The Big Question

I am currently reading a great book John Hattie’s Visible Learning. The book aims to explore the influences on student learning and then review the evidence to support its impact.

Very interesting reading. I have just finished the section on “The Contributions from the Teacher” and made a summary of the top 4 elements from this chapter for those who are interested.

Micro Teaching – the process of preparing, delivering, getting evaluation/feedback and reflection on teaching is important. Teachers who micro teach have powerful effects on students. I believe this is due to the high level of evaluation involved in the practice. Video, peer evaluation and discussion can all lead to quality feedback and performance improvement.

Teacher Clarity – One of our DLFT elements Teacher Clarity or Explicit quality criteria is very important. There are significant positive impacts when the teacher communicates the intentions of the lesson and the notions of what success means for these intentions.

Teacher Student relationships – Person centred teachers make a large difference The affective outcomes that had the biggest impact were

1. Non directivity – A relationship that allows the individual to grow

2. Empathy

3. Warmth

4. Encouragement of higher order thinking

Professional Development – Professional Development is an effective way to improve job performance and satisfaction and has significant positive impact on the students.

I found this collection quite interesting, 4 contributions from the teacher that we can easily ensure become part of our teaching practice, confident that it will improve student outcomes. Why not give it a try?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Professional Learning, Readings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.