Visible Learning for Teachers Quotes

“if you want to increase student academic achievement, give each student a friend.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“It is incumbent therefore upon schools to attend to student friendships, to ensure that the class makes newcomers welcomed, and, at minimum, to ensure that all students have a sense of belonging.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Across the grades, when instruction was challenging, relevant, and academically demanding, then all students had higher engagement and teachers talked less – and the greatest beneficiaries were at-risk students.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“The aim is to get the students actively involved in seeking this evidence: their role is not simply to do tasks as decided by teachers, but to actively manage and understand their learning gains. This includes evaluating their own progress, being more responsible for their learning, and being involved with peers in learning together about gains in learning. If students are to become active evaluators of their own progress, teachers must provide the students with appropriate feedback so that they can engage in this task. Van den Bergh, Ros, and Beijaard (2010: 3) describe the task thus: Fostering active learning seems a very challenging and demanding task for teachers, requiring knowledge of students’ learning processes, skills in providing guidance and feedback and classroom management. The need is to engage students in this same challenging and demanding task. The suggestion in this chapter is to start lessons with helping students to understand the intention of the lesson and showing them what success might look like at the end. Many times, teachers look for the interesting beginning to a lesson – for the hook, and the motivating question. Dan Willingham (2009) has provided an excellent argument for not thinking in this way. He advocates starting with what the student is likely to think about. Interesting hooks, demonstrations, fascinating facts, and likewise may seem to be captivating (and often are), but he suggests that there are likely to be other parts of the lesson that are more suitable for the attention-grabber. The place for the attention-grabber is more likely to be at the end of the lesson, because this will help to consolidate what has been learnt. Most importantly,Willingham asks teachers to think long and hard about how to make the connection between the attention-grabber and the point that it is designed to make; preferably, that point will be the main idea from the lesson. Having too many open-ended activities (discovery learning, searching the Internet, preparing PowerPoint presentations) can make it difficult to direct students’ attention to that which matters – because they often love to explore the details, the irrelevancies, and the unimportant while doing these activities. One of Willingham's principles is that any teaching method is most useful when there is plenty of prompt feedback about whether the student is thinking about a problem in the right way. Similarly, he promotes the notion that assignments should be primarily about what the teacher wants the students to think about (not about demonstrating ‘what they know’). Students are very good at ignoring what you say (‘I value connections, deep ideas, your thoughts’) and seeing what you value (corrections to the grammar, comments on referencing, correctness or absence of facts). Thus teachers must develop a scoring rubric for any assignment before they complete the question or prompts, and show the rubric to the students so that they know what the teacher values. Such formative feedback can reinforce the ‘big ideas’ and the important understandings, and help to make the investment of”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Teachers and students use the power of peers positively to progress learning.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“The more accomplished teachers set tasks that had a greater degree of challenge; they were more sensitive to context and they had a deeper understanding of the content being taught.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“The greater the challenge, the higher the probability that one seeks and needs feedback, but the more important it is that there is a teacher to provide feedback and to ensure that the learner is on the right path to successfully meet the challenges.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Accomplishing the maximum impact on student learning depends on teams of teachers working together, with excellent leaders or coaches, agreeing on worthwhile outcomes, setting high expectations, knowing the students’ starting and desired success in learning, seeking evidence continually about their impact on all students, modifying their teaching in light of this evaluation, and joining in the success of truly making a difference to student outcomes.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“The major message, however, is that rather than recommending a particular teaching method, teachers need to be evaluators of the effect of the methods that they choose.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“ask why we ever set tests; indeed, the best answer to this question is ‘so that we, as teachers, know who we taught well, what they mastered or failed to master, who made larger and smaller gains, and what we may need to re-teach’. Tests are primarily to help teachers to gather formative information about their impact. With this mind frame, the students reap the dividends.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“School leaders need to stop creating schools that attempt to lock in prior achievement and experiences (such as by using tracking), and instead be evidence-informed about the talents and growth of all students by welcoming diversity and being accountable for all (regardless of the teachers’ and schools’ expectations).”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Cooperative learning is most powerful after the students have acquired sufficient surface knowledge to then be involved in discussion and learning with their peers – usually in some structured manner. It is then most useful for learning concepts, verbal problem-solving, categorizing, spatial problem-solving, retention and memory, and guessing”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“My role, as teacher, is to evaluate the effect I have on my students.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“those teachers who are students of their own impact are the teachers who are the most influential in raising students’ achievement.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“What does matter is teachers having a mind frame in which they see it as their role to evaluate their effect on learning.”
― John A.C. Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“The major message, however, is that rather than recommending a particular teaching method, teachers need to be evaluators of the effect of the methods that they choose. When students do not learn via one method, it is more likely that it then needs to be re-taught using a different method; it will not be enough merely to repeat the same method again and again.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“It's okay in this school to discuss feelings, worries, and frustrations with other teachers.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“often by helping teachers to interpret evidence about the effect of their actions,”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Targeted learning involves the teacher knowing where he or she is going with the lesson and ensuring that the students know where they are going. These pathways must be transparent for the student. Such teacher clarity is essential, and by this I mean clarity by the teachers as seen by the students. Teachers need to know how to keep all in the class on track for the learning goal and then evaluate their success in moving all to the goal. Transparent learning intentions can also lead to greater trust between student and teacher, such that both parties become more engaged in the challenge provided and invested in moving towards the target. It does not mean knowing if and when the students complete the activities, but knowing whether they gain the concepts and understandings relative to the intentions of the lesson(s).”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Based on Piaget's notions, Shayer (2003) developed a program of ‘cognitive acceleration’ based on three main drivers: the mind develops in response to challenge or disequilibrium, so any intervention must provide some cognitive conflict; the mind grows as we learn to become conscious of, and so take control of, its own processes; and cognitive development is a social process promoted by high-quality dialogue among peers supported by teachers. The program attained effect sizes of 0.60+.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“is not so much a concern, for example, that beginning teachers know about diversity; it is more a concern that they know about the effects that they have on the diverse student cohort that they are likely to be teaching. They need to be able to react to the situation, the particular students, and the moment.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Steele notes that nearly all enter the teaching profession with a sense of idealism and purpose. As we confront the realities and challenges of schools and classrooms, we can then choose four roads: quit (as do about 50 per cent within the first five years); become dis-connected and simply perform the role of teaching; work to become competent and seek promotion out of the classroom; or learn to experience the joy of inspired teaching.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Students who are taught by expert teachers exhibit an understanding of the concepts targeted in the instruction that is more integrated, more coherent, and at a higher level of abstraction than the under-standing achieved by students in classes taught by experienced, but not expert, teachers.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“All adults in this school recognize that: a. there is variation among teachers in their impact on student learning and achievement;”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“School leaders and teachers need to create schools, staffrooms, and classroom environments in which error is welcomed as a learning opportunity, in which discarding incorrect knowledge and understandings is welcomed, and in which teachers can feel safe to learn, re-learn, and explore knowledge and understanding.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“It is not the knowledge or ideas, but the learner's construction of this knowledge and ideas that is critical.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“the key ingredients are being aware of the learning intentions, knowing when a student is successful in attaining those intentions, having sufficient understanding of the student's prior understanding as he or she comes to the task, and knowing enough about the content to provide meaningful and challenging experiences so that there is some sort of progressive development.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“Fundamentally, the most powerful way of thinking about a teacher's role is for teachers to see themselves as evaluators of their effects on students. Teachers”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning

“The remarkable feature of the evidence is that the greatest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers.”
― John Hattie, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning