Visible Learning

A book whose time has come.

This is a detailed contribution to the educators library, on the important theme- what affects educational outcomes for our students. Given the size and detail, it is best suited to the educated professional, but is also accessible enough for the educated reader - though having little opportunity to affect any change may prove frustrating.

The book is broken down into sections looking at the different influences on outcomes such as the influence from home, school reforms, principal, and teacher and teaching practices etc. Within these sections all the influences are assessed using a statistical comparison called 'effect size'. This aims to be a common scale on which to measure effectiveness- a nice speedometer type graphic is used to indicate the rating for each item.

Think sending a child to an 'elite' child will turn them into a rhodes scholar?
Think keeping a child down a grade if they are not progressing is a good idea?
Think the lauded 'direct instruction' technique is chalk, talk and worksheets?

Read on and see what the current evidence indicates- and it is not always what we want to hear.

Noteably most influences are positive- but the aim of the work is to find out what has a significant influence so that efforts can be made on practices that are more effective. In contrast to one of the other reviewers - there are some questions that are not answered in this book - namely which interventions work best with which types of students? It is great to know what 'on average' is more effective, but this is qualified by the fact that each intervention varies in effectiveness in different studies. This variance should be a source of further study so that we can know which strategy to use and when it is most appropriate to use it.

The other issue that is not acknowledged by some reviewers here is that the measure of success in this type of study is purely academic - did they learn more content or skills than at the beginning and in contrast to a control group. What it also does not tell us about are the other outcomes that are important too - were the students more engaged in their learning, did they become better learners, did they learn other (real world) skills that are useful, and did they learn to get along and work together better? These are all important outcomes that young people arguably need to learn to survive in a fast changing, modern world.

The other qualifier I would need to add is that some areas- such as the effective use of technology are largely dependent on the skill of teachers to design instructional practices that are complimentary and sophisticated enough to be effective. Currently teacher capacity in this area is still emerging and so the results here I would have to conclude are tentative, or at least open for review. The more recent works of Robert Marzano have shown far more promise in this area- particularly for interactive white boards.

As with all strategies, procedures or practices - no two practitioners, classrooms or school communities are alike and the research evidence presented by the late Graham Nuthall in "The Hidden Lives of Learners' indicated that a good educator continually modifies and adapts 'what works' at the chalkface every day. This would then be a qualifying consideration when analyzing the book. Hattie himself lists others including; the cost of the intervention, and from memory I think the complexity of implementation is also discussed. So don't use the work as a recipe book for state intervention in schools!

Overall an extremely informative book - sorts the wheat from the chaff, but must be read critically and in concert with other books from authors such as Marzano and Nuthall.

I bought this book after Rick Wormeli (author of [[ASIN:1571104240 Fair Isn't Always Equal]]) recommended it at a workshop I attended. Overall I think this book is an excellent one, and I would recommend it to anyone involved with or interested in education, especially teachers. The essential message is that teachers make the difference in how well students learn, so if you (as a teacher) know what research says about what is effective, then you can make an enormous difference.

The reason I rated this book four stars instead of five is because I think it needs better editing. As a teacher of English as a Second Language, I am perhaps hyperaware of grammatical errors and typos. It's not unusual for me to notice these types of errors in professionally published materials and usually I just ignore them, especially if they don't affect the message. So, when I noticed some typos in this book, I ignored the first two or three. But they kept appearing and became too frequent for me to ignore. They generally do not affect the message and I hate to be petty because we all make mistakes, but I expect better of a professionally published work dealing with education. Moreover, if I can't trust the editor to identify and correct simple mistakes that anyone who is proficient in English should be able to notice, then I can't trust the editor to identify and correct mistakes that have to do with the content and would not be noticeable to the average reader (who presumably is not an expert in analyzing and interpreting research).

UPDATE: My original review had some examples of the errors I found, and to my surprise, the author, Mr. Hattie, contacted me asking for any more I had found! Clearly the author cares about his work and is seeking to improve it for the next edition. With the errors fixed, which it seems they will be soon, I definitely think this book merits a 5 star review.

In conclusion, this is a valuable and important book, and it could have a profound effect on education if teachers, administrators, and policy makers used the research it presents to make decisions. However, I found so many small errors within the text that it makes me question if there are bigger, less obvious errors in the content. This book could be greatly improved with some more careful editing so that the readers can fully trust the content.

First, this is an amazing collection of research and represents an extremely useful body of knowledge for anyone who is interested in improving education. I would have happily given it five stars, except that it contains what seems to be a significant statistical error. The error is in his use of "Common Language Effect Size," which is a different way of looking at the rather abstract notion of effect size, with the intent of making it more intuitively understandable. Basically, effect size is a measure of how far off of the mean (in units of standard deviations) a particular technique will push achievement. The trouble with it is that it's a pretty abstract number. Common language effect size was developed as a way to translate that into something that is easier to understand. Common language effect size is a measure of how likely it is that a randomly selected person from a group where the technique was applied would exceed a similar person from a control group. With that definition, it should range from 0% to 100%, with 50% meaning there is no effect. The numbers in the book range from around -50% to 220%, which doesn't make any sense, and makes me wonder what he was actually measuring. To a small extent it reduces my trust in his other numbers as well, though I suspect that they are probably fine.

With that caveat though, I still think this is a very useful book and a great piece of work. Most of the work is actually focused on regular effect size, and it seems that the CL version of it was added as an alternative view for the real data. The amount of research represented in here is mind boggling, and I think it has a lot of very interesting things to say about what works and what doesn't. I'd recommend it, but for important decisions it may be worth going back to the originally cited works and checking the numbers (something I haven't done).

This book is needed by any parent with a child in school. Hattie makes it known that education is driven by fads and ideology not empirical research. This is the book everyone needs who wishes to distinguish practices that are extremely likely to produce positive results from those that do not. YOU need TO BUY this BOOK, if you read this far.
Hattie concludes this tour de force with "Project Follow Through" which clearly demonstrated what worked, the result was education decision makers decided to throw increasingly large amounts of money into practices they would like to have work. You guessed it those practices still do not work.

[effect sizes from "Visible Learning" by Hattie : the hinge effect value of 0.40 or greater indicates an intervention is likely to bring success]

Seattle's current math direction is centered on:
a. Inquiry based teaching (0.31)
b. Problem based learning (0.15)
c. Differentiated Instruction (no empirical evidence)

Consider the effective practices Seattle chooses not to use:
a. Project Follow Through's recommendation for Direct Instruction (0.59).
b. Problem Solving teaching (0.61),
c. Mastery Learning (0.58), and
d. Worked Examples (0.57).

These four innovations are not only effective but could be easily combined into a deliverable package. Instead Seattle chooses to buy expensive to deliver programs that do not work.

Seattle blunders on and your school and district is likely to do the same.
Medicine went from an immature profession to one based on evidence because the clients demanded it.
These days the immature profession of education appears headed to being an infantile profession. Only with lots of pressure will it become a mature profession.

page 254:
A major area in education research should be why we continue to believe many claims about "what works best " when there is no evidence for these claims. .......

The likelihood of the claims in this book (Visible Learning) having a major effect will depend more on whether schools can turn, as did much of medicine, to evidence based claims.

page 257:
There is a preference for the teaching method that fits the latest ideology and rarely are these methods assessed by evidence.

BUY THIS BOOK .. or continue being hoodwinked by pseudo-experts. Then, at least you will be able to write coherent letters of protest.

There's a lot already known about what works and what doesn't in education. This book summarizes nearly all of it. Before you start or commission another study, look here.

John Hattie leads by saying that nearly everything works. I suppose that's because humans learn naturally. The question is what works well. Hattie shows that simply being in a classroom for a year has an effect size of 0.4 so the important innovations must have an effect size greater than that.

What really makes a big difference? Visible Learning and Visible Teaching. Specifically, getting into the students shoes and exploring the learning process. And students getting in the teachers shoes. Measuring and adapting the teaching and learning processes to fit the peope involved.

One caution: Many of the ideas have very narrow definitions when they are measured in this book. So, before pushing a concept with a high effect size or dismissing something with a low one, be sure to read Hattie's commentary and really understand what the studies have shown.

You know when someone says "that will never work" or "my students can't learn because___________"? This book is actual research all wrapped up in a neat little package for you to use as a reference to see what does work and what doesn't. Of course, you have to spend a lot of time reading and researching, but this has been helpful in making leadership decisions on strategies we just aren't sure of--and yes, I know I ended my sentence in a preposition.

If you are an educator and like research/data, you will like this book.

This book is packed with statistical analysis of various practices in the education system. It was eye opening to see that some of the practices we are using have a negative or moderate impact on students -based on the research.
The only reason I gave the book four stars is due to the fact my book came with two chapter 7s and no chapter 8. I’ve missed the return date so if you’re not planning to read it right away you might flip through to make sure you have all of the chapters.

I bought this book because my school wanted to implement some of his ideas into our teaching. I really love learning about all the information John Hattie has researched and find it valuable as a teacher. This was a great buy and I use this book as a reference!

This is a super metaresearch book on almost any educational topic. It shows the metrics for almost any topic and what we currently know in research. As an Ed.D. student, this is a great primer for almost any topic in research. It offers a great jump-off point of showing seminal researchers.

I specifically bought this product because it was advertised as "New." However, it was poorly shrink wrapped and there are markings in the book which indicated it is not "new." While the book is in decent condition, aside from the markings in it, I feel I paid more for this product than I should have given its false status.