About the Toolkits

The Toolkits

Our Teaching and Learning Toolkit (the Toolkit) and the Early Childhood Education Toolkit (ECE Toolkit) are accessible summaries of education research. The two Toolkits are designed to support teachers, school leaders and early childhood education educators in making evidence-informed decisions about how to improve learning outcomes, particularly for children and young people from disadvantaged settings.

The Toolkits do not make definitive claims as to what will work to improve outcomes in a given setting. Rather they provide high quality information about what is likely to be beneficial based on existing evidence. 

The Toolkits aim to: 

• support evidence-informed decision making in Australian schools and early childhood education settings;
• provide guidance for school leaders and teachers, and early childhood education educators on how to use their resources to improve educational outcomes for their students, particularly those surrounded by disadvantage;
• act as an introduction to educational research.

The Toolkits synthesise international and Australian research, and presents a wide range of educational interventions, summarised in terms of:

1. the average months’ worth of learning progress; 
2. the strength of the evidence;
3. the cost.

The Toolkits are live resources updated regularly as new studies are published in Australia and internationally.

Watch this video on how the Toolkits are designed to support educators who are making decisions about approaches they're considering implementing in their schools to improve learning outcomes, particularly for students from settings surrounded by disadvantage. (11:43).

Read more about the Teaching & Learning Toolkit and how you can use it (1 MB, PDF).

Read more about the Early Childhood Education Tookit (726 KB, PDF)

'In my role, I spend a great deal of time collecting, reading and unpacking research around teaching practice and approaches with our teachers. The [Teaching & Learning] Toolkit is neat, concise and easy to use. It will save me countless hours in the way it lights the path directly to the most relevant and reliable research.' - Frances Roberts,Head of Curriculum, Bounty Boulevard State School after attending a workshop led by Evidence for Learning's Dr Tanya Vaughan.

Months' impact

Months' impact is estimated in terms of the additional months' progress you can likely expect children and young people to make as a result of implementing an approach, compared to similar children and young people who did not receive the approach. The months’ impact takes the average progress over a year as a benchmark.

For example, the ‘feedback’ strand in the Teaching & Learning Toolkit shows that improving the quality of feedback provided to students has an average impact of eight months. This means that students in a class where high quality feedback is provided can be expected to make, on average, eight months more progress over the course of a year compared to another class of students who are performing at the same level at the start of the year.

Effect sizes

These impact estimations are based on ‘effect sizes’ reported in comparative data (see table below). Effect sizes are quantitative measures of the impact of different approaches on learning. The Toolkits prioritise effect sizes derived from systematic reviews of research and quantitative syntheses of data such as meta-analyses of experimental studies. To be included in the analysis an approach needs to have some quantifiable evidence base for comparison.

Effect sizes describe the size of the difference between two groups in a standard and comparable way. However, it can be difficult to understand what a given effect size actually means for the progress of children and young people. That is why the Toolkits translates effect sizes into the months’ progress measure, as shown in the table below.

Cost

Cost estimations in the Toolkits are based on the approximate cost of implementing an approach in a class of 25 students. Cost estimates commonly include the cost of additional resources, the cost of training or professional development or the cost of activities for students. 

Evidence security

Evidence security 'padlock' ratings provide an overall estimate of the robustness of the evidence. It is based on:

• the quantity of evidence available (i.e. the number of systematic reviews or meta-analyses and the number of primary studies which they synthesise);
• the outcomes measured in those studies
• the methodological quality of the available evidence;
• the consistency of impact estimates across the reviews and meta-analyses that have been synthesised.

Who wrote the Toolkits

The Teaching & Learning Toolkit was developed by two charities based in the UK, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Sutton Trust, in collaboration with academics at Durham University. In 2015, the Australian Teaching & Learning Toolkit was launched, with support from the Department of Education and Training in Victoria, Social Ventures Australia (SVA) and a number of other organisations in Australia. The Australasian Research Summaries for approaches in the Teaching & Learning Toolkit were produced in collaboration with Melbourne Graduate School of Education and launched in 2016. 

The Early Childhood Education Toolkit was produced by the EEF in collaboration with a team of academics at Durham University, led by Professor Steve Higgins. The Australasian Research Summaries for the 12 approaches in the Early Childhood Education Toolkit were produced in collaboration with Telethon Kids. In 2019, the Early Childhood Education Toolkit was launched in Australia with support from The Bryan Foundation. In 2019, the Early Childhood Education Toolkit was launched with support from The Bryan Family Foundation.  

The full references for the Toolkits are:

The Teaching & Learning Toolkit

Education Endowment Foundation. (2019). Evidence for Learning Teaching & Learning Toolkit: Education Endowment Foundation. Retrieved from https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkits/the-teaching-and-learning-toolkit/

Evidence for Learning in collaboration with Melbourne Graduate School of Education. (2019). Australasian Research Summaries. Retrieved from https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkits/the-teaching-and-learning-toolkit/australasian-research-summaries/

The Early Childhood Education Toolkit

Education Endowment Foundation. (2019). Evidence for Learning Early Childhood Education Toolkit: Education Endowment Foundation. Retrieved from https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkits/early-childhood-education-toolkit/

Evidence for Learning in collaboration with Telethon Kids. (2019). Australasian Research Summaries. Retrieved from https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkits/early-childhood-education-toolkit/australasian-research-summaries/