Implementing high-quality teaching of disciplinary vocabulary

John Rodgers, Assistant Principal, Mounts Bay Academy, UK; Director, Cornwall Associate Research School, UK Since September, a priority at Mounts Bay Academy, an 11–16 mixed school in Penzance, has been high-quality disciplinary vocabulary instruction. I aim to show how and why we implemented practice change across all faculties to improve the teaching of disciplinary vocabulary. The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) guidance report ‘Putting evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation’ (2021a) details an evidence-based process that ‘can be described as a series of stages relating to thinking about, preparing for, delivering and sustaining change’ (p. 5). The report clarifies this: ‘It doesn’t matter how great an educational idea or intervention is in principle; what really matters is how it manifests itself in the day-to-day work of people in schools.’ (p. 2) Explore The first phase of the iterative process is ‘Explore’. In the introduction t