Primary Teaching for Mastery Work Group (TRG)
Hear from teachers who have taken part in the Teaching for Mastery programme in this video, where they reflect on the impact the professional development has had on pupils:
YH1: The impact on pupils from Chloe Murphy on Vimeo.
What does the opportunity involve?
Two teachers from each participating school join a Work Group, consisting of six or seven local primary schools. Each Work Group is led by a trained primary Mastery Specialist.
Work Groups (sometimes known as Teacher Research Groups, or TRGs) meet regularly to plan, observe and discuss teaching for mastery. In between meetings, teachers explore mastery approaches in their own classrooms and across their school. Work Groups run for a year initially, with light touch support continuing beyond the first year as mastery is embedded in participants’ schools.
Support is provided from a local classroom-based Mastery Specialist who leads the group. This model of professional development involves hands-on learning and peer-to-peer support. It is evidence-based and designed to support substantial long-term change.
Primary Mastery Specialists
Mastery Specialists are classroom practitioners who develop expertise in the mastery approach to teaching maths. Through rigorous and interactive training, they become experts in introducing and embedding mastery. After first developing a mastery approach in their own classrooms, they go on to support colleagues in their own and other schools.
There are currently hundreds of Mastery Specialists supporting colleagues in their own schools and beyond to develop mastery approaches to maths teaching. Mastery Specialists are classroom-based practitioners who develop expertise in mastery and lead Work Groups to support other schools and teachers locally.
The Mastery Specialist Programme for primary teachers started in 2015/16. Each year around 140 primary teachers – four from each Maths Hub – complete a programme of professional development to become Mastery Specialists. In every subsequent year, each of these teachers leads a Teaching for Mastery Work Group. This involves working with participant teachers from six or seven primary schools within their Maths Hub area, so that these schools can start to introduce teaching for mastery themselves.
By the end of the 2019/20 school year, there will be 700 Primary Mastery Specialists established and operational. They will collectively have worked with more than 8,000 other primary schools, which represents around half of all primary schools in England.
