About
Build Better Education.
Build Better Education works with schools on formative practice: finding out what students think, interpreting it, and acting on it. BBE Buddy makes that expertise, and the research behind it, available whenever a teacher plans or reflects.
Background
Why BBE Buddy exists
Much of what a school learns on a training day fades within a term. The ideas are usually sound; the difficulty is applying them later, while planning a specific lesson that the training did not cover.
BBE Buddy brings the collection to that moment: 136 curated works on learning and assessment, from the EEF guidance reports to Wiliam, Hattie, Kirschner and Hendrick. It answers from those works, shows the passage it relied on, and turns the answer into material a teacher can use.
Team
Who we are
Valentina works with school leaders on implementation; Samuel teaches every day. BBE Buddy is shaped by both perspectives.
Valentina Devid
Implementation · leadership · whole-school development
A former teacher and middle leader who now trains and advises schools, in the Netherlands and abroad. Her focus is whether an approach will still be working in a school a year later, which means working on leadership, structures and follow-through.
That is why BBE Buddy can be configured: a school that is accountable for the advice has to be able to change it.
Samuel Derkse
Teacher · learning support · classroom practice
A teacher of Dutch and a learning-support specialist who teaches every day and uses formative action in his own lessons. He tests in practice which ideas hold up in a class, and refines the ones that do not work the first time.
That is why BBE Buddy writes material that can be used in class as it is.
What we hold to
Our principles
They explain why BBE Buddy cites its sources, why it will not answer beyond the collection, and why it tells you when the research disagrees with you.
- Decisions about teaching are made in the lesson.
- Research must be usable in the classroom.
- A tool shows where its answers come from.
- BBE Buddy says so when the research disagrees.
How it is built
How BBE Buddy is built
BBE Buddy answers from the works in the collection and says so when they do not cover a question.
- A curated collection136 works selected by Build Better Education. A school's own policy and terminology can be added on top and weighted.
- Sources per claimOpen “What is this based on?” to see the claim, the passage, the work it comes from and why it applies.
- Adjustable settingsInstructions, source weighting and terminology are editable and versioned, with every change recorded.
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