The New Art and Science of Teaching

The Problem This Book Solves

The New Art and Science of Teaching confronts the central problem every educator faces: instructional strategies fail when they are applied in isolation, without a system to connect them to student outcomes. For decades, professional development has delivered disconnected tips that work in one classroom and collapse in another, leaving teachers frustrated and student academic success stagnant.

This book replaces piecemeal techniques with a competency-based education framework that organizes teaching into a coherent whole. It shows educators not just what to do, but when, why, and how each strategy fits into a larger architecture of effective instruction.

The cost of fragmentation is real. Teachers burn out juggling uncoordinated initiatives, professional development budgets are spent on one-off workshops, and the achievement gaps that good instruction could close never close. The New Art and Science of Teaching attacks the problem at the root by giving every educator a shared, competency-based definition of great teaching.

The New Art and Science of Teaching by Marzano at a Glance

The New Art and Science of Teaching is a comprehensive instructional framework developed by Dr. Robert J. Marzano, organized around a competency-based education model for raising student achievement. This revised and expanded edition, published by Solution Tree Press in 2017, is a greatly expanded volume of the original The Art and Science of Teaching.

At the heart of the book is a simple but powerful premise: effective teaching is a set of competencies that can be observed, measured, and improved. Marzano distills decades of classroom research into more than fifty new instructional strategies for academic success, arranged so that teachers can self-assess and target their growth.

The framework covers the full arc of teaching, from planning lessons and delivering content to managing behavior, engaging students, and creating a supportive classroom climate. Rather than a loose collection of techniques, it presents a unified system that schools can adopt as the foundation of their instructional model.

• A competency-based education framework for substantive change
• More than fifty new instructional strategies for academic success
• Guidance for self-assessment and targeted professional growth
• A greatly expanded treatment of the original teaching framework
• Practical protocols for classroom observation and feedback

The book’s design respects the reality of a teacher’s day. Each strategy is presented in practical, observable terms, so an educator can read a section in the morning and apply it in the next period. For school leaders, the same clarity makes walk-throughs and feedback conversations more precise and far less subjective.

Who Should Read This Book?

The New Art and Science of Teaching is written for anyone who has a stake in what happens in the classroom, but it is especially valuable for K-12 educators who want to move from isolated tricks to an integrated practice.

Because the book is structured around competencies rather than a single grade level or subject area, it translates directly to elementary, middle, and high school settings, and across all content areas. It also serves schools across the organizational chart: what a teacher experiences as a guide to daily practice, a principal experiences as a coaching rubric, and a district office experiences as a framework for system-wide improvement.

• Classroom teachers seeking to deepen their instructional practice
• Instructional coaches and mentors who support teacher growth
• Principals and school leaders designing professional development
• Teacher candidates in educator preparation programs
• Curriculum coordinators aligning instruction across grade levels
• Professional learning communities looking for a common language
• District administrators building a system-wide instructional model

Teacher preparation programs also use the book to give candidates a precise vocabulary for what they observe in clinical placements. School boards and parent groups can use the same vocabulary to evaluate whether a building is genuinely focused on instruction.

What You Will Learn

Readers of this book do not merely collect strategies; they build a mental model of what great teaching looks like, element by element. The ten competencies below form the core of the framework, and each one maps to the competency-based education model that runs throughout the book.

• How to set clear learning goals and track student progress toward mastery
• How to design formative assessments that inform your next instructional move
• How to deliver compelling direct instruction and guided practice
• How to use questioning and academic discourse to deepen understanding
• How to engage students by making content relevant and rigorous
• How to establish rules and procedures that protect learning time
• How to build a classroom culture of trust and high expectations
• How to develop student agency, self-efficacy, and ownership of learning
• How to adapt instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners
• How to lead instructional improvement in your school or team

Notice how the list moves from planning and assessment to instruction and engagement, then to classroom climate and leadership. That sequence mirrors the framework: you set goals, teach strategically, protect the learning environment, and finally extend your impact beyond your own classroom.

What Sets It Apart

The New Art and Science of Teaching outperforms every alternative because it is not a collection of tips but a full operating system for instruction, grounded in a competency-based education framework.

Most teaching books excel in one niche: engagement, management, or assessment. This book intentionally unifies those domains, showing how they interact in a single lesson, a single unit, and a single teacher’s professional growth. This matters because teachers do not fail from a lack of strategies; they fail from a lack of guidance about when and why to use them.

• It provides a common vocabulary for an entire school to improve together
• It is built on a systematic research base, not one teacher’s anecdotal success
• It is competency-based, so teachers can self-assess and document their growth
• It is greatly expanded from the original framework with brand-new strategies
• It connects classroom practice to teacher evaluation and professional development
• It offers immediate classroom applications without sacrificing theoretical depth

Moreover, the competency-based design means teachers can rate themselves against a clear standard, set a growth target, and observe measurable improvement. Generic professional development books offer inspiration; this one offers a calibration tool you can return to every school year.

Who Wrote This Book

Dr. Robert J. Marzano is a leading researcher in education with roughly 50 years of experience in teaching, research, and school leadership, and his name is synonymous with research-based instruction and school effectiveness.

Solution Tree Press, the publisher of this revised and expanded edition, is a recognized leader in K-12 professional development resources. This 2017 edition is a greatly expanded volume of the original The Art and Science of Teaching, ensuring that educators learn from the most current version of Marzano’s framework rather than a dated text.

Marzano’s earlier work helped define the era of data-driven instruction and teacher evaluation. This revised and expanded edition updates and enriches that legacy instead of merely repeating it, which is exactly what a field that has learned so much in the intervening years needs.

That institutional backing matters. When a school adopts this book as its instructional foundation, it is building on a body of work tested in classrooms and refined over decades.

Final Assessment

Yes, The New Art and Science of Teaching is worth it for any educator who wants classroom practice and school improvement to be driven by a coherent, research-based system rather than by fads.

The book’s greatest strength is its architecture. Every strategy connects to a competency, every competency connects to the broader framework, and every part of the framework connects to student academic success. That makes it equally useful for a first-year teacher building foundational skills and a veteran principal refining a school-wide instructional model.

• Strengths: comprehensive framework organized around observable competencies
• Strengths: practical strategies that transfer to any grade level or subject area
• Strengths: usable for self-assessment, instructional coaching, and formal evaluation
• Consideration: demands sustained engagement with the full framework rather than quick skimming
• Consideration: not a collection of ready-made tricks for educators seeking instant fixes

The verdict depends on your goal. If you are assembling a personal library of teaching ideas, this is one of the few books that earns its place by the sheer coherence of its system. If you are selecting one title for a building-wide or district-wide instructional initiative, it is arguably the strongest candidate available.

If you want a quick list of tricks, this book will feel dense. If you want to become a more intentional educator, it is a career-defining resource.

Download The New Art and Science of Teaching by Marzano Now

Your students do not need another disconnected strategy; they need a teacher who makes intentional, research-backed instructional decisions every day. The New Art and Science of Teaching gives you the competency-based framework to do exactly that, with more than fifty new instructional strategies for academic success.

Whether you are a classroom teacher planning your next unit, an instructional coach leading a professional learning community, or a principal aligning your school’s approach to instruction, this revised and expanded edition from Solution Tree Press (2017) belongs on your digital shelf.

With instant digital access, you can begin reading tonight and apply a new strategy in tomorrow’s lesson — no shipping wait, no physical shelf required.

Bring Dr. Marzano’s updated framework into your practice today. Get your copy of The New Art and Science of Teaching now and start building the instructional system that turns research into results.