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A Practical Guide to a Big Education

Balancing Head, Heart and Hand

A Practical Guide to a Big Education cover

A Practical Guide to a Big Education

Balancing Head, Heart and Hand

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Pre-order. Available 12 Mar 2026
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Description

A Practical Guide to a Big Education offers a bold new vision of an expansive education that is academic, relational and creative and shows you how you can make that shift in your school.

Discover practical guidance and tools to help you offer a more holistic education, balancing 'Head, Heart and Hand' (academic learning, relational wellbeing and creativity) across your leadership, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practice. Covering a broad range of topics from belonging to behaviour, lunchtimes to learner profiles, design thinking to developing agency in teachers, school leaders from across the UK bring advice and insights to help you in your transformational journey. Each chapter explores inspiring changes you can make, the difference these can make to learners and practical, realistic ideas of how to achieve this change along with case studies and reflective questions.

Big Education is a Multi-Academy Trust and charity working to transform the education system, ensuring young people receive a balanced education. Big Education run their own schools, as well as provide programmes to develop leaders and teachers.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Leadership
1. Leading for a Big Education: Building a culture of agency and creativity by Liz Robinson
2. Design thinking: School improvement that empowers stakeholders and designs more effective solutions by Matt Morden
3. What it means to be evidence-informed: How to engage teachers with evidence and help them to generate their own by Sarah Seleznyov
4. Developing teaching and learning: How professional development can build teacher agency and improve learning by Moray Dickson
5. Peer review: A better way to 'inspect' schools by Sarah Marriott and Tom Raw
6. Behaviour and culture: Exploring non-punitive approaches to relationship and culture building by Helen Gourley
7. Collaborative pastoral support: Teamwork to improve learner wellbeing and accelerate learning by Kathryn Puch

Part 2: Curriculum
8. Project-based learning: How interdisciplinary projects support knowledge, skills and competency development by Paddy Russell
9. Real-world learning: How preparation for the world of work can be built into the school curriculum by Chris Anders
10. Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging: Ensuring that learners, parents and staff feel a sense of belonging by Andrea Silvain
11. Entrepreneurialism: How to construct a curriculum that develops learners' entrepreneurial spirit by Hayley Peacock
12. Citizenship education: Preparing young people to shape society by Seb Chapleau
13. Health matters: A curriculum for health and wellbeing by Ben Levinson
14. Lunchtimes: How lunchtimes can enable learning experiences for our young people by Tim Stayner

Part 3: Pedagogy
15. Play-based learning: Why play matters and how playful pedagogies improve learning by Sarah Seleznyov
16. Imagination matters: Shaping the conditions for creative learning experiences by Tom Doust
17. Outdoor learning: How outdoor learning can improve engagement and progression by Gemma Goldenberg
18. Oracy: Progressively developing learner talk to build confidence and raise attainment by Daniel Thomas and Emily Thomas
19. Mantle of the Expert: Using drama and role-play to bring learning to life by Tim Taylor
20. Design thinking as pedagogy: The importance of the Maker{Cycle} in practical subjects by Alison Buxton

Part 4: Assessment
21. Competency progression: How can we teach and assess transferable competencies? by Robert Lobatto
22. Learner profiles: Assessment that evidences the full breadth of learning by Rosie Clayton and Fran Wilby
23. Interdisciplinary qualifications: New qualifications for future-facing schools by Bertie Cairns
24. Beyond the curriculum: Qualifications that enable learners to explore their own lines of enquiry by John Taylor

Product details

Published 12 Mar 2026
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 256
ISBN 9781801997928
Imprint Bloomsbury Education
Dimensions 234 x 153 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Sarah Seleznyov

Sarah Seleznyov is Director of the London South Te…

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