Difficulty: Introductory to Intermediate | Prerequisites: Review Unit 2 (influences on education) and Unit 4 (high-leverage practices) before using these notes.
Education does not exist in a vacuum. What happens inside a classroom is shaped by forces that predate the teacher, the curriculum, and even the school building: court decisions, cultural movements, legislative acts, and shifts in public values. At the same time, certain teaching practices have been identified through research as disproportionately effective regardless of context. These are called high-leverage practices. Task 1 asks you to connect both of these ideas to real classroom observations, which means you need a working understanding of what counts as an influence and what counts as an HLP before you sit down to write.
Historical, cultural, and legal influences are external forces that have shaped how schools operate, who has access, and what is taught. High-leverage practices are the specific teaching moves that research identifies as most impactful for student learning. For Task 1, you need to name one influence, apply it to all three classrooms, and then show how HLPs look different across those same settings.
Historical influence on education
An event, movement, or trend from the past that changed educational practice or policy. Examples include the Common School Movement, the progressive education movement, and the shift toward standardised testing in the 20th century.
Think of it as the backstory that explains why schools look and work the way they do today.
Cultural influence on education
A shift in societal values, demographics, or community expectations that shapes what is taught, how it is taught, or who has access. Examples include immigration patterns that created multilingual classrooms, and the push for culturally responsive teaching.
In simple terms, this is how the people and values in a community show up in the classroom.
Legal influence on education
A law, court ruling, or regulation that mandates change in schools. Classic examples include Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ended legal school segregation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Title IX.
Think of it as the rules schools must follow because a court or legislature said so.
High-leverage practice (HLP)
A teaching practice identified by research as producing substantial learning gains when done well. The term comes from the TeachingWorks framework at the University of Michigan, which identifies 19 such practices. They apply across subjects and grade levels.
In simple terms, these are the teaching skills worth getting right because they move the needle the most.
Leading a group discussion
An HLP in which the teacher facilitates structured conversation among students around a central question or text. The teacher's role is to guide, not lecture.
Explaining and modelling content
An HLP in which the teacher breaks down a concept or skill and demonstrates it step by step, making their thinking visible to students.
Providing feedback
An HLP in which the teacher gives specific, actionable information to students about their work, aimed at closing the gap between current performance and the learning goal.
Eliciting and interpreting student thinking
An HLP in which the teacher asks questions or designs tasks that reveal what students understand, then uses that information to adjust instruction.
The three categories (historical, cultural, legal) are not mutually exclusive. A single event can be all three. Brown v. Board of Education, for instance, is a legal ruling, a historical milestone, and a cultural turning point. For Task 1, you choose the lens that fits best and commit to it.
Historical influences tend to be broad movements or eras: the rise of compulsory schooling, the factory model of education, the progressive education movement, the launch of Sputnik and its effect on science curricula.
Cultural influences centre on people and communities: demographic shifts, the civil rights movement's impact on curriculum representation, the rise of bilingual education, the push for inclusive classrooms.
Legal influences are codified: specific laws, court decisions, or regulations. They create mandates. IDEA requires schools to provide a free appropriate public education to students with disabilities. Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programmes.
The task asks for one influence applied to all three classrooms you observed. The key is choosing an influence that is broad enough to be visible in each setting but specific enough to discuss concretely.
For example, if you choose IDEA as your legal influence, you might note that one classroom has visible accommodations (e.g. modified materials on a desk), another has an inclusion aide present, and a third has no visible evidence of special education support, which itself is worth discussing.
The strength of your paragraph depends on connecting the influence to specific observations from your table, not on writing a history essay about the influence itself.
High-leverage practices were codified by TeachingWorks and are widely used in teacher preparation programmes. They represent the core of what effective teachers do, regardless of subject matter or grade level. The full list contains 19 practices, but for Task 1 you only need one to three.
Common HLPs that are easy to spot in video observations include:
Leading a group discussion: Look for the teacher posing a question and students responding to each other, not just to the teacher.
Explaining and modelling content: Look for the teacher demonstrating a process, using think-alouds, or breaking down steps visually.
Providing feedback: Look for the teacher circulating, commenting on student work, or using formative assessment tools.
Using and connecting mathematical representations: In maths classrooms, look for multiple representations of the same concept (number line, equation, diagram).
Setting up and managing small group work: Look for how groups are formed, whether roles are assigned, and how the teacher monitors.
The same practice looks different depending on the grade level, subject, and setting. Leading a group discussion in a primary classroom might involve a circle on the carpet with hand-raising norms. In a secondary classroom, it might be a Socratic seminar with textual evidence. In a special education setting, it might involve visual supports and sentence starters.
Your job in A4 is to name these differences and connect them to what you saw in each video.
Students often confuse an influence with an opinion. "I think technology has changed education" is not an influence from Unit 2. Name a specific event, law, or movement.
Students sometimes write about an HLP without naming it. The task requires you to identify the practice by its formal name (e.g. "leading a group discussion"), not just describe something a teacher did.
A common mistake is treating all three classrooms identically when discussing an HLP. The whole point of A4 is that the same practice looks different in different settings. If your paragraph says the same thing three times, rethink your approach.
Students occasionally confuse cultural and historical influences. A useful test: if you can point to a specific date or era, it is likely historical. If it is about ongoing values, norms, or community characteristics, it is likely cultural. Both are valid, just be clear about which you are claiming.
⚠️ High-leverage practices are a framework you will return to throughout the programme. Build fluency with the terminology now.
⚠️ The ability to connect external influences to classroom realities is a core skill in education studies. This is not a one-off exercise.
⚠️ Your paragraph on influences (A3) is stronger when you choose an influence that has visible evidence in your observation table, not the most famous one you can think of.
⚠️ If you use three different HLPs for A4 (one per classroom), make sure each one is drawn from Unit 4 and named precisely.
True or False: Brown v. Board of Education is an example of a cultural influence on education. Answer: False. It is a legal influence (a Supreme Court ruling), though it also has historical and cultural dimensions.
Fill in the blank: High-leverage practices are teaching moves that produce __________ learning gains when done well. Answer: substantial (or disproportionate/outsized).
True or False: You must use three different HLPs for prompt A4. Answer: False. You may use one HLP applied differently across all three classrooms, or three different ones.
Fill in the blank: The three categories of influence on education covered in Unit 2 are __________, __________, and __________. Answer: historical, cultural, legal.
True or False: "Providing feedback" means giving students a grade on their work. Answer: False. Providing feedback means giving specific, actionable information about how to improve, not simply assigning a mark.
Q: Name three examples of legal influences on education in the United States.
A: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
Q: What distinguishes a high-leverage practice from any other teaching technique?
A: High-leverage practices are backed by research showing they produce disproportionately large learning gains. They are also broadly applicable across subjects and grade levels, making them foundational to teacher preparation.
Q: How would "explaining and modelling content" look different in a primary classroom compared to a secondary classroom?
A: In a primary classroom, the teacher might use physical manipulatives and simple language while modelling a maths problem on the board. In a secondary classroom, the teacher might use a think-aloud strategy while annotating a complex text, making their reasoning process visible through more abstract means.
Q: Why does the task ask you to apply one influence to all three classrooms rather than picking a different influence for each?
A: Using one influence across all three classrooms tests your ability to trace a single external force through different settings. It shows analytical depth rather than surface-level name-dropping of three separate concepts.
Q: What is the difference between "eliciting student thinking" and "providing feedback"?
A: Eliciting student thinking is about gathering information: the teacher asks questions or designs tasks to find out what students understand. Providing feedback is about giving information back: the teacher tells students how to improve. One gathers data, the other acts on it.
High-leverage practices, HLP, TeachingWorks, historical influences on education, cultural influences on education, legal influences on education, Brown v. Board of Education, IDEA, Title IX, classroom observation, compare and contrast classrooms, leading group discussion, explaining and modelling content, providing feedback, eliciting student thinking, education foundations, teacher preparation, Arizona State University
High-leverage practices connect to every subsequent task in this programme that involves lesson planning or instructional analysis. The influences framework from Unit 2 will reappear whenever you are asked to consider the broader context in which a school operates. If you are also studying topics like classroom management, culturally responsive teaching, or differentiated instruction, those sit on top of the same foundational concepts covered here.