Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement

by John Hattie

looking for errors in their thinking and knowledge, seeing how students build on prior knowledge and conceptions of learning, asking whether there is sufficient challenge and engagement in the learning, and understanding the strategies students are using when learning and confronting difficulties.

Clinical prediction refers to any judgment using informal or intuitive processes to make decisions.

Aegisdottir et al. (2006) used 173 effect sizes from 69 studies published over the past 56 years, and concluded that there was a somewhat greater accuracy for statistical rather than clinical judgment methods. Similarly, Martin, Quinn, Ruger, and Kim (2004) found that statistical models could predict the outcomes of United States Supreme Court decisions more effectively than a set of independent predictions by 83 legal experts.

Seems like a discussion for.the beginnning of the book

they recall instances in which their predictions were correct but fail to recall those instances in which independent evidence was more accurate.

Republicans

Where are your endorsements from historically successful teachers (those whose students outperform demographic predictions)? The depressing news is that “the closer an innovation gets to the core of schooling, the less likely it is that it will influence teaching and learning on a large scale” (Elmore, 1996, p.

This is what makes teaching a moral profession, with such fundamental issues as: “Why teach this rather than that?”, “How does one teach in defensible and ethical ways?”. Snook (2003) has argued that teaching involves close personal relationships: between teachers and students, between one student and another, and between one teacher and another.

teaching involves ethics in its aims, its methods and its relationships.

we should remind ourselves that education is essentially a moral enterprise and in that enterprise the ethical teacher has a central role to play” (p. 8).

The education dollar in the United States has risen a steady 3.5 percent annually over the past 100 years, and the majority (60 percent) is spent on instruction. Odden (2007) argued that increasing the portion spent on instruction will be unlikely to have an effect on student learning,

Cross-age tutoring was the most cost-effective. The longer school day and reducing class size by five students showed the smallest returns. Computer-assisted instruction was associated with gains in the middle of the range of results.

the devil in this story is not the negative, criminal, and incompetent teacher, but the average, let's get through the curricula, behave, be busy, we are “all friends in here” teacher who has no idea of the damage he or she is doing.

Whoa

Only Direct Instruction had positive effects on basic skills, on deeper comprehension measures, on social measures, and on affective measures.

The conclusion seems clear: experienced experts possess pedagogical content knowledge that is more flexibly and innovatively employed in instruction; they are more able to improvise and to alter instruction in response to contextual features of the classroom situation; they understand at a deeper level the reasons for individual student success and failure on any given academic task;

provide developmentally appropriate learning tasks that engage, challenge, and even intrigue students, without boring or overwhelming them;

they bring a distinct passion to their work.

They are often head-down in the school, not always picked by parents as the better teachers, but the students know and welcome being in their classes.

First, to nurture and challenge my daughters’ intellectual and imaginative capacities way out to horizons unsullied by self-fulfilling minimalist expectations. Don't patronize them with lowest-common-denominator blancmange masquerading as knowledge and learning; nor crush their love for learning through boring pedagogy.

Second, to care for Sophie and Millie with humanity and sensitivity, as developing human beings worthy of being taught with genuine respect, enlightened discipline and imaginative flair.

potential for later schooling, post-school education, training and employment and for the quality of life itself so that they can contribute to and enjoy the fruits of living within an Australian society that is fair, just, tolerant, honorable, knowledgeable, prosperous and happy.