The University of Auckland
9 January 2009
A study by Professor John Hattie into what actually works in schools to improve learning has been lauded as education's "Holy Grail" by the UK media.
Titled Visible Learning, it is believed to be the largest evidence-based study in the world into what works for students. It found that improving student-teacher interaction is the key to schooling success.
The study ranked the power of teacher feedback and interaction far above influences like the school a student attends, reducing class sizes, frequent testing or a pupil's gender.
The study was reported in the UK's Times Education Supplement in November 2008 as "education's equivalent to the search for the Holy Grail" for its ability to pinpoint the one thing that could improve schooling for all students.
It has also piqued the interest of Education Minister Anne Tolley, who told the Sunday Star-Times that Professor Hattie's research will have a profound influence on how the new government approaches education.
The study is the result of 15 years research into the influences on achievement in school-aged students, compiled into a book titled Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement published in November 2008 (Routledge). It involved more than 80 million students from around the world and brought together 50,000 smaller studies.
The study draws up a league table ranking 138 innovations in schools to improve learning. Topping the table was a pupil's ability to assess their own learning and feed this back to their teacher. Also rated highly were programmes that set work ahead of a student's level; using assessment to decide pupils' next steps in learning; teacher clarity; letting students teach the class; and feedback, both between teacher and student.
"A major message is that what works best for students is similar to what works best for teachers - an attention to setting challenging learning intentions, being clear about what success means, and an attention to learning strategies for developing conceptual understanding about what teachers and students know and understand," the book's description says.
"This book is about using evidence to build and defend a model of teaching and learning."
Professor Hattie is the director of asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning), an educational resource for assessing literacy and numeracy (in both English and Maori) developed for the Ministry of Education by The University of Auckland.
Professor Hattie co-authored two additional books published in 2008; Adolescent Reputations and Risk: Developmental trajectories to Delinquency (Springer) and Assessing teachers for professional certification: The first decade of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (Oxford, Elsevier).