Cool.org is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2008. Cool’s mission is to enable educators to be the best they can be so that young people grow up happy, healthy, informed and empowered with the skills to help tackle our greatest challenges, creating a better world for all.

This discussion paper explores an investigation undertaken by Cool.org and E4L around using evidence within primary teaching resources.

The objective was to conduct a small investigation to understand teachers’ preferences around viewing and using evidence-informed tips within primary teaching resources. By including evidence-informed tips in resources designed by Cool.org, we aimed to build educator understanding and encourage using evidence and evidence-informed approaches to support learning so that all children, regardless of background, make the best possible progress. This partnership builds on a collaboration that embedded research evidence curated by E4L into Bluey Education Resources developed by Cool.org.

The partners conducted a teacher survey, focus groups, and data analysis to create a new pilot resource, Unlikely Animal Friends. This resource addressed several areas of feedback in terms of design and format. Further feedback was gathered to validate these changes and to scale these across future resources developed by Cool.org.