The Right Angle

Ryan Woolaston is a maths teacher and school leader with nearly two decades experience in UK and international classrooms. He is passionate about using evidence-informed practice alongside the realities and contexts of everyday classrooms to support excellent classroom practice. Having driven sustained success and improvement from challenging schools in England to the international classroom, he brings a distinct perspective on what great maths teaching looks like. Across every setting, his focus has remained consistent - raising standards, developing teachers, and getting better outcomes for students. Central to that has been a consistent commitment to cognitive science and how students actually learn, a question that continually shapes his practice, his speaking, and his writing. Ryan is a regular speaker at the Festival of Education and has delivered keynotes and sessions at the John Catt Cognitive Science in Education Conference and FOBISIA. He is the founder of Mathematics Leaders Thailand and the creator of The BIG Maths Teaching and Learning Conference, which has grown to become the largest mathematics-focused teaching conference in Asia. He has contributed to Inspiring Deep Learning with Metacognition (Sage, 2023) and Developing a Metacognitive Curriculum (Sage, 2026). He shares his thinking on evidence-informed practice on X and Bluesky at @ThtPedagogyGeek. The Right Angle is his first solo book.

Foreword by Tom Sherrington Chapter 1: Do you have a suit? Great teaching is built, not born Chapter 2: In the beginning...: Because the first five minutes can define the whole lesson Chapter 3: Model behaviour: How to make expert thinking visible Chapter 4: Just checking: Why checking for understanding changes everything Chapter 5: Losing the stabilisers: The art and science of independent practice Chapter 6: Stick the landing: Making the most of how your lesson ends Chapter 7: What was the question? How to make questioning work harder for everyone Chapter 8: Ticks don't teach: Why feedback is a process not an activity Chapter 9: The big picture: Building evidence-informed practice across your faculty Chapter 10: Finding the right angle: Why great teaching is always a work in progress Chapter 11: Too long; didn't read: A quick reference guide to the key ideas from cognitive science