💡 2-Sentence-Summary
Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn by John Hattie is a comprehensive meta-analysis of educational research, providing evidence-based insights into what makes effective teaching and learning. Hattie’s work identifies key factors that contribute to student achievement, including the importance of feedback, teacher-student relationships, and student expectations. He emphasizes the need for educators to have a deep understanding of how students learn and to use this knowledge to inform their instructional practices, as well as the need for ongoing assessment and evaluation to ensure that teaching is effective.
💭 What I think about it
I loved every chapter, even though it’s more on the academic side of writing – this book is correctly regarded as a highly influential and important book for educators and learners. It’s a thorough analysis of educational research and offers practical implications for teaching and learning. Hattie’s work has had a significant impact on education policy and practice, and his meta-analysis is frequently cited in academic literature and teacher training programs.
🌟 Who benefits from reading this book?
I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their own learning as you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the science of how we learn and apply this knowledge to your own learning practices. But more specifically, I’d recommend this book to three audiences:
- For educators, the book provides evidence-based insights into what makes effective teaching and learning, including key factors that contribute to student achievement, such as feedback, teacher-student relationships, and student expectations. It emphasizes the need for ongoing assessment and evaluation to ensure that teaching is effective.
- For researchers, the book provides a comprehensive meta-analysis of educational research, synthesizing a vast amount of data to identify what works and what doesn’t work in education.
- For policymakers, the book provides a roadmap for improving education outcomes, highlighting the need for evidence-based policy decisions that prioritize effective teaching and learning.
📚 How the book changed my life
By applying the insights from the book, I improved my teaching practices, leading to better learning outcomes for my writing online accelerator students. I gained a deeper understanding of the factors contributing to effective teaching and learning.
✍️ My Favorite Quotes
- The key to making a difference in the learning of students is to identify what impacts positively on student learning and to implement these actions.
- Know thy impact. It’s not enough to have high expectations, we need to know what effect our teaching is having.
- The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers.
- We know since the beginnings of behavioral science the importance of feedback for academic achievement. And yet, the variability of feedback effectiveness is massive. Some feedback is way better than other. (Source: Reviews of the literature on feedback (Hattie & Gan, 2011; Hattie & Timperley, 2007))
- The key question is, does feedback help someone understand what they don’t know, what they do know, and where they go? That’s when and why feedback is so powerful, but a lot of feedback doesn’t—and doesn’t have any effect
- In a nutshell: The teacher decides the learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to the students, demonstrates them by modelling, evaluates if they understand what they have been told by checking for understanding, and re-telling them what they have told by tying it all together with closure.