Visible Learning and Teacher Evaluation

Video Transcription

Hi. My name is Ashley, and today's lesson is titled "Visible Learning and Teacher Evaluation."

In today's lesson, we will define visible learning, then look at how visible learning is connected to teacher evaluation. Lastly, we will define and identify effect sizes.

What is visible learning? John Hattie completed numerous studies to discover the factors with the most impact on student learning. As a result of his studies, Hattie established a list of 138 influences and effect sizes.

In 2009, he published "Visible Learning," where he included his findings and stated that teachers should see learning from the students' perspective and allow them to become their own teachers.

In order for this to occur, teachers must be self-reflective and self-evaluative. In 2011, Hattie published "Visible Learning for Teachers," where he identified six domains that impact student learning.

The six domains are the student, which includes their personal characteristics and demographics. The second domain is the home, which includes the student's family, influences, and culture. Domain number three, the school, includes culture, the school environment, structure, and other influences. The curricula includes content and the progression of the curriculum and what is assessed. Lastly, we have the background and preparation of the teacher, which includes learning style and teaching strategies.

How is visible learning connected to teacher evaluation? Hattie suggests that teachers must reflect and evaluate on their teaching practice while using feedback from peers and evaluators, in addition to student data. And that's exactly what you do during the teacher evaluation process. You reflect and evaluate on your teaching practices.

Hattie also suggests that teachers think of teaching from the student's perspective. Therefore, receiving feedback from the student is vital. Teachers are assessed on their use of actionable, timely, and specific feedback in most teacher evaluation models, including Danielson and Marzano teacher evaluation models. This is connected to teacher evaluation, in that you use the feedback that students provide to help you reflect on your teaching practices and make changes if needed.

Lastly, Hattie suggests that teachers use research on effect sizes and their impacts to improve their teaching practices. Now, let's go ahead and identify what those effect sizes are.

What are effect sizes? According to Hattie's meta-analysis, what teaching practices have the greatest impact on student achievement? Well, this is what his research found. He discovered that strategies that had the most influence on student achievement had effect sizes greater than 0.40. He called this number the hinge point. An effect size of 1.0 means a student growth is increased by 50%, which is great.

Here are the top 20 influences. At the top of the list, with the most impact on student growth, is student self-report grades. As you go down the list, you can see school classroom behavioral, with an effect size of 0.8, and teaching feedback, within effect size of 0.73. This means that receiving seeking feedback for your teaching practices can affect student growth.

As we continue down the list, we see student prior achievement has an effect size of 0.67 and teaching problem-solving teaching has an effect size of 0.61. As you can see from these results, the top 20 influences, the greatest impact, on student achievement, involve the student, the teacher, pedagogy, and content.

Other studies like these, including the Measures of Effective Teaching project, coaching feedback, and teacher evaluation observations, can be used to focus on the high-impact areas to make improvements to increase student achievement.

Also, these top 20 influences, with the exception of acceleration, are embedded in the Danielson and Marzano teacher evaluation models. This is important because teachers should be evaluated and supported in the areas that influence student achievement the most.

Let's recap what we have discussed in today's lesson. Visible learning is the practice of teachers considering learning from the perspective of their students and considering the factors that impact their growth the most. Visible learning is connected to teacher evaluation, because in both cases, the teacher is reflective on their teaching practices and uses research to adapt their teaching. Lastly, we identified effect sizes that greatly impact students the most. We found that giving students self-report grades has the greatest impact on student growth.

As you reflect on this material, consider focusing on the top 20 high-impact areas to improve your effectiveness. For more information on how to apply what you've learned in this video, please use 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.