John Hattie's 10 Myths about Student Achievement John Hattie’s 15 year meta-analysis of over ¼ of a billion students worldwide has enabled him to identify what really aids student achievement. In an interview with Sarah Montague for BBC Radio 4, he dispels some popular myths about what does and doesn’t matter in your school. Factors affecting student achievement – Hattie’s take: 1. Class Size – Reducing class size does enhance student achievement but only by a marginal amount. Our preoccupation with class size is an enigma; what’s really important is that the teacher learns to be an expert in their own class, no matter what size it is. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. We teach children to be passive and listen in the classroom, whilst a great teacher does the opposite: letting their students be active both in what they know and what they don’t. 9. 10. How can we improve the UK education system? What John wants to make clear is that a student’s ability to achieve academically primarily comes down to teacher expertise. Listen now
Getting your students to really think independently | Neil Atkin What are the answers to these three questions? Try to solve them before reading further (1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. These are taken from S Frederick Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making (2005) . This seems counter intuitive, performance was improved by adding a difficulty? Another piece of research that seems to support this was the following Line 1 is easier to read, but that lines 2, 3, and 4 are easier to remember and may help learning new material. Researchers at Princeton University and Indiana University conducted two experiments to determine if changing the font of material would improve memory and learning. This also seems to fly in the face of the fundamentals of teaching. It would appear that simply giving the information to students, even if it is to us clearly at odds to their prior beliefs, can often just lead to them misinterpreting it and instead using it to confirm their own bias. David Didau Like this: Like Loading...
John Hattie admits that half of the Statistics in Visible Learning are wrong | ollieorange2 At the researchED conference in September 2013, Professor Robert Coe, Professor of Education at Durham University, said that John Hattie’s book, ‘Visible Learning’, is “riddled with errors”. But what are some of those errors? The biggest mistake Hattie makes is with the CLE statistic that he uses throughout the book. In ‘Visible Learning, Hattie only uses two statistics, the ‘Effect Size’ and the CLE (neither of which Mathematicians use). The CLE is meant to be a probability, yet Hattie has it at values between -49% and 219%. This was first spotted and pointed out to him by Arne Kare Topphol, an Associate Professor at the University of Volda and his class who sent Hattie an email. In his first reply – here , Hattie completely misses the point about probability being negative and claims he actually used a different version of the CLE than the one he actually referenced (by McGraw and Wong). There are several worrying aspects to this – Sources – Book review – Visible Learning by @twistedsq
Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce! This article features on The Guardian Teacher Network here. My supporting resource to this article below can also be found on the TES Resources website. It has been viewed over 10,500 times (Nov ’12), and I have to say…one of my favourite resources and strategies to use in the classroom. It definitely helps achieve ‘Outstanding’. This was originally posted on 4.11.12 and have been redrafted on 4.1.13. Where would I be without Twitter? Following this tweet below on #ukedchat 3.11.11, I have decided to elaborate on this AfL strategy, before sharing it with the world via The Guardian Teacher Network Blog. My tweet on 3.11.11 was:“@TeacherToolkit, #ukedchat Missed out tonight, look forward to reading ideas. Firstly, this concept is not mine. So it is at this point, where I will be honourable and credit a colleague who I think has a money-spinning idea here. The session was delivered by the fabulous Mrs. What is it? Why is it useful? For many reasons. How does it work? Explore! Resources: Like this:
John Hattie The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes Taxonomy (SOLO) is a notion that describes the stages of learning that students go through to reach a real depth of understanding on a topic. It outlines the journey from surface to deep learning. SOLO is John Hattie’s taxonomy of choice and is currently being studied in depth at his Visible Learning Labs (Osiris Educational Outstanding Teaching Conference, 2014). It is seen by Hattie and other academics as having many advantages over other taxonomies, in particular that of Benjamin Bloom. Quoted advantages over Bloom’s Taxonomy include: The SOLO Taxonomy emerged from in-classroom research whereas Bloom’s Taxonomy was theorised from a proposal by a committee of educatorsSOLO is a taxonomy about teaching and learning vs Bloom’s which is about knowledgeSOLO is based on progressively more challenging levels of cognitive complexity. Image via pamhook.com. SOLO works by students progressing from surface learning to deep. With thanks to:
9 Strategies to improve your students thinking skills | Neil Atkin It is a common complaint that our students lack the ability to think for themselves. Maybe we should look at whether they have had the opportunity to learn thinking. We learn most things by observing with our senses, imitating what we have seen/heard and then modifying what we have learned to fit into our values, beliefs or abilities. The problem with thinking is that it is largely invisible. If our students come from homes where issues and arguments are not rationally and explicitly discussed in open ways with justifications then thinking is something they largely have have to discover for themselves -Rather like trying to learn to play football, but the other footballers are invisible. What does the research say? I do think there are issues with research as I feel the variables, the biggest being the hormonal students themselves, are so huge that I am not convinced we can truly make sense of data. How can we get them to think? 9 Practical Strategies 1. Why do you say that? 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Visible Thinking Purpose and Goals Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. An extensive and adaptable collection of practices, Visible Thinking has a double goal: on the one hand, to cultivate students' thinking skills and dispositions, and, on the other, to deepen content learning. By thinking dispositions, we mean curiosity, concern for truth and understanding, a creative mindset, not just being skilled but also alert to thinking and learning opportunities and eager to take them Who is it for? Key Features and Practices At the core of Visible Thinking are practices that help make thinking visible: Thinking Routines loosely guide learners' thought processes and encourage active processing. A key feature of the Visible Thinking approach is the Teacher Study Group as described in the School-Wide Culture of Thinking section.