Product reviews for Adaptive Teaching

Andrew Young’s Adaptive Teaching: Culture to Classroom is the practical SEND handbook education has been waiting for.

Writing from genuine classroom experience, Young cuts through over­whelming complexity with his ‘big three’ framework – working memory, executive function and cognitive load – giving teachers a unified lens for understanding diverse needs without requiring expertise in every condition.

The book dismantles the damaging myth that ‘adaptive teaching is just good teaching’, validating teachers’ experiences while providing the sophisticated knowledge they’ve been missing.

Immediately applicable frameworks (the Four S’s, Three-Pronged Approach, Graduated Response) offer concrete solutions that work within current con­straints and where no unlimited budgets are required.

What distinguishes this from theoretical texts is Young’s realistic optimism.

He acknowledges systemic failures while refusing to accept them as excuses for inaction, positioning inclusion as a collective responsibility rather than a specialist domain. Evidence-based without being academic, the guidance on curriculum design, cognitive science and teaching assis­tant deployment connects research to Monday-morning practice.

Essential reading for teachers, SENDCos, senior leaders and local authori­ties facing the SEND crisis. This is hope grounded in evidence and genuinely workable solutions for inclusive excellence.