Hattie - What Works Best in Teaching

Theories about improving education abound, class sizes, amounts of homework, school hours, or co-ed vs single sex education have all been advanced as ways to improve education, but these factors have relatively little impact on learning outcomes.

What matters most is the mindset of engaged teachers who can give their students a clear purpose for their learning journey. 

Professor John Hattie, has just released his second book looking at global teaching trends. He says he "wants to change the debate, from asking 'what works?' To 'what works best?'"

Compared to the evidence for changing the culture of teaching and learning within classrooms, Prof Hattie says that current school inspection methods have no correlation with quality learning. 

Plenty of homework, small classroom sizes and a long school day are often seen as the mark of a successful school – but research shows the number one factor that impacts learning is engaging teaching.

“It turns out the most significant factor for students is the expertise of their teachers and their willingness to reframe how they view their teaching by looking at its impact on their students," Hattie says.

Hattie put in 20 years of work to understand where exactly at which point educational interventions start to positively impact students. It proved to be critical for educators and policymakers in the last 15 years, selling more than two million copies worldwide and being published in 27 languages. 

His new book, the sequel, is the result of scouring 2,100 meta-analyses over 40 years, drawn from more than 130,000 studies and involving more than 400 million students from all around the world. 

Hattie said, “This isn’t about hints and tips that will give schools easy hacks to good grades, this is about changing the culture of education so that teachers are excited about teaching, and students are excited and engaged in learning. 

“Every child can learn, can grow, and can be taught to love learning. The most important thing a teacher can do it to have high expectations for all students and to see differences as opportunities to learn in different ways, and to teach students to welcome the challenge to aim high.” 

Research and Reality 
Since the first book was published, Hattie created and launched teaching programs around the world, gaining an even deeper understanding of the reality of teaching. 

There has also been a global pandemic, which Hattie acknowledges in the book as having had a huge impact on the mental health of children and teachers, amplifying the connection between social and emotional wellbeing and learning. 

Hattie suggests equipping teachers with emotional and problem-based coping strategies that they can pass on to their students. 

He explains: “We do that by creating classrooms full of trust, where mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn, and the teachers are constantly assessing their own impact. 

“We want students to trust their teachers and know what they are learning, why they are learning, and knowing their progress in their learning.” 

Key findings
Many of the commonly used strategies have les effect on learning outcomes than purposeful teaching that is informed by data.

Hattie has found that Labelling children and ability-based classroom ‘sets’ are counter-productive to self-esteem and learning.

Teachers need to collaborate more – critique each other’s work and encourage sharing of ideas and learn from each other and need to think less about ‘how’ they are teaching, and instead think about the impact of their teaching.

Classrooms should be a safe space for learners to make mistakes and not feel ashamed, but see mistakes as learning opportunities.

Technology is not the enemy – video recordings, lesson transcripts and other tools can all be used to help teachers evaluate their impact.