The Challenge of Opening Doors: How to Get Teachers to Invite Others In

I believe that improving teaching and learning starts with building the capacity of the people already in the building. My belief is backed by substantial research and nearly 30 years of working in schools. 

One of the most powerful ways to do that is also one of the hardest: creating the conditions for teachers to learn from one another. 

I see this leadership challenge everywhere. Experienced teachers are resistant—they've been teaching successfully for years and don't see why they should change now. New teachers feel too vulnerable to expose their teaching. Everyone is time-poor, and peer observation feels like yet another thing on an impossible list.

But the biggest barrier is the one we've inherited: observation still carries the weight of its graded past. For many teachers, being observed means being judged—graded, told what they got wrong, and rarely observed again. Even though Ofsted stopped grading individual lessons over a decade ago, the damage lingers.

Teaching is an intensely human-facing profession—teachers perform every day in front of students—yet being observed by a colleague can feel deeply uncomfortable.

Senior teams face a genuine leadership paradox: teachers won't participate unless it's mandated, but mandating peer observation undermines the very trust and openness they're trying to build.

And even when teachers are willing to observe, teacher observers don't know what to look for. Without a shared understanding of effective teaching, observation risks becoming a tick-box exercise—or worse, reinforcing poor practice.

Building the Foundation First

We began by establishing a shared understanding of what "great' looks like—grounded in both educational evidence and the specific context of the school. 

All teachers needed to understand how learning works from a cognitive perspective. This wasn't abstract theory—it was practical knowledge about working memory, cognitive load, retrieval practice, and spaced learning and collective evidence from classroom research outlined in resources like Rosenshine and the Great Teaching Toolkit. This became the 'why' behind what we do, and crucially, it gave teachers a shared language for talking about teaching and learning.

Now for opening doors … 

Moving from knowing, to seeing, to doing—and then practising—is how learning sticks. For this to work, the expertise has to live within the school. When teachers see strong practice happening down the corridor and discuss what works (and what doesn’t), it builds belief. Over time, that's how capacity grows.

Before any structure, leadership had to build shared commitment that learning from each other was worth the discomfort, and that the goal was growth, not evaluation. This meant letting go of control, accepting slow change, and, if the leader is also a teacher, modelling vulnerability by inviting others to their classroom.

Creating Low-Stakes Entry Points

We introduced pairs and trios. Teachers visited each other’s classrooms with a focus—improving questioning or implementing oracy structures, for example.  Some volunteered to be recorded.

Video gave us something powerful: the chance for teachers to reflect on their own practice before sharing with others. In small, trusted groups, teachers could say "next time I'd...'before anyone offered feedback. The video created an artifact that multiple people could learn from together. Capacity grew through reflection and dialogue, not verdicts.

Anchoring in Positive Noticing

We anchored everything in positive noticing. Leaders left Post-it notes—one thing we noticed, and the impact it had on students. No grades. Just noticing decisions and their effects.

Over time, we invited teachers to observe alongside leaders during whole school learning walks. I’ve seen this work a number of ways in different schools, but always with guiding principles rooted in a shared understanding, never a ticklist. Then we implemented 'Drop-in' Weeks—dedicated time for teachers to visit each other's classrooms. We provided cover when needed and created protected time for professional conversations.

The Leadership Shift

The leadership challenge wasn't just about getting teachers to open doors—it was about showing them it was worth it. Teachers were talking more about lessons and inviting others in. 

It wasn't—and isn't—easy. Resistance remained. Some teachers still preferred closed doors. But leadership listened, adapted, yet held firm: teachers learning from teachers mattered to improving learning for our students.

Dylan Wiliam captures this perfectly: "If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve."

Building teaching capacity isn't about opening every door all at once. It's about establishing what "great" looks like first, then opening doors carefully, intentionally, and with trust—recognising that when teachers are treated as learners, improvement becomes something a school owns together.

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