Rosenshine’s (2012) principles of instruction are deservedly having a bit of a moment in education. This is good news, as they are firmly grounded teacher effectiveness research. This, now quite venerable, field has been one of the more successful parts of educational research in providing valid and reliable findings of relevance to practice. 

Historically, teacher effectiveness research emerged in the 1960’s as a result of the failure of previous attempts to link teacher personality to pupil attainment.Following the breakthrough of behavioural learning theory in psychology in the 1950’s and 1960’s researchers in education sought to apply some of the methods and insights of these theories to teaching practise. While the experimental designs that had characterised behaviourist psychology were not deemed suitable to study classroom practise, many other elements of behaviourist theory and methodology were adopted.One key aspect was the rejection of ‘mentalism’, the study of mental conditions which could not…