A new name circulates in education. You read it in papers and hear about him in lectures. Some of the most important German university researchers can no longer do without him. And soon, it can be prophesied, everybody will know him. People talk about the “Hattie factor” and “Hattie ranking”. And the question is raised, “What does Hattie say about that?” Since in Switzerland some educational colleges and some school representatives in the communes pretend to have never heard about Germany and Austria having to “clear off” the whole reform nonsense, we will contribute some ideas below that cannot be ignored. Anyone who has gone hot in the zeal for reform does well to come down from his tours, abandon the OECD bondage and reflect on how he can return down to earth, i.e. to reality in time. The era of “global nonsense” is expiring.

John Hattie   – New Zealander, education researcher, professor at the University of Melbourne   – published a book in 2008 that has electrified the educational world since then. “Visible Learning” is the title. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive answer to the most important question of educational research: What is good teaching?

That sounds arrogant, even mad, and it may even be so   – a little at least. Because John Hattie did what no one before him has ever tried: to look through all the English-speaking studies about successful learning worldwide, evaluate them and bring them together in a large synthesis of empirical research on teaching. He evaluated more than 800 meta-analyses, i.e. those kinds of studies that summarize the various studies on a certain topic, be it homework or supplementary lessons, vocabulary learning, work with parents or having to repeat a year.

Using statistical tools he created a mega-analysis from this meta-analysis, including more than 50,000 individual studies with 250 million participating students. For the various methods of teaching and learning conditions Hattie then reckoned up a success factor, called effect size. It took Hattie fifteen years of research for his diligence work. In the end Hattie set up a kind of ranking of the most effective educational programs.

“Visible Learning”   – the world’s largest database for research on teaching   – made Hattie an international celebrity within a short time. The education supplement of the British “Times” calls him the “world’s most influential education academic”. Others put his book on the same level with major international comparative studies such as Pisa. And even critical articles bear titles as the following “Has John Hattie actually found the Holy Grail of educational research?”

However, it is not only the dimension of his megalomaniacal project that justifies Hattie’s reputation or the coldness of his scientific gaze (“there are enough opinions, what matters is measurable evidence”). The greatest explosive force lies in its findings. Since these findings cut across the educational debate in many countries. “We are passionately discussing the outer structures of schools and teaching,” Hattie criticizes. “They range at the very bottom of the list and are not important when it comes to learning.”

Thus, a school’s funding has little influence on its students’ acquisition of knowledge. The situation is similar to the reduction of class size, the favorite solution of teachers for problems of any kind. Small classes cost a lot of money, however in terms of learning outcomes they remain largely unprofitable. Class size ends up on 106th place in Hattie’s ranking. Worldwide the competition between public and private schools is also attributed great importance. However, the school forms differ only minimally when it comes to the learning progress of the students.

A good teacher may not waste time on unimportant things

Anyway, Hattie considers all the talk about best schools “almost irrelevant”. All evidence of his data show, says the researcher, that the biggest differences in the learning progress does not show between schools, but between single classes, and that means between individual teachers. This is Hattie’s central message, which he gleaned from the mountain of data: It is the individual educator who determines what students learn. All the other factors   – the general conditions, the type of school or special teaching methods   – are rather secondary.

So it depends on the good teacher. It sounds banal, we would say. Everyone knows it, they say. But why does the political world still set their effort on improving learning outcomes with structural reforms? Why does a controversy on methods flourish especially in the German school debate? And how come that all educators themselves play down their significance? Last year the Allensbach Institute asked teachers for their importance. 48 percent felt they had little or no impact on their students, in contrast to the media, for example. Only a total of 8 percent assigned a “very great” importance to themselves.

Hattie’s findings refute such lack of influence. He also contradicts all attempts to marginalize the teacher in the classroom. For Hattie a teacher must not be a mere facilitator, not an architect of learning environments (“faciliator”). If he wants to achieve anything, a teacher must be understood rather as a director, as “activator” who has his class under control and always keeps an eye on everyone.

For those affected by the ideas of educational reformism these statements are difficult to digest. Hattie would consider the idea bizarre that it is “best that students shape their learning processes for themselves”, as propagated by the recently established initiative “School on the Move”. In his eyes, other favorite concepts of the school new-thinkers fail as well. This is especially true for “open classrooms” or “inter-year classes”. For both Hattie found almost no empirical evidence that they improve learning.

Neither is it true according to Hattie’s findings that individualization of teaching has a great learning impact per se. “Considering the great hopes that one has associated with the so-called individual development, you should think twice what is actually meant by the term,” warns Eckhard Klieme. The Frankfurt school researcher was one of the first in Germany who received Hatties great project. For him the results of the New Zealander’s research emphasize especially the importance of structure for all good teaching.

It begins with a strict classroom management. A good teacher should not waste time on unimportant things, he must quickly recognize when to respond to a disturbance with rigor and when with humor. Even higher on the Hattie-scale ranks the “teacher clarity” i.e. that students understand what the teacher expects them to do. Both conditions of success for effective teaching are greatly underestimated. They hardly play a role in teacher training. In the life of a student whole weeks of time for learning get lost alone by the teachers’ distributing of cumbersome worksheets. Whole hours prove to be ineffective, because the teacher does not make clear from the very beginning what is important in the next 45 minutes.

Structured and disciplined, specialized and always at the center of attention: I know this type of teacher, some may say in Germany; you can find him in every “Gymnasium” (grammar school)! But as much as Hattie rejects the “learning coach”, who then and now makes a marginal remark from the side during lessons, as little is his research suitable to rehabilitate the traditional grammar school teacher who presents the benefits of a comprehensive expert knowledge to his students by means of lectures.

In fact a good teacher controls the classroom, according to Hattie from the first to the last minute. He does this, however   – and that is special   – always from his students’ perspective. “A good teacher sees his own teaching through the eyes of his students,” says Hattie. How this exactly works, is explained by the New Zealand education researcher in his second book, which was published 2011. In “Visible Learning for Teachers” John Hattie outlines a pedagogy of permanent self-reflection.

It begins with the teacher’s attitude. Far too many teachers, Hattie criticizes, explain the lack of progress in learning by the deficits of their students: the lack of diligence, the wrong talent or lack of support by the parents. Instead, the teacher must ask himself, Hattie recommends, what he did wrong when his class does not make any learning progresses.

Empirics apparently prove Hattie right. Learning progress of students can vary up to one whole grade, depending on who the teacher is. This difference in quality was made particularly evident a few years ago by an experiment in Sweden. Selected teachers had taken over a class in a deprived area whose pupils had largely given themselves up. After a year their mood had changed and they had considerably reduced their learning deficits.

There are no educational magic formulas

Hattie’s ideal teacher is such a super hero, but one who systematically nurtures his self-doubts. He does not only regularly control the achievement level of every student, with small tests that often do not take more than two or three minutes. He also makes students systematically judge his teaching. Such students’ statements   – “I kept on my task during the whole lesson”, “I knew what I had to learn in this lesson”   – can be obtained by multiple choice tests already at elementary level. For Germany, they were developed by the research group around Andreas Helmke. “With the right tools, students usually judge fairly and surprisingly accurately about teaching”, says the educational researcher from the University of Koblenz-Landau. Students can also assess well, what they are able to do. In Hattie’s ranking no other instrument shows a greater effect than the systematic self-assessment of students.

Hattie preaches a culture of “feedback”, and no other term is mentioned more often in his book. He hardly talks about praise, however, and he does not talk about punishment. According to Hattie feedback to students should always be neutral, based solely on the teaching subject. Students wrong answers are really welcome in this concept. Hattie sees errors as the real driving force behind all learning (“the essence of learning”).

The same applies to the teachers themselves. It is true, you may look up in Hattie’s new book what teaching methods have proved to be particularly effective according to his mega-analysis. Among them was “direct instruction”, i.e. the teacher-centered instruction commonly misunderstood as teacher’s monologue. The New Zealander, however, detests each methodological dispute. For him, a good teacher has a wide repertoire of teaching styles which he tries out   – depending on the class, checks them “evidence-based” and   – if necessary   – dismisses them again. “There are no magic bullets”, says Hattie, there is no educational magic formula.

On the other hand, the New Zealander considers the emotional aspects of learning non-negotiable. Without respect and appreciation, caring and trust, teaching will not succeed, he writes and gives evidence with impressive figures. Even the old-fashioned “love for the subject” experiences a revival with him. “Anyone who has read Hattie will never warn again of a cozy pedagogy”, says Ulrich Steffens form the Hessian Institute for Quality Development quite mockingly, who concisely summarized Hattie’s key messages in some professional articles in German.

In the local school debate Hattie’s lessons are provocative for all those involved   – and at the same time a confirmation. So the first and foremost aim of school should be performance, however Hattie does not care about grades; teacher-centered lessons work, he says, but only if the teacher talks little; teachers have an overwhelming influence who they can only claim if they think about their students each and every moment. Education reformers may be upset about the fact that open teaching is mostly ineffective, traditionalists may be upset that the same applies for repeating a class. And both fractions will hardly fancy that small classes contribute almost nothing to success in learning. This may please money-conscious politicians. If they read Hattie thoroughly, however, they may feel sick. The researcher explains their actions to be largely ineffective. Hattie’s empiricism suggests that better learning results cannot be organized from the outside; and certainly not in one or two terms of office. As long as education policies only reach the surface of school, but do not alter the deep structure   – i.e. the actual teaching   – they will remain ineffective.

The emotional side of learning

The fact that 30 years of school reform in Germany have not left any mark on many classrooms seems to be the best evidence. The teachers’ associations should also take a close look. Good teachers are important. That is what they always said. They have however always kept the logical implication a secret: that there are also bad representatives of their profession, whom we should prompt by all means to do better   – or to change their job. Hattie calls the deliberate ignorance to recognize quality differences between teachers a “conspiracy of silence”.

The controversy over John Hattie’s work has not yet reached Germany. That will change. Forthcoming “Visible Learning” will be published in German, in a translation of the Oldenburg educational researcher Klaus Zierer. The findings of the New Zealander cannot be transferred one-to-one to the German school reality. The meta-analysis he aggregated is based on English-speaking research, which in turn deals with the Anglo-Saxon education systems. When Hattie classifies school holidays as “harmful to learning”, he refers to the several months of vacation periods in the United States or Australia. In our country, the effect is likely to be far lower.

Hence Klaus Zierer warns against a “Fast Food Hattie”. We should not rely solely on the numerical impact factor, but look exactly at each factor on learning tested by Hattie. Homework has only little effect in elementary schools; in higher classes, however, they well promote learning success. In Hattie’s ranking, the average effect size for “homework” is somewhere in the middle.

An open classroom can also be quite profitable   – if the students are capable of independent learning and the teachers prepare thoroughly and meticulously watch over its course. However, Hattie’s research shows that both apply rather rarely. And of course, school pursues other objectives than to make students work with intellectual top performance. Creativity or ability for democracy, a sense for aesthetic and social behavior does not appear in Hattie’s lists as learning objectives. He is only interested in “achievements”, measurable cognitive specialist achievements. They are simply the core business of school.

Hattie’s findings can change the education policy debate in Germany. “No one who talks about school can ignore it,” says Andreas Helmke. We must not “fundamentally rethink our education system”, as the initiative “School on the Move” demands. System issues should no longer be raised according to Hattie. The New Zealander puts the teacher back to where he belongs: at the center of all the debate about school. He is primarily responsible for what students learn. He will decide whether school becomes better. “The schools finally should be able to work in peace”, is a popular demand after years of hectic school reforms. It is addressed to our education politicians. But for our teachers it applies equally.

(Translation Current Concerns)

Source: Die Zeit of 3.1.2013

This article as an audio file in the premium area at: www.zeit.de audio/