The idea of high-leverage practices is deceptively simple: they are the teaching practices that are central to the daily work of teaching; they are important for students’ learning, participation, agency, and flourishing; and they are possible to teach to beginning teachers. They are the foundation of skillful teaching. But foundational doesn’t mean that they are easy. In fact, I would argue that four of the high-leverage practices—eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student thinking, leading a group discussion, explaining and modeling content, and acknowledging competence—are among the most complex and demanding teaching practices, regardless of the level or subject matter you are teaching. This means that while these practices are important for beginning teachers to develop skill with, supports must be provided for continued growth across teachers’ careers.
High-leverage practices in practice
Teachers know that teaching, no matter the context, involves unique interactions between and among the teacher and the students, is influenced by the context and the environment, and is impacted by broader societal norms, attitudes, and ways of being. Anyone who has taught more than one group of children, changed grade levels or school buildings, or moved to a different city or state can attest to this. This means that there is no single “correct” or “best” way of carrying out a particular teaching practice. However, the decompositions of the high-leverage practices provide guidance for carrying out these practices in any context, naming the specific work teachers do and techniques they may use. You might presume that since we are able to name the work required by the practice, we would see such practices being used regularly across classrooms and that more experienced teachers would be consistently enacting these practices in more advanced ways than new teachers. But research doesn’t necessarily bear that out.
Take, for example, the practice of leading a group discussion in mathematics. Across several studies of teachers’ mathematics discussion-leading practice (e.g., Garcia et al., 2026), we found that experienced teachers who were not yet receiving support to continue to develop their discussion-leading practice were generally skilled in setting up the mathematical task, launching the discussion, and asking questions that allowed students to share their process to solve the task. However, they often were not asking questions that probed student understanding, helped students to make sense of or use one another’s ideas, or connect ideas, and did not generally conclude the discussion in ways that helped students to know what to take away despite the fact that such moves are specifically named across research and practitioner resources (e.g., Inoue et al., 2019; Kazemi & Stipek, 2001; Webb et al., 2014). While this is one example of a single practice, similar patterns of practice emerge around eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student thinking.
If we as a field know what it takes to enact high-leverage practices well, why are they not always happening consistently in classrooms? To be honest, we should acknowledge that teachers are pulled in many directions and experience pressure to move through the curriculum and attend to test scores. Even so, the demands of these practices are real and require practice-based support for teachers to use them regularly and skillfully.
What’s the challenge of these practices?
We know that these practices are complicated. In many ways, I would argue that the four practices I’ve named (eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student thinking, leading a group discussion, explaining and modeling content, and acknowledging competence) are much more complicated than others on the list. The reason for that is that each of these practices requires nuanced decision-making and involves a number of complex skills.
First, each of these requires listening carefully in the moment to students’ ideas and interpreting their ideas in light of what you know about the student and the content. Careful listening requires attending to the cadences and language patterns of children, which are quite different from adult speech, regardless of the age of the child. That in itself is difficult, but layered on top of that is the work of making sense of what children are communicating about the content—ideas for which they do not yet have clear language. Then teachers must interpret what the child is saying, determining what they know and can do, what their ideas about the content are, and consider how to respond. For the practices of eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student thinking and leading a group discussion, this might involve asking further questions. For the practice of explaining and modeling content, this could involve determining which ideas to emphasize in your explanation. And for acknowledging competence, this means identifying an authentic strength in what the student has shared and determining how to make that strength apparent to the child and/or their classmates. This is incredibly complex work, especially when teachers are attending to 30 other children, the pacing and timing of the lesson, and external disruptions at the same time.
Second, each of these practices requires speaking in ways that children can hear. Teachers must work to convey curiosity and genuine interest in student ideas, communicate the value of children’s thinking, and use language that is accessible, but also true to the content area. Again, this work requires nuance and deep knowledge of each child as an individual in relation to the content being taught and in relation to others in the classroom.
Finally, each practice requires flexible knowledge about the content being taught. Teachers of course bring their own understanding of the content to their teaching, but these practices require teachers to see the content from the students’ perspective, not only their own. This type of flexibility in content area thinking is required for interpreting student ideas and determining how to move thinking forward along the pathway that students are on.
What does that mean for teacher preparation and professional learning?
The complexity of these foundational practices means that space must be made in teacher preparation for careful work that highlights and supports the nuance involved in enacting these practices. But this must be done in ways that don’t make the work feel impossible for beginning teachers. Pedagogies such as simulated student interactions, peer practice, and rehearsals provide the kind of support necessary to develop beginning skill with these teaching practices. But this isn’t enough for sustained teacher growth. Practicing teachers also need opportunities to practice this work with knowledgeable others, receive practice-focused feedback that pushes their work forward, and engage in professional learning that focuses deeply on the content-specific ways these practices are enacted. Laying the foundation isn’t enough. Continued care and maintenance are required. For more information on how our recently revised list of high-leverage practices and their associated decompositions can support teacher growth from pre-service teaching to experienced professional, see our newly published report, High-Leverage Practices of Teaching.