great job. Well done, thanks.”

“It clearly summarises what we have done so far and what we are currently doing. It useful to use as our foundational guideline when we carry out any teaching and learning activities in WC.”

“Really helpful scripts around behaviour. Great to have an easy to use format like this. Thank you!”

There were concerns that some parts of the playbook were a bit ‘light touch’, in particular the Neurodiversity section. This is one of the great things about the playbook, it is ringbound by design so that we can add more in-depth support in key areas of teaching. This model enables collaboration and co-construction with staff, ensuring that it remains relevant, responsive and ‘living’.

Ako Tahi Implementation

We now need to be very considered and deliberate with how we implement Ako Tahi. Within a context of considerable curriculum change, teachers are at risk of cognitive overload and work overwhelm. The increasing pressures on the education sector is not new, but it is growing, and so any resources provided for staff needs to sit within that reality.

Our message to our teachers is to choose one or two things from the playbook to try, test, and then embed. We draw from Implementation Science to guide us with this, specifically the Active Implementation Framework (AIF).

As we continue on our journey of strengthening teaching and learning at WC, we are developing coaching and mentoring support systems, teaching our students how their brains learn, and developing their learner habits, all while engaging in ongoing discourse on character development. As our understanding of teaching deepens, so too will the strategies we include in our playbook and the ways we use them.

We champion our teachers and the incredible work they do. Ako Tahi exists to support and strengthen their mahi; it is their daily commitment to high expectations, careful planning, and an unwavering belief in our students that brings this playbook to life. Without their professionalism, expertise, and dedication, our students would not experience the success they do. While Ako Tahi helps teachers to bridge the research-to-practice gap, it is their everyday practice that truly makes the difference.

Ako Tahi has been shaped by the generosity, expertise, and commitment of many people. We extend our sincere thanks to the schools that supported this work by openly sharing their resources, ideas, and practices – in particular Ivanhoe Institute, Brighton Grammar and The Crowther Centre, The Anglican Church Grammar School (Churchie), Dixons Academies Trust, Reach Academy, Mossbourne Community Academy, Arc Globe Academy, Long Bay College, Westlake Boys High School, and the many other schools who have generously shared their playbooks and teaching and learning frameworks. Your willingness to collaborate and contribute beyond your own communities reflects the very spirit of collective improvement that underpins this document.

If you would like to learn more about Ako Tahi, contact Deputy Principal Nikki Corbishley at n.corbishley@wc.school.nz.