The phrase ‘I do, we do, you do’ has become commonplace in educational discourse. In the UK it is often used in school meetings, training sessions and policy documents when talking about how to scaffold students’ learning, and even a cursory exploration of school websites yields many explicit references to it. Here’s an example below, where ‘I do, we do, you do’ is presented as the main body of the school’s generic lesson plan with a ‘Do now’ before and a ‘Plenary’ after:
What is ‘I do, we do, you do’ and why is it so ubiquitous?
‘I do, we do, you do’ is simplified classroom shorthand for the modelling guided practice independent practice model described by Archer and Hughes (2011). It draws on earlier work by Pearson and Gallagher (1983) who referred to the process as a gradual release of responsibility from teacher to learner, a notion rooted in Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (1978) and Wood et al.’s ideas on scaffolding (1976). Many schools now use it in conjunction with Barak Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’ (2012), which also emphasises a clear, structured approach to teaching where the teacher models, the class practises together, and students then work independently. Its appeal is obvious. It is simple, memorable, and grounded in evidence about effective, explicit instruction. However, this simplicity and user-friendliness that make ‘I do, we do, you do’ so attractive also limit its usefulness at supporting better outcomes for learners, particularly when faced with the need for students to comprehend and compose texts, including multi-modal texts, across the full range of subject disciplines within the school curriculum. For this, the ‘cyclical model of teaching and learning’ promised in the heading for the school’s ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach cited earlier, needs to be fully realised and include a strong focus on how language works, alongside other semiotic (meaning making) systems such as the visual, or performance that communicate disciplinary knowledge.
Disciplinary Literacy and the Teaching and Learning Cycle
Disciplinary literacy development is where the Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC) comes into its own. Although it is based on the same instructional principle as ‘I do, we do, you do’ in aiming to gradually transfer responsibility from teacher to learner, the TLC provides a principled and practical tool for teachers to ensure that students accrue the language through which knowledge is constructed and reflected upon critically and analytically. Developed in Australia in the 1980s, as a way of tackling inequality in educational outcomes, the TLC began as a way of translating into classroom practice understandings that had arisen from language development studies by Halliday and Painter and Vygotskyian learning theory (Rose and Martin, 2012). The theory of language on which the TLC is based, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), is particularly useful in educational contexts because it conceptualises language as a meaning-making resource shaped by context. This enables teachers to explicitly model how texts work within their own subject context and to scaffold learners’ development of the genres they need to do well.
Since its inception, the TLC has been widely adopted and adapted internationally wherever genre-based and explicit scaffolding approaches have been influential, though often implicitly, without retaining its original title, and with varying degrees of alignment with its SFL foundations. In UK guidance and school inspection documentation, language such as ‘scaffolding’, ‘modelling’ (EEF, 2019), ‘curriculum intent’, ‘progression to independence’, ‘knowledge and cultural capital’ (Ofsted, 2019) and ‘essential knowledge’ (DfE, 2014) all echo key ideas of the TLC.
The particular power of the TLC lies in its capacity for developing discipline-specific literacies by doing the following:
Exploring context and building field knowledge
The TLC foregrounds the building of disciplinary knowledge and cultural capital by adding an explicit and comprehensive context-setting and knowledge-building stage before teacher modelling. This knowledge-building focus does not stop after the first stage but continues to be developed throughout the cycle. The two diagrams below show an earlier representation, where the explicit attention to knowledge-building as an ongoing feature is highlighted (Fig.1) and a later one, where the knowledge-building stage is presented separately thereby providing a clear planning tool for teachers and facilitating the organisation of units of work across topics (Fig. 2).
The TLC develops the background knowledge, vocabulary, and conceptual understanding that students need to engage successfully with texts, particularly those students who may not be exposed to such knowledge outside school. In this way it supports the drive for greater equality of outcomes in diverse contexts.
Next time: Teaching students to comprehend and compose disciplinary genres
References
Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching. Guilford Press.
Department for Education (2014) The national curriculum in England: Framework document. London: Department for Education. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-framework-document.
Education Endowment Foundation: Quigley, A. and Coleman, R. (2019) Improving literacy in secondary schools: Guidance report. London: Education Endowment Foundation.
Ofsted (2019) Education inspection framework. London: Ofsted. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-inspection-framework.
Martin, J.R. and Rothery, J. (1986) Writing Project Report No. 1: What a functional approach to the writing task can show teachers about “good writing”. Sydney: University of Sydney.
Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The Instruction of Reading Comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology.
Rose, D. and Martin, J.R. (2012) Learning to Write, Reading to Learn: Genre, Knowledge and Pedagogy in the Sydney School. Sheffield: Equinox.
Rosenshine, B. (2012) Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), pp. 12–19, 39.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
