Hattie's Research Based Instructional Practices and Collaborative Professional Development Plans

Video Transcription

In this tutorial, we'll discuss how John Hattie's research-based instructional practices can impact the work of our collaborative professional development plans. We'll begin with an overview of John Hattie's Visible Learning strategies. And then we'll cover the six domains that impact student learning. We'll talk about the effect sizes identified in Hattie's work, and I'll show you a chart that lists the top 20 influences across those six domains. And finally, we'll look at the links between Hattie's Visible Learning and our collaborative professional development. Let's get started.

Let's begin with an overview of Visible Learning. John Hattie compiled data in a meta-analysis of 800 different studies that focused on the factors that have the most impact on student learning, worldwide. In 2009, he published his findings, and he used the title Visible Learning to describe the ability of teachers to see learning from the perspective of their students. He explains that teachers need to be self-reflective and self-evaluative of our own teaching practices as we go through the process of coaching our students to become their own teachers.

Hattie's findings have been updated in a more recent publication that has a very similar title. It's entitled Visible Learning for Teachers and was published in 2011. Hattie's Visible Learning is summarized in a list of 138 different influences on student achievement. Each of these elements is assigned an effect size, and each element is also sorted into six different areas, or domains, that impact student learning.

The first domain is the student. This includes the student's demographics and personal characteristics. The next domain is home, including the student's family influences and the student's culture. The next domain is school. This would include the structure, and culture, and environment of the school, and any other school-specific characteristics.

Next is curricula, including the content of the curriculum, anything that is being assessed in the curriculum, and curriculum progressions. The next domain is the teacher, including the teacher's background and preparation. And the final domain is teaching and learning approaches, including teaching styles and teaching strategies, or pedagogy.

As I mentioned, each of these influences is assigned an effect size. These effect sizes help us to identify what teacher practices and what other influences have the greatest impact on student achievement. Remember, this data all comes from Hattie's meta-analysis of these 800 different studies. In his research, he found that an effect size of 0.40 is what he calls the hinge point at which the strategies or influences have an impact on student achievement. An effect size of 1.0 means that student achievement increases by 50%. This is a significant impact.

So here is that list of the top 20 influences across all six of the domains. Feel free to pause the video here if you wish to take a closer look at the list. We can see in this top 20 list out of the 138 total influences, the domains that have the greatest impact on student achievement are the student, the teacher, the pedagogy, and the content.

The results that we see in Hattie's work actually echo the results of other similar studies, including the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. The conclusion that we can gain here is that teacher evaluation observations, teacher coaching, and feedback, should all focus on the high-impact strategies and practices that can help to improve teacher effectiveness, and as a result, increase student achievement.

Furthermore, the evaluation models of both Danielson and Marzano contain the top 20 influences embedded right within the evaluation model. Perhaps the only exception to this is the acceleration influence, which may not be contained in these models. But all of the other top 20 influences are already contained within these evaluation models. And this is important to note, because our regulatory requirements indicate that teachers should be focusing on our use of these influences in our practices with our students.

So how does Hattie's Visible Learning connect to our collaborative professional development? Well, Hattie's research encourages teachers to use student data to guide our self-reflection and our self-evaluation. We can use this research to help us develop professional growth plans and to improve our instructional practices by providing us with a lens through which we can determine our areas of need.

For example, you might use student data to reflect on your use of formative assessment in the classroom. Providing formative evaluation has an effect size of 0.9. So by choosing an element from that top 20 influences list and engaging in some reflective practice, you can help to make your instructional practices more effective.

When you are creating your professional growth plan, be sure to consider strategies that have the greatest impact. Remember to always focus on strategies that have a strong effect size above that hinge point of 0.40. So you may, for example, wish to focus on feedback from the teaching or pedagogy domain as you are creating your professional growth plan. Feedback has an effect size of 0.73. And so you could then create goals and action steps in your professional growth plan that are focused on that particular area or influence.

Again, remember to focus on those strategies that have the greatest impact on student learning. And within the context of your collaborative teacher team, you may opt to create your entire professional development or growth plan, individually or at the team level, around the building of your instructional skills in these focus areas. So not only might an individual teacher choose to focus on formative assessment or feedback, but the entire collaborative team might wish to focus on that area.

A great focus for a collaborative professional growth plan might be the use of vocabulary programs, which has an effect size of 0.67. The collaborative team could each set individual goals in relation to that overarching group goal and could support one another in that collaborative learning situation as they work towards increasing their effectiveness within the context of the vocabulary program.

So now it's your turn to stop and reflect. Select a few elements from that list of the top 20 influences. Focus, especially, on those influences that are in the teaching or pedagogy domain. Think about how you can be more effective in your instructional practices within the context of those influences.

For more information on how to apply what you learned in this video, please view the additional resources section that accompanies this video presentation. The additional resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource.

Thanks for joining me today. Have a great day.