John Hattie on “Visible Learning”
John Hattie, professor and director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute of the University of Melborne, Australia, has coined the term “visible learning”. According to Hattie learning becomes visible by being measurable. Any kind of teaching has an effect, he argues, but only one kind has a long lasting effect. Hattie states:
“The ‘visible’ aspect also refers to making teaching visible to the student, such that they learn to become their own teachers, which is the core attribute of lifelong learning or self-regulation, and of the love of learning that we so want students to value.”[1]
The author of the ground breaking book “Visible Learning”, a study on the impact of teaching on students, distinguishes between “excellent” teachers and “experienced” teachers. Long years of research at numerous schools, with teachers and pupils have shown evidence that there is a special group of teachers who make all the difference. Hattie states:
“That the purposes of education and schooling include more than achievement have been long debated – from Plato and his predecessors, through Rousseau to modern thinkers. Among the most important purposes is the development of critical evaluation skills, such that we develop citizens with challenging minds and dispositions, who become active, competent, and thoughtfully critical in our complex world. This includes: Critical evaluation of the political issues that affect a person’s community, country, and world; the ability to examine, reflect, and argue, with reference to history and tradition, while respecting self and others; having concern for one’s own and other’s life and well-being; and the ability to imagine and think about what is ‘good’ for self and others (see Nussbaum, 2010). Schooling should have major impacts not only on the enhancement of knowing and understanding, but also on the enhancement of character: intellectual character, moral character, civic character, and performance character (Shields, 2011).”[2]
For Hattie one of the most important aspects of teaching is constant evaluation. “Know the impact” is his key sentence.
“Visible teaching and learning occurs when learning is the explicit and transparent goal, when it is appropriately challenging, and when the teacher and the student both (in their various ways) seek to ascertain whether and to what degree the challenging goal is attained. Visible teaching and learning occurs when there is deliberate practice aimed at attaining mastery of the goal, when there is feedback given and sought, and when there are active, passionate, and engaging people (teachers, students, peers) participating in the act of learning. It is teachers seeing learning through the eyes of students, and students seeing teaching as the key to their ongoing 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. When students become their own teachers, they exhibit the self-regulatory attributes that seem most desirable for learners (self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-assessment, self-teaching). Thus, it is visible teaching and learning by teachers that makes all the difference.
[1] Hattie, John: Visible Learning for Teachers. Maximising impact on learning. Routledge. London and New York 2012, p. 1.
[2] Hattie, John, p. 4.