This is post number three in a ten part blog series (you may click here to start from the beginning).

This blog series serves to highlight his most significant findings and their applications to our classrooms from John Hattie’s 2012 work, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning.  His work has given educators quantifiable insights that have no parallel in the field of education.

visible-learning-for-teachers-by-john-hattie-book-cover

Need an introduction or a crash course on the effect sizes referenced below?  An effect size of 0.40 is what Hattie refers to as a hinge-point regarding what is significantly effective or at “a level where the effects of innovation enhance achievement in such a way that we can notice real-world differences” (Hattie, 2009).  Anything between a 0.00 and 0.39 is growth, but is not considered significant growth.  Anything below a 0.00 is considered detrimental to student growth.

Hattie_barometer_2_hinge

Number 8 – Comprehensive Interventions for Learning Disabled Students (effect size = 0.75)

Hattie cited a wide range of studies and types of successful interventions in this vastly studaccelerated learning imageied area of education.  He cited Swanson et al.’s 1999 work which found that a combination of direct instruction and strategy instruction was highly effective.  The important components of instruction included “attention to sequencing, drill-repetition-practice, segmenting information into parts or units for later synthesis, controlling task difficulty through prompts and cues, making use of technology, systematically modeling problem solving steps, and making use of small interactive groups” (p. 217).  One common theme that held true throughout the studies was the importance of direct instruction.

Application to the Classroom

If you are looking for the best research-based interventions look no further than the United States Department of Education What Works Clearinghouse website (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/).  You are able to filter your desiWhat-Works-11vk93zred instructional need by topic and grade level and are given a list of  interventions with their respective improvement index, effectiveness rating, and extent of evidence related to the intervention.  There are a plethora of researched interventions that can help to guide educators to best meet students’ needs.  The website has a specific tab for children and students with disabilities.

A Random Mention

Number 11 out of 150 – Reciprocal Teaching (effect size = 0.74)

Reciprocal teaching focuses on the teachers empowering their students to learn through the use of cognitive strategies including summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting.  They use these skills while assuming the role of ‘teacher’ and using these skills to dialogue.  Students check their understanding by generating questions and summarizing.  As Hattie emphasizes, “Expert scaffolding is essential for cognitive development as students move from spectator to performer after repeated modeling by adults.”

Hattie found that the effects were highest when the teacher explicitly taught the cognitive strategies necessary before integrating reciprocal teaching.  Adlit.org provides one possible examples of how recipricoal teaching could be utilized in the classroom with teacher modeling.  First, break the classroom into mixed-ability small groups. Designate one student as the “teacher” within each small group. This student will help keep their small group on task and ensure they move through each of the four steps (prediction, question as you go, clarify, and summarize) as they read material that has already been divided it into smaller chunks by you. Next, you will read the first chunk to all the small groups, modeling the following four steps of reciprocal teaching.

A Peek at the Bottom 10

Number 148 out of 150 – School Retention (effect size -0.13)

Hattie states that this topic is one of few areas in education where it is difficult to find any study with a positive effect size.  He shared that retention has been found to have a negative effect size in relation to language arts, reading, mathematics, work-study skills, social studies, and grade point average.  Conversely, he shared that promoted students scored better than retained students on social and emotional adjustment, behavior, self-concept, and attitude towards school.  

For more from this blog series view the following posts:

#10 – Feedback

#9 – Teacher Clarity

 

http://www.adlit.org/strategies/19765/

Hattie, J., Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (2009)

Hattie, J. Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning (2012)

Effect size image retrieved from: http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/what_works.htm

Student image retrieved from: http://www.edgazette.govt.nz/Articles/Article.aspx?ArticleId=8821