By Colin McGill

Main headline – The Teaching Delusion 3 is a must read for any teacher who wants to improve their practice (i.e. all teachers) and also for anyone acting as a coach/mentor to a colleague. 

The book begins with ten “Learning Lessons” which summarises how learning happens, with plenty of footnotes for anyone who wants to read more. In the heart of the book, Bruce goes onto go through 12 elements of pedagogy, and how these elements can be used to improve learning & teaching in the classroom. Within each element, there are Power-up Prompts which will make you think about a specific aspect of teaching, and Trusted Techniques, which are specific practices that can be tried in the classroom to improve your practice. 

Bruce has created a fantastic resource that teachers can use to identify aspects of their practice that they’d like to improve, and gives suggested techniques on how these aspects can be improved. Throughout the book there are plenty of concrete examples of how the techniques could be implemented. The book is also ideal for anyone in a coaching or mentoring relationship with a colleague, as it will help to the coach/mentor to provide specific, actionable feedback focused on improving classroom practice.  

As with his other books, Bruce has written a book that I wish had been written 15 years ago as I know I would have been a better teacher, mentor and leader if I’d had this book to hand. The Trusted Techniques are mostly strategies that can be implemented very quickly with no huge impact on workload – the sort of professional learning that I like! 

 I’ll definitely be recommending it to the student teachers that I work with.