Lesson Design and Questioning Technique Assessment for Teachers and TrainersA class can answer every question and learn nothing new. The difference is in the moves.
Thirty-eight exercises on the moment that decides whether a session teaches anything: the question nobody answers, the confident wrong answer, the check that only a third can do. Scored against a keyed standard and reported as a dumbbell chart, with four tendencies printed as flags beside it, never as a score.
A key instead of an opinion, a figure instead of a feeling, and four tendencies printed as flags, never as a score
The Lesson Design and Questioning Technique Assessment for Teachers and Trainers is a thirty-minute, thirty-eight-exercise measure of judgement about teaching moves in written classroom and training-room situations, for teachers and trainers, reported as a dumbbell chart against a secure standard with four tendencies printed as flags, never as a score.
Thirty-eight exercises across five formats, all one behavioural-tendency instruction, what you are most likely to do rather than what you should do: sixteen written situations with four graded moves each, six select-every-change exercises on a lesson or practice plan, six true-or-false claims about how learning actually behaves, five matching exercises pairing an outcome or a wrong answer with the check or response that fits it, and five ordering exercises on a session, a modelling sequence or a practice schedule.
Two things are scored and they sit beside each other and are never combined. A keyed judgement figure is graded partial credit on every exercise, corrected against a declared share of ordinary respondents expected to choose each answer, so zero means no better than the way people typically answer, not half marks and not a uniform guess. Beside it sit four one-tailed tendency scales, counted from the options you actually chose on the situations, each raised only above a declared threshold with a declared minimum of moments answered, because a scale like this is zero for most respondents by construction and a percentile on it would mislead.
The report is a dumbbell chart, the direct replacement for a radar chart: one row per teaching move, your own figure and the secure standard joined by a line, sorted so the largest gap sits at the top, so the layout itself answers what to look at first. The four tendencies are never numbers on this page. Each is a flag: a described behaviour, the situation that triggers it, and the specific move to do instead, always bounded, always conditional, and printed in words rather than left off the page when it was not raised or when too few moments were answered to say.
The report says plainly, because it is the honest answer and a selling point rather than a caveat to bury: this measures judgement about teaching moves in written situations in one sitting. It does not measure anybody's actual teaching, a person's subject knowledge, or their relationships with the people they teach, and it is never a basis for a decision about anybody's employment. A person can score anywhere on this page and be a fine or a poor teacher of their subject.
No item keys on matching teaching to a learner's preferred style: the controlled evidence does not support that practice, and it is treated here as a distractor, not a design principle. No item keys on any country's curriculum, examination system, age grade, inspection regime or school type, so a school teacher and a workplace trainer sit the same instrument. The methodology note names the published sources the construct draws on, from wait time and formative assessment to retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, cognitive load and worked examples, and the instrument is an original work affiliated with no certification body.
What you walk away with
Whether the question you reach for gets a reason or only settles an answer, and whether the pause before it is long enough for the room to think.
Whether your checks read the whole room or the two or three people willing to be read, and what you do with a check that says the group already knows it.
Whether a plan starts from what the group already holds and hands a new method over in stages, or runs unchanged regardless of who is in the room.
Whether the practice you set feels harder and keeps the skill for months, mixed and spaced and recalled from memory, or feels productive on the day and little else.
Whether a wrong answer becomes a look at the reasoning behind it, or a correction that leaves the reasoning exactly where it was.
Closing a question early, taking the first right answer as the room's, sampling only the hands that go up, and scaffolding before the learner has struggled — each a flag with the trigger and the replacement, never a number.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
| Move | Figure | Standard | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checking what the room understood | 8 | 34 | ▼ below standard |
| Responding to a wrong answer | 12 | 31 | ▼ below standard |
| Questioning that reveals thinking | 22 | 33 | ▼ below standard |
| Sequencing and prior knowledge | — | 30 | ◬ Near the standard |
| Practice and transfer | 26 | 29 | ▼ below standard |
Each row carries its own 68% and 95% band; the sample values above are illustrative. A row without a filled circle carries a three-word placement instead of a figure, and says why.
Under time pressure, may close a question before the room has answered it.
When it shows up. A session running behind, and a closed check feels like the fastest way to finish a point.
Instead. Follow it with one question the room cannot answer with a yes.
On the situations where a first right answer could have ended the check, mostly kept checking.
May sample the room through the hands that go up, so the silence is never read.
When it shows up. A question has gone quiet and a volunteer is the fastest way out of it.
Instead. Wait five seconds, then name a learner who has not spoken yet.
Only two of the moments that could raise this were answered, under the four the rule needs.
Every flag is counted from your own choices on written situations, never self-reported, and is always paired with the situation that triggers it and the move to do instead.
Built for
- Individual teachers and trainers who want an honest reading of their own questioning and lesson-design habits
- Workplace trainers and facilitators who run sessions rather than mark a subject and want the same instrument
- Schools, colleges and training providers screening or developing staff on lesson design and questioning, not on subject knowledge
- L&D and learning-design teams building a shared, evidence-based vocabulary for what a good session actually does
Find out which teaching moves you reach for under pressure, and which situations pull you off them
38 exercises across five formats · about 30 minutes · a keyed figure against a secure standard and four tendencies printed as flags, never as a score. Measures judgement on written situations, not anybody's teaching, and never a basis for an employment decision.
₹699 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
No. It measures judgement about teaching moves on written classroom and training-room situations, answered in one sitting of about thirty minutes. Nobody watches a session and no learner's result is in it. It does not measure your subject knowledge, your relationships with learners, your qualifications, or how the people you teach perform. A person can score anywhere on this report and still be a fine or a poor teacher of their subject, and the report says so before it prints a number.
No, and the report says so in its own words rather than in a footnote. It is never a basis for a decision about anybody's employment. Schools, colleges and L&D teams that use it are using a diagnostic of judgement on written situations, useful for development conversations and for choosing where training time goes, not a substitute for observation, appraisal or any employment process.
They are closing a question too early, taking the first right answer as the room's, sampling only the hands that go up, and scaffolding before a learner has struggled. Each is counted from the options you chose on the situations, not from anything you say about yourself, and is raised only above a declared threshold with enough moments answered. It is printed as a flag with the triggering situation and the move to do instead, never as a percentile, because the scale is zero for most people by construction.
No. No exercise keys on matching teaching to a learner's preferred style, because the controlled evidence does not support that idea, and no exercise keys on any country's curriculum, examination system, age grade, inspection regime or school type. Every situation is written for a group, a session and a set of learners, so a school teacher and a workplace trainer answer the same instrument on equal footing.
One row for each of the five teaching moves: your own figure and the secure standard as two marked points joined by a line, sorted so the row with the largest gap sits at the top. It replaces a radar chart, which hides exactly this. Every row carries its measurement-error band in words, and a part answered too briefly to carry a number says so and prints a three-word placement instead of a figure.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Thirty-eight original exercises across five formats: sixteen written classroom and training-room situations with four graded moves each; six select-every-change exercises on a lesson plan or a practice plan; six true-or-false claims about how learning actually behaves; five match-the-following exercises pairing an intended outcome, a question or a kind of wrong answer with the check or response that fits it; and five ordering exercises on the sequence of a session, a modelling sequence, a questioning sequence, a practice schedule and a planning order. Construct statement: this measures judgement about teaching moves in written situations in one sitting, in five parts, questioning that reveals thinking, checking what the room understood, sequencing and prior knowledge, practice and transfer, and responding to a wrong answer; it does not measure anybody's actual teaching, their subject knowledge, their relationships with learners, their qualifications, or how learners in their care perform, and it is never a basis for a decision about anybody's employment. One response instruction is declared for the whole instrument and it is a BEHAVIOURAL TENDENCY instruction: every situation asks what the respondent is most likely to do, never what should be done, and the claim, matching and ordering exercises ask what they would rely on, plan or set. Scoring has two parts that sit beside each other and are never combined. The keyed judgement figure is graded partial credit on every exercise, corrected per exercise against a declared marginal: on each situation an authored share of ordinary respondents expected to choose each move, on each claim an authored share expected to answer true, on each select-all an authored selection share per option from which the expected overlap with the key is computed exactly over every possible selection, on each matching exercise an authored share expected to place each left-hand item correctly, and on each ordering exercise an authored share expected to place each position correctly. Zero on the keyed figure means no better than a respondent answering the way people typically answer, the null is that declared marginal and never uniform random, and observed answer shares replace the authored ones once live data exist. An unanswered exercise leaves the numerator, the denominator and the chance term together; an empty sitting scores exactly zero; a sitting with fewer than fourteen answered exercises, or fewer than six answered situations, is refused a report rather than given one; a part with fewer than eight answered exercises or an assumed omega under .70 carries a three-way placement and no number, and the refusal is printed. Beside the keyed figure sit four one-tailed tendency scales, counted from the respondent's own option choices on the situations and never self-reported: closing a question rather than asking one that shows thinking, taking the first right answer as the room's, sampling only the hands that go up, and scaffolding before the learner has struggled. Each is the share of moments where that move was available on which the respondent chose it; a tendency is raised only above a declared threshold of half of those moments, with at least four such moments answered, and it is reported as a flag with a described behaviour and the situation that triggers it, never as a percentile and never as a level, because such a scale is zero for most respondents by construction. The spread gate that a continuous score must pass is therefore applied to the keyed judgement figure and not to the tendency scales. Every reported figure carries its standard error band from an assumed omega that is printed unrounded; no percentile appears anywhere because there is no norm group. A careless-responding flag count is computed for the operator and never shown to the respondent as a judgement. No item keys on matching teaching to a learner's preferred style: the controlled evidence does not support that practice, and where a distractor is built on it the rationale says so. No item keys on any country's curriculum, examination system, age grade, inspection regime or school type; every situation is written for a group, a session and a set of learners so that a school teacher and a workplace trainer sit the same instrument. Every item is an original work; the instrument reproduces no item from any published test, is not affiliated with any commercial instrument, learning-styles inventory, teaching framework or certification body, and no such mark is used. Sources drawn on across the construct: Rowe on wait time and what changes when a teacher pauses longer; Black and Wiliam on formative assessment and eliciting evidence from every learner; Wiliam on hinge questions and whole-class response; Roediger and Karpicke on retrieval practice against re-reading; Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted and Rohrer on spacing and the distribution of practice; Rohrer and Taylor on interleaving; Bjork on desirable difficulties; Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham on the relative utility of study techniques; Sweller on cognitive load and the worked-example effect; Renkl and Atkinson on fading worked examples; Kalyuga on the expertise reversal effect; Rosenshine's principles of instruction; Hattie and Timperley on the three questions and the four levels of feedback; Kluger and DeNisi on feedback interventions; Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork on the absence of evidence for learning styles; Chi on self-explanation and active, constructive and interactive engagement; Nuthall on the hidden lives of learners; Slavin on individual accountability in cooperative learning; Crouch and Mazur on peer instruction; and McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel and Grubb and Lievens, Peeters and Schollaert on situational judgement test validity and behavioural-tendency response instructions.