Establishing enabling routines: How do highly effective teachers do it?

Of all the practices that impact learning engagement, few could be more important than the 'first day, first class' signals teachers give their students about the learning culture desired in their classrooms. Yet of all the issues impacting learning engagement, no issue seems to be so lacking in empirical evidence about how effective teachers actually do this. In other words, we authors, as experienced researchers in the field, have not found a single well-documented and published study into the way capable teachers initiate the routines that will enable and sustain their students' learning. Our 'Enabling Routines' Project (2017) breaks new ground in the research literature on teaching and learning by investigating how highly effective teachers establish enabling pedagogical routines with a new class of middle years or secondary students in Brisbane Grammar School, a high performing Queensland school.