Starting out in teaching is both exhilarating and overwhelming. You’re managing a classroom, planning lessons and navigating school culture, all while learning how to teach. During this time the right books can offer not just practical strategies, but clarity, inspiration and that comforting feeling of, “Ah, so it’s not just me.”
Here are seven books I’d recommend to any new teacher. These are books that offer guidance without gimmicks, and theory that earns its place on your shelf. Each one has helped me to become more thoughtful, more efficient and, hopefully, more effective.
1. Memorable Teaching: Leveraging memory to build deep and durable learning in the classroom by Peps Mccrea
This slim but densely packed book is one of the clearest explanations I know of how memory works in the classroom. Peps Mccrea distils insights from cognitive science into a readable, high-impact guide for teachers trying to make learning stick.
He explores how we can reduce cognitive load, strengthen retrieval and design lessons that are remembered not just at the end of the week but months later. It’s not about flashy gimmicks or tricks - it’s about understanding how learning happens and teaching accordingly.
For new teachers trying to figure out why students forget what you’ve just taught them, Memorable Teaching offers answers and strategies that you can apply straight away.
2. Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom by Daniel T Willingham
Cognitive science is often seen as intimidating, but Willingham’s book is the bridge between lab findings and lesson planning. Each chapter explores a key idea (such as memory, attention or motivation) and links it directly to what happens in classrooms.
Willingham helps you to understand why students struggle to remember content, what makes learning meaningful and how to structure lessons around the limitations (and possibilities) of the human brain.
For new teachers, it gives a lens through which to evaluate whether your lessons are working, and why.
If you ever find yourself asking, “Why don’t they get it?”, this book has the answers.
3. Making Every Lesson Count: Six principles to support great teaching and learning by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby
Practical, readable and refreshingly free of fads, this book by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby sets out six principles of great teaching - challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, questioning and feedback - and explores how each can be embedded in real classrooms.
What makes this book especially valuable is its focus on long-term learning, not short-term performance. It doesn’t chase novelty or edutainment. Instead, it roots itself in sound pedagogy and offers tangible examples of what these principles look like across subjects.
This is a book to return to again and again - not to skim, but to absorb slowly, lesson by lesson.
4. The Hidden Lives of Learners by Graham Nuthall
If you want to get under the skin of what learning really is, and what makes it stick, Nuthall’s book is transformative. It’s based on detailed classroom studies, observing what students actually experience and remember across time.
What emerges is both surprising and humbling. Much of what we think we’ve taught doesn’t land. Students don’t all hear the same message. And they’re constantly learning from one another, often in unspoken ways.
For new teachers, this book is a quiet but powerful reminder that what matters is not what’s taught but what’s learned. Understanding that gap is the beginning of wisdom in the classroom.
5. Running the Room: The teacher’s guide to behaviour by Tom Bennett
Behaviour management is one of the biggest challenges facing early-career teachers, and one of the most crucial foundations for success. In Running the Room, Tom Bennett brings clarity and confidence to this challenge.
Drawing on years of classroom experience and policy work, Bennett strips behaviour management back to its core principles: consistency, clarity and certainty. He offers practical advice, not platitudes. He doesn’t treat poor behaviour as moral failure. He treats behaviour as something that can be taught, reinforced and improved.
This is the book I wish I’d had in my first year. It doesn’t promise miracles, but it does offer steps to help you take control.
6. Back on Track: fewer things, greater depth by Mary Myatt
In a world of buzzwords and endless “initiatives”, Mary Myatt cuts through the noise with calm clarity. Back on Track is a call to focus on the core business of education - high expectations, rich curriculum and meaningful learning - especially in the wake of disruption.
Myatt is particularly good at drawing attention to what matters and what doesn’t. She reminds us that not everything that counts can be measured, but also that rigour and kindness can (and must) coexist in the classroom.
For new teachers, this book is a masterclass in priorities. It helps you strip away the fluff and stay grounded in purpose.
7. Seven myths about education by Daisy Christodoulou
This book shook up the education world when it was first published in 2013, and it’s just as relevant today. Daisy Christodoulou takes on seven widely held but flawed beliefs about teaching and learning, such as “facts prevent understanding” or “teacher-led instruction is passive”.
What’s powerful here is the evidence-led challenge to fashionable ideas that have too often shaped policy and practice. For new teachers, it offers a liberating insight: you don’t have to chase the latest trend. You can teach knowledge explicitly, and do so with integrity.
It’s a bold, smart book that will sharpen your thinking and your teaching.
Final thoughts
No book can replace the lived experience of teaching. You’ll learn more in your first year at the front of the room than from any shelf of theory. But books can offer something else: perspective, structure and a voice of sanity amid the noise.
The seven books above aren’t silver bullets, but they each offer something rare: clarity without cliche. They respect the craft. They honour your time. And they’ll walk beside you as you find your own rhythm.
To any new teacher reading this: it’s hard, but it’s worth it. These books helped me to believe that, and I hope they’ll do the same for you.
Mark Enser is a freelance writer and former HMI
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