Tuesday, January 13, 2009

NZ study Challenges world on teaching

John Hattie has just released a book Visible Learning and a brief summary was provided in The Sunday Star Times last week. The article, titled NZ study challenges world on teaching, doesn't really reveal anything particularly radical, but confirms the importance of effective feedback to help student learning. I absolutely agree, as I teacher I am well aware of the importance of providing feedback to help students in the next step of their learning, both written and oral feedback. I am also interested in exploring ways students generate their own internal feedback and seek feedback from their peers. Feedback doesn't just go from teacher to student, and of course teachers should always be looking for feedback from students as to what is working and not working in the classroom.

What does confuse me about Hattie's report is that class size is not particularly important in helping student learning. Class size is included with school type, homework and a student's diet and exercise as factors not significant in effecting student learning. However, following the paragraph to this effect a further paragraph states, "All of these things could help improve the quality of interaction in the classroom, but are not nearly as effective as strategies such as giving regular feedback and fostering an atmosphere of trust". To me it seems smaller class sizes would surely be significant in allowing time for more effective feedback to occur. It could also provide more opportunity for more teacher-student interactions to take place and this must be significant in developing the atmosphere of trust needed. Many secondary teachers have 5 classes. The quality of feedback teachers give to 5 classes of 30 has got to be less effective than the feedback offered to 5 classes of 20, within the same time frame. Furthermore, from work I did for my MEd I am aware class size can effect students willingness to seek help in class - both very small classes and large classes discourage student help seeking. Small classes, due to student being obvious or conspicuous and large sizes due to lack of availability of the teacher. These findings support a medium class size, my ideal would be about 20.

Given the repsonses to Hatties' article, I know I am not alone in finding his suggestions on class size surprising. I am also concerned about his push for performance pay. I have yet to read any research that shows performance pay improves student learning, though to be fair I haven't been active in searching for it. I can only imagine performance pay causing less collaborative school environments with far reaching effects.

With Education Minister, Anne Tolley latching on to Hatties' work, I hope she focusses on findings that help the profession, the teachers and importantly, the kids.

2 comments:

MrWoody said...

I reckon you're spot on here [not that my opinion is worth diddly], Craig. I said exactly the same thing to my poor wife [who has to listen to my rants first hand]. Surely it's self evident that less kids equals more time per kid to give that personalised feedback.
Sometimes i get so frustrated with our profession...
Back to the cricket! :-)

p.s. I think the other thing i liked about that article was the lack of importance placed on teacher subject knowledge ;-)

Mel Gibb said...

I too was very surprised when I read the article about Hattie's findings in the Sunday Star times. But I struggle to understand why the factors were not considered to be highly interwoven. Like you say "feedback" highly important, "class size" not so important yet feedback is highly compromised when there are 30+ students in the class. I only hope Anne Tolley has enough sense to talk to us teachers at the coal face before making any radical decisions but it is gut-wrenching to know the likely hood of having class sizes around the 20+ mark are virtually nil.

I liked his finding that subject knowledge is not so important and that being too much of a subject expert can have a detrimental effect on the students achievement.