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In this edition of ⚗️DistillED, we're looking at the difference between strategies and principles, and why knowing which one you are reaching for changes almost everything else that follows.
📄 The primary source for this edition is Dr Haili Hughes' excellent article The De-intellectualisation of Teaching (2026), which you can read here.
In this edition
📊 Do Now: Quick Poll!
When planning a lesson, what do you think about first?
What Is the Difference Between a Strategy and a Principle?
Most teachers can name loads of classroom strategies: cold calling, mini-whiteboards, hinge questions, exit tickets, worked examples, retrieval starters, Do Nows, Turn and Talk, choral response. The list goes on. Training introduces more. Books add more. This newsletter certainly does! Yet far fewer teachers could explain, off the top of their head, the purpose each strategy serves. This edition argues that effective teaching starts not with strategies, but with principles. Knowing the why before the what. Understanding the instructional principle before implementing a specific technique.
A strategy is what you do. A principle is why you do it:
Teaching Strategies: The visible part of teaching. They are the action an observer can see. Mini-whiteboards up. Cold call. Hinge question on the screen. An Exit ticket before the end of the lesson.
Teaching Principles: What strategies actually enact. The things that must be true for learning to happen. For example, cold calling, mini-whiteboards, hinge questions and exit tickets are four different strategies enacting the same principle: teaching should respond to evidence of student thinking.
👎 Principles ARE NOT:
A poster slogan or a school value — "high expectations" is a value. "Retention requires successful retrieval over time" is a principle. Values describe what a school aspires to; principles describe how learning actually works.
Owned by any single technique — no strategy has a monopoly on a principle. Cold calling does not own responsiveness; mini-whiteboards do not own checking for understanding. The moment a strategy is treated as the only way to enact its principle, the principle has quietly become a mandated rule.
Above or beyond evidence-informed practice — principles are not a philosophical layer sitting above the research. They are what the research is telling you. Cognitive load theory, retrieval practice, adaptive teaching: these are principles, and they are as evidence-informed as the strategies that enact them.
👍 Principles ARE:
A description of a learning mechanism — how memory forms, how attention narrows, how misconceptions arise. Principles describe what must be true for learning to happen, not what teachers must be seen to do.
Enacted by many strategies at once — cold calling, mini-whiteboards, hinge questions and exit tickets all serve the same principle: teaching should respond to evidence of student thinking. The strategies are different faces of one commitment.
What survives when the strategy changes — when a plan needs to flex mid-lesson, the principle tells you what must be preserved and what can move. Adaptation without a principle is drift.
Shaped by subject knowledge and pupil context — Modelling a paragraph in English is different from modelling a shot in PE, and a probing question in science serves a different purpose from one in literature. Principles are more universal than strategies, but they are never context-free.
In other words, many different strategies can serve the same principle. A teacher who uses cold calling simply because it has been mandated by SLT is often applying a strategy without understanding the principle behind it. By contrast, a teacher who uses cold calling because they need to know what every student is thinking about a particular question is selecting a strategy in service of a principle. From the back of the room, the two lessons may look identical, yet they are doing entirely different instructional work.
The sequence of thought is small but consequential: Learning Problem → Principle → Strategy → Decision
The diagram shows that naming the learning problem first tells you what to look for. Naming the principle tells you which family of strategies is even in the running. Naming the strategy is a matter of fit: which member of that family suits this content, this class, this moment. The decision comes last, and it is where responsive, evidence-informed teaching actually lives.
Why Does the Distinction Between Strategies and Principles Matter?
In The De-intellectualisation of Teaching, Hughes (2026) argues that teaching has gradually been flattened into the performance of approved techniques. The evaluation often becomes little more than a checklist for SLT: Did the teacher cold call? Yes. Use Think, Pair, Share? Yes. Use mini-whiteboards? Yes.
What often goes unasked is: What learning problem was the teacher trying to solve? Hughes' argument is not that instructional techniques are the problem. Rather, techniques become problematic when they are detached from the thinking that gives them purpose. Hughes explains:
"The strategy is not the pedagogy. The decision is the pedagogy."
I have some skin in this argument too. My book Teaching One-Pagers codifies strategies and often gives step-by-step scripts just like a playbook. If Hughes' argument were that playbooks themselves are the problem, I would be arguing against my own work! However, she is not making that argument, and neither am I. Strategies are a roadmap, not the journey. They make effective teaching visible, discussable, and actionable. But the codification of an idea does not improve teaching by itself. In fact, a playbook full of strategies is inert without the principles that give each one its purpose.
This is illustrated in a classic study by Chi, Feltovich and Glaser (1981) who asked physics novices and physics experts to sort problems into groups. Novices sorted by surface features: problems involving springs went together, problems involving inclined planes went together. On the other hand, experts sorted by the deep structure: the principle required to solve each problem, such as conservation of energy. Same problems… Different filing systems. The expert advantage was not simply knowing more, but organising knowledge around the underlying structures that sit at the heart of the domain.
The parallel with teaching is obvious. A teacher who thinks in strategies organises their practice around mechanical step-by-step processes. A teacher who thinks in principles organises it around what the strategy is designed to achieve. That shift changes how strategies are selected, adapted and combined in classroom practice. Three things become possible:
Implication 1: Thinking in principles makes substitution possible
If mini-whiteboards do not fit today's lesson, cold calling may serve the same principle. The strategy is negotiable; the principle is not.
👉 Read the edition on Cold Calling — a sibling strategy to mini-whiteboards in the same principle-family
Implication 2: Thinking in principles makes adaptation possible
When you understand the principle a strategy is intended to enact, you can recognise when it is no longer achieving that purpose and adapt it without losing the point.
👉 Read the edition on Adaptive Teaching — the fuller treatment of the responsive stance
Implication 3: Thinking in principles makes professional judgement possible
The professional judgement Hughes describes—choosing, adapting and responding in the moment—depends on knowing which principle you are trying to enact. Without a guiding principle, judgement becomes guesswork.
👉 Read the edition on Formative Action Loops — the decision that follows the check
Principles are more universal than the strategies that enact them, but they are not context-free. In A Playbook Is Not a Pedagogy (2026), Hughes argues that subject knowledge changes what a strategy actually does. Modelling how to analyse a poem is not the same as modelling how to solve a simultaneous equation. A probing question in science elicits different reasoning from a probing question in English. Feedback in art works differently from feedback in modern languages. Subject knowledge sometimes changes which principle is in play, and it always changes what counts as evidence of understanding. A principle-first repertoire provides a foundation for professional judgement, not a substitute for subject expertise.
👉 Read the edition on Explicit Instruction — for how subject-specific mechanisms shape enactment
How Do I Implement a Principles-First Approach?
Principles-focused teaching depends on understanding how learning works. That is why high-quality professional development should build teachers' knowledge of the learning process, not simply expand their repertoire of strategies. Some of the core principles underpinning evidence-informed teaching include:
Attention: Students can only learn what they attend to.
Cognitive Load: Learning is supported when cognitive load is managed.
Thinking: Students remember what they think hard about.
Feedback: Learning improves when misconceptions are addressed.
Retrieval: Long-term retention depends on successful retrieval over time.
Thinking in principles changes how teachers plan, adapt and respond. Instead of asking, Which strategy should I use? the question becomes, Which principle does this lesson most need to enact? The five steps below show how to make that shift in practice.
Step | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
1. Name the Principle Behind Each Strategy
| Take each strategy you use regularly and ask one question of it: What principle of learning is this strategy designed to enact? If you cannot answer, the strategy is running on habit. | A Year 10 English teacher lists the strategies she uses in a typical week and writes the principle beside each one. For example, her Do Now enacts the principle that long-term retention requires successful retrieval over time. |
2. Group Strategies by Principle
| Strategies that enact the same principle form a family. When one strategy does not fit the lesson, another from the same family may achieve the same purpose. Strategies with no siblings are worth noticing… they may be indispensable, or they may reveal a gap in your repertoire. | A Year 8 Maths teacher realises that cold calling, mini-whiteboards, hinge questions and exit tickets all belong to the same principle family: gathering evidence of student thinking. She chooses between them based on the lesson, not because one is inherently better than another. |
3. Plan From the Principle — Anticipate, Then Choose
| Before choosing a strategy, identify the principle the lesson most needs to enact. Then anticipate where understanding is likely to break down, which misconceptions may emerge, and what prior knowledge, explanations and examples students will need. Only then choose the strategy that best serves that principle. | A Year 9 Geography teacher planning a lesson on the causes of migration anticipates two likely misconceptions before the lesson. To gather evidence of students' thinking at the point of release, she designs a hinge question to discriminate between them and plans how she will respond to each possible answer. |
4. Adapt the Strategy, Preserve the Principle
| Every strategy contains features that are negotiable and features that are not. The principle tells you which is which. When circumstances force you to change course mid-lesson, preserve the principle and let the strategy flex. | A Science teacher discovers that half the class has forgotten their mini-whiteboards. Rather than abandoning the check for understanding, she switches to finger voting on the same hinge question. The strategy changed; the principle—making every student's thinking visible at the same time—remained intact. |
5. Plan the Decision the Principle Sets Up
| Every strategy generates evidence. The principle determines what that evidence is for. Decide your response before the lesson: if most answers are correct, move on; if one error dominates, reteach that step; if answers scatter, return to the model. A strategy with no planned response is a ritual. | A Year 7 History teacher designs a hinge question with four options, each revealing a different misconception. Before the lesson, she decides how she will respond to each possible pattern of answers. |
The underlying shift is small to describe and large in effect. Strategies are how principles get enacted. A strategy without a principle is theatre; a principle without a strategy is a slogan. Teach the principle, and the strategy takes care of itself.
— Jamie
If you want more:
👉 Read Mini-Whiteboards: Revisited — one strategy examined in depth, and the principle it enacts
👉 Read Overt vs Covert Retrieval — a worked example of Step 3: choosing between family members by the demands of the material
👉 Read Cold Calling — a second strategy in the same family, and how to make it safe and purposeful
👉 Read Exit Tickets — the family member built for checking retention, not performance
👉 Get the Feedback and Responsive Teaching CPD Collection — the most directly relevant collection, covering the responsive stance this edition argues for
👉 Get the Checking for Understanding CPD Collection — a full collection on formative assessment and the strategies that make thinking visible
👉 Get the Participation and Thinking CPD Collection — the strategies that make whole-class thinking visible and accountable
📥 Free Resources
The Principles-First Planning Tool & One-Pager
Download the FREE Principles-First Planning Tool and Strategies vs Principles One-Pager. Together, they help you move beyond simply selecting strategies and instead plan from the learning problem first. The planning tool guides you through the sequence Learning Problem → Principle → Strategy → Response, while the one-pager summarises the key ideas and five-step framework in a printable reference for individual or department professional learning.
⚗️DistillED+ Exclusive Content
This week, ⚗️DistillED+ members receive a Strategies vs Principles CPD PowerPoint, a printable Strategy-to-Principle Mapping template, a Department Meeting Discussion Guide, and a brand-new Principles One-Pager. Together, these resources help teachers name the principles behind their strategies, group interchangeable techniques into families, plan from the principle first, and design the in-lesson decisions that turn strategies into responsive teaching.
