Latest / IB Unplugged / Visible Learning in Practice: Feedback, Inquiry, and Impact w/ John Hattie

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Visible Learning in Practice: Feedback, Inquiry, and Impact w/ John Hattie · IB Unplugged

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Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IBDP
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educators, that tackles your submitted challenges and questions
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by connecting you with experts and peers who share their ideas and stories
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Hi everybody.
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Welcome to this week's episode of IB Unplugged, where John and
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I have the absolute pleasure of speaking with John Hattie.
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So this, this guest needs no introduction for many of you.
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He is one of the most influential,
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researchers and authors in the field of education.
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He's worked on visible learning and and many other books and research projects
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as well, all around evidence based learning, making,
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bringing this to the forefront through all of his meta analyzes, really
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being able to help teachers and educators improve teaching and learning
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through really,
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understanding the strategies that work and don't work in the classroom.
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And really talking about all of this evaluation and reflection of how you do
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your craft.
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So, John, is somebody that we have
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from the very beginning wanted to interview and get on the show.
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His work has shaped so much of what we do at Kognity.
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We've had so much,
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influence from his studies and his work on how we've built our product.
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John, I think most teachers have,
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been impacted one way or another in their teaching.
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So we are so excited for this conversation today.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, when I realized, oh, we've got John Hattie on the show,
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I did do a little bit of a jump around and dance a bit.
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I was I was pretty psyched.
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And, I'm really looking forward to this conversation where, you know,
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I think as educators, you constantly look into what's work and what's not work.
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And how can I be a better teacher?
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How can I really teach in great ways?
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And I think what we can look forward to in this show with John is flipping
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that a little bit.
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And let's stop
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focusing on what's teaching well, and let's start looking at the learning.
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How do I know that learning is taking place
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and what's really beneficial thing there?
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So we're going to be going through different strategies
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for how to make sure that you can actually see learning
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taking place,
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what you need to do as a teacher to create the conditions
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so that people feel safe and included
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and ready to genuinely and authentically get into that learning process.
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So I think there's going to be some really excellent things
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here, regardless of if you've read all of Hattie's work
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or you've spent
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a lot of time in the Visible Learning book or something like that, this episode,
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I think, is going to dive deeper into what we can do as educators to create
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really safe, inclusive learning spaces where kids can be authentically
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themselves, curious, driving into their own education themselves.
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So stick around. We're so glad you're here.
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It's going to be a great episode.
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And here we go with John Hattie.
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Hello, John Hattie,
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welcome to IB Unplugged.
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We're so excited that you're here today.
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Hello, John Patton.
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That's wonderful. I love talking about the stuff.
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Yeah, we're looking forward to it a lot.
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Obviously, you know, you've had some pretty amazing impacts within education.
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And we're excited to talk a little bit more about some of the studies,
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some of the research you've done, looking at ways in which,
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you know, teachers can know their impact and how we can be doing
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more efficient stuff within our classrooms.
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So, let's dive in.
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And I think I think you mentioned your name kind of anywhere in education.
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And people are aware of it.
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They know of some of the stuff you've done, but people might not be aware
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of kind of your start and a little bit of your background.
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So every expert kind of starts somewhere.
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I wonder if you can share a moment in your own teaching career where maybe
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things didn't go as planned, or how it maybe changed your approach?
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John, I started all my career
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and until the last ten years,
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I teach those courses in research, design and statistics that you loved.
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Right?
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I loved them, yeah, t tests and and all those samples.
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I was a big fan.
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And in the first few years,
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I realized that many of the students
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had an anxiety when they saw a number.
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And they were fearful of making mistakes,
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but they succeeded
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all files on the opportunities I gave to them.
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They didn't make connections.
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And then many of them walked away, disliking statistics
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more than they started.
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And it took me a while to realize the problem was me.
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The problem is that I didn't deal with the anxiety.
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I didn't acknowledge it. I didn't set up,
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for example, the right assignment
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so they saw it as valuable.
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So I switched the assignment and I remember it was
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think about creating an assessment that you want to use in your own work.
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And that became the focus rather than the statistics and the research design.
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And suddenly there was a purpose.
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Suddenly they were not as fearful of making mistakes.
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They saw me as someone that was going to support them, to create
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a really good assessment they could use in their subsequent phases or whatever.
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And so that was kind of a pivotal moment when you realize after a few years
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of blaming the students and saying that is a lack and
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and as a good education, I came up with all the reasons why they
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weren't going to succeed.
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Yeah.
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Hey, I think I'm the problem here.
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And so that that was didn't go to plan.
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And it certainly changed my approach looking at which subsequently turned out
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not then but subsequently turned out my laser
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focus on the impact we have
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and looking for the evidence where it doesn't work as well
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it does work.
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Yeah.
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I think so often we kind of get focused on like, oh, I'm doing the right thing,
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or I've done the research on it here, but, you know,
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turn the mirror around for a little bit and take a look at yourself and go like,
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what am I doing that's actually working and how do I know or not?
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Yeah.
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And we fit people into our beliefs about the world.
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And when I have the silly theory that there are a lot of academic study,
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they weakness.
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And my first thesis was on creativity tests.
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And I think that's probably a litmus test of how I need to be better
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at making connections between ideas and making connections
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between what I was doing and what the students were doing.
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Yeah, in all of your research, you do a lot of work on the hows,
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and I think it's also really important to focus on the why.
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And so I was wondering if you could answer, in your view,
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what you think the purpose is of education?
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I'm at the luxury stage of life now.
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I'm a granddad and I've watching my seven grandkids.
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Four of them have started school in the last few years, and I have this
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very strong view, Courtney, that our job is not to create their futures.
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They're going to create their futures.
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And our best chance as whilst we have them
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to initiate them, to see, teach them
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the value of what we consider as valuable in our lives and our world,
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knowing that their job is to in many ways disrupt that.
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So disruption is part of the purposes of education.
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I also with all my own,
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I have three boys, with my own three boys and I went through school.
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I just wanted them to have a passion.
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Yes, I wanted it to be socially desirable.
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And yes,
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certainly the high school years, their passion was sport.
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They did not go to school for academics.
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They went for sport, and I was happy with that
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because I know that the best predictor of adult health,
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wealth and happiness is not achieved at school.
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It's the number of years of schooling.
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And so I think one of the purposes of education is to make schools
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inviting places where kids want to come and learn.
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And I think when you look at
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adults and ask them, as we have done in a study,
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tell us about the best teacher you ever had and why.
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Two reasons: that teacher turns you on to their passion,
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or that teacher
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saw something in you you didn't see in yourself.
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And this is why I don't think
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the job of schools is to help kids reach their potential.
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I think that's an incredibly low aspiration.
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Our job is to help kids exceed what they think is their potential.
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And so yeah, I could go into a lot of education
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jargon about I want to maximize the impact of teaching on learning.
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I want to develop visible learners.
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You know, where they're going.
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But that notion of turning them on to learning,
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giving them the skills, of course, it relates
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to learning about something, which is why we do history in English.
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But if you look at, for example, in the US and ask how many adults
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use high school trigonometry, algebra, calculus? 2%.
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How many use graphing in Excel? 75%.
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Sometimes I think we create too much stuff and I wish we had cut back.
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I'm out of stuff.
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So we can go deeper because let me ask you, John and Courtney,
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I bet if I said to you, what is the most
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fun learning thing you ever learned when you're at school?
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I bet it was something you went deep on. Yeah, definitely.
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I mean, it wasn't like a simple pop up question in the in the lesson
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or something like that. It wasn't like a little quiz.
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For me it was,
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we were going really deep into the human anatomy and physiology,
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and we were exploring why, why does this thing work the way it does.
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And I was able to relate it to I had a passion for sport as well,
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cross-country skiing, and I did a lot of racing there.
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And so I just immediately saw this connection.
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I was so happy that my teacher saw that too.
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It's just as you're saying here, I'm smiling
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because I'm like, that's exactly what turned me on
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and made me feel like I just, as you said, belong to my school is my teacher
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recognize this is something that you like, some you're interested in.
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Let me tell you more about it that can help you engage deeper into this.
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So yeah, that's a, I love that.
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I'm really glad you brought that up. Go on Court. What about for you?
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The first thing that I thought of
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actually this.
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I promise
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I've liked school since then, but in second grade,
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so I think I was about, like, eight years old.
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We transformed the entire classroom into a pond.
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I'm from Florida, so swamps and ponds are a bit more, prevalent for us.
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And we decorated the entire classroom.
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Everyone had to pick a different animal to make and dive super deep.
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Like, I have an absurd amount of knowledge about a beaver to this day,
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because that was my animal and we, like,
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had to live in this pond classroom for what feels like a month.
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It was probably only a week.
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But yeah, it was that full immersion deep dive into one
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specific thing that definitely stays for a while.
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So why on earth do we come up with every curriculum review?
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We add more and more to it.
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All our tests are about the facts and the knowledge.
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When that's not what turns people on to be learners.
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Well what I love
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just how you've answered these first two questions right away
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is it's very clear that it's about developing a passion
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and it's very clear about introspection and kind of evaluating yourself
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and recognizing like I might not always be right.
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And I think that's a huge thing that when we're trying to convey this idea
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of like young people to be,
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yeah, good thinkers, I want you to go into the world
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and think carefully about stuff and be interested in things and think about it.
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It's important to then recognize, yeah, I might not know all this stuff here.
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And I guess to a certain extent, as teachers, we've got to model that right?
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I learned after my life in academia, and I still enjoy
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being curious and curious and as you say, trying to understand it, why is it so?
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Why is it not so?
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And yeah, that's the that's the core evaluative question that a lot of my work
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at the moment is looking at this notion of evaluative thinking,
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and particularly in this day of AI,
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we have to have our kids evaluative think, is it good enough?
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Is it right or wrong? Right.
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How do I go about critique? How do I seek collaborative,
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versions of this?
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And what's fascinating is if you want to see an action,
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go to a class of four year olds.
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It's every around you.
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They're into what they're into compliance.
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And like we know from the Jenkins work that by the time they get to high school
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that best four out of ten want to be there to study the stuff we teach them.
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We haven't got it right, but
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there are some stunning classes out there that do get it right.
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So I think the biggest problem is not excellence.
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Our problem is we don't have very skilled at scaling up when we see excellence.
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Yeah, I love that because it's there's this young passion that kind of starts out
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it almost at toddler age where it's just why, why that why this, why this.
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And and then sometimes it feels educators you know
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DP coordinator and I work with mainly 16, 17, 18 year olds.
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There's almost an element of kind of beating that out of them.
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Not intentionally, but just like,
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no, you have to tell me what you have to tell me how,
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and then you have to analyze it in this respect.
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And I guess that's to the to the end of trying
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to get people to dive deeper into it and analyze it more.
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But there is an element of like, am I teaching you,
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the student, how to be curious, how to ask the right questions, how to value it?
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Just you said, is it good enough?
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Like I recognize and I think you've you've mentioned this before in your work.
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And I was listening to another show that you've done and,
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you know, this concept that, like the teacher asks the vast
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majority of the questions in the classroom instead of flipping it
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and allowing the student to ask the questions
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and start to really think like, is that answer good enough for me?
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And I think you've hit it right on the head right now in this age
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where AI and ChatGPT and these things are so readily available,
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if we're not teaching that introspection,
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that evaluative thinking, then I think we're missing the mark, right?
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Oh, isn't it kind of ironic that ChatGPT is called chat?
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We got a chat to it, but we got to ask the right questions.
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And, you know,
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if you ask the wrong question, you get a result, and it looks convincing.
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And so then let me just
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be a little bit careful here because I'm greedy,
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I want both I want the students to have knowledge, particularly on AI.
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If they don't have the knowledge,
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they won't have any understanding
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of whether it's right or wrong or good enough.
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So I want the what and the why.
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And I think one of the problems that we quickly jump into in education
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is we bipolarise them.
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You can have direct instruction,
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explicit teaching where you can have problem solving.
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You can have the what or the why.
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I want the balance.
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And this is why when I said before about what did you go deep on
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you got a lot of knowledge when you study beavers,
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probably more knowledge than you'll ever need.
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More knowledge than I ever need.
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But you did it for a purpose.
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So one of the purposes. Why? Why are they like this?
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Why do they do this stuff? How do they fill the dams?
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Why are they sometimes ecologically destructive as well?
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So don't get me wrong, I want both, but I think it's getting that balance.
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So greedy there, John.
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We can't have both of these things at the same time.
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Well, I mean, you know, I think most people would know visible learning.
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That's a pretty landmark, book that you put up, but obviously you had
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lots of published work before then, and you've done plenty of work since then.
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And I'm kind of interested in, like, taking a step back
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from all the things that you've published and just understand them,
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like what made you decide to embark on the journey in the first place?
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So was it just that curiosity, that curiosity of why do things work
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the way they are, or was there like a deeper purpose,
15:01
thinking like we could do education better?
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It wasn't deeper purpose, and I wasn't that it was, you know, as a
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as a statistics measurement person coming into education, I was an outsider
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and all my colleagues told me that if I was going to be successful,
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I had to study a particular topic, and it was always a particular topic.
15:21
And they're all so different.
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And then I met teachers and they did the same.
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All you have to do, John, is come and watch me and they're all different.
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And I, you know, was I was a kid.
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Teachers are dramatically different.
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How come everything in education works?
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And it was kind of fascinating because that was not my experience
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as a as a student.
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I had some pretty horrific teachers, pretty good teachers.
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I had the mix, and I think most of us get the mix.
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And so and again, when you ask adults to remember their best teachers,
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the model number they remember is 2 and we had 50.
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So we've got a problem.
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The other coincidence is I started my career at the same time
16:00
that Jim Glass invented this thing called meta analysis,
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which is a statistical way of synthesizing literature.
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And the best way to learn about it was to do one.
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So I did one, and I enjoyed it, and I did another one.
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And it was at a pivotal moment.
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I remember sitting in a colleague's office at the University of Washington,
16:15
one August,
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what if I put the two things together?
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What if I use the meta analysis studies
16:22
to change the question from what works
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to what works best to ask the relative question?
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And then I got going on that, and it took me
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20, 30 years to collect all that data.
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But the hardest part was the why?
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Because I set up a very what I think is a very strong counterfactual.
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I said, okay, what are the common elements of those influences
16:43
above the average compared to those below the average?
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And that's what took me 20 odd years to work out.
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And I literally wrote that visible learning book to get it out of my system.
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I thought, okay, I moved to New Zealand.
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I was the measurement.
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I developed the New Zealand Assessment Scheme with some colleagues,
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and I had the sitting in the back.
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And so now I'll sit down and it took me a few years
17:04
and I have a holiday house when I was in Auckland.
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So every time I went down there I played a way with another influence.
17:10
I never expected it to catch on, like guys,
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it was my 10th book. What happened to the other nine? Yeah.
17:19
Yeah, I mean, it definitely caught on, that's for sure.
17:21
I mean, like I said, it's kind of everywhere that's out there,
17:23
but you kind of bring up something
17:24
that I'm, I'm interested in because I'm, I'm also I'm doing a doctorate right now
17:29
and I'm studying quite a bit
17:30
and I'm looking into different meta analyzes themselves and just kind of
17:34
interestingly on the side, I mean, education is a very, very social,
17:39
subjective sort of space.
17:41
You know, you need to understand how the classroom works, the context,
17:45
what's going on within the students
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and sometimes some people might say that when you put that to a number,
17:50
you're kind of missing a lot of what's going on there.
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And I'm just kind of interested in such a social subject.
17:58
How have you found that tension of being kind of more a statistician
18:01
and kind of looking at this from meta analysis and like, data points
18:05
versus maybe people who might critique that and say, well, no, no, look, the
18:08
this is a classroom. This is interaction between people and relationships.
18:11
You know, we can't really quantify that.
18:13
How would you how did you kind of square that circle?
18:15
Well, we can quantify. But let me come back to this.
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One of my colleagues, Allison Jones, many years ago
18:22
heard me give this talk.
18:23
And she came up afterwards with the best criticism ever.
18:26
She said, John, I'm impressed
18:28
that you know what happens in classrooms to the second decimal point,
18:35
So one of the things I've been doing over the years,
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I tried to do a meta synthesis of classroom observation.
18:42
My wife developed at all, that I found
18:45
to collect, observation with incredible accuracy.
18:48
And we've got a large number of students.
18:50
And very soon, someone you should have on your podcast.
18:53
Peter Bradford from England is, producing a book on his career
18:56
where he actually has done what you're talking about.
18:58
He's gone into classrooms.
19:00
He's looked at what happens in the classroom when you change
19:03
class size, what happens when you have a teaching assistant?
19:06
And as he showed, teaching assistants have a zero to negative impact.
19:09
Why is it so low?
19:11
What happens?
19:12
Like one of the things that fascinates me, guys is
19:15
we put kids in groups and we teach them as if they're a whole class.
19:18
We aren't very good at group work. He's looked at that.
19:21
So I think, John, what you're doing and what Peter's doing
19:24
and what Ned Flanders did many years ago, not the neighbor of the Simpsons,
19:28
but the real good sociologist.
19:30
No, nobody thought that right now.
19:32
Nobody was thinking about The Simpsons when he said that.
19:34
And getting into all that kind of classroom,
19:36
it's it's really quite exciting.
19:38
Now, here's the good in the bad news.
19:40
What can
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happen now is already
19:42
people have already done this using AI as automatic coding of classrooms
19:46
on the spot because it's very expensive to do, takes a lot of scope.
19:52
The good side is that I think we're going to get a lot more data
19:54
about what happens in classrooms.
19:56
The bad side, it's going to be incredibly misused.
19:59
And I think there's kind of all kinds of tensions on that.
20:02
But yes, you're right.
20:03
I think I'm looking forward to someone
20:05
writing the visible Learning book from inside the classroom perspective.
20:09
And guys, I could be wrong.
20:13
Yeah, yeah. We'll see.
20:14
I mean, at least at this point,
20:16
what do you think is one of the most misinterpreted
20:20
takes on your work that you're kind of coming up on time and time again?
20:24
Well, firstly, at the last minute
20:27
I added the ranking of the effects,
20:31
in the book
20:32
and it kind of got a lot of attention.
20:35
But it probably was one of the misused parts of the whole thing.
20:39
And since about 2017, 19, I stopped using that.
20:43
You might find that in any of our work, the rankings, because people thought
20:46
that each of the now 400 influences were unique, and my argument was the opposite.
20:51
What's the overlap between those above?
20:54
Those below?
20:55
The second is people thought, oh, we're doing we took off.
20:58
We're doing the stuff at the top.
20:59
We're not doing the stuff at the bottom.
21:01
Some of that stuff at the bottom should worry the heck out of us.
21:05
And so if you're asking me what specific findings,
21:08
the one that still surprises me teaching subject matter knowledge.
21:13
Surely you should know your subject matter.
21:15
And that would make a difference to the quality and effective as you're teaching.
21:19
It doesn't.
21:20
Now, I've spent 20 years,
21:23
six studies trying to understand it.
21:26
You've got one minute.
21:27
Accept the evidence guys.
21:29
Why does teacher subject matter knowledge matter?
21:32
I do, I actually really love that argument there.
21:36
I've been spent I've been spending a lot of time on this.
21:38
I understand it, just trust me on this one.
21:40
I think that's quite useful too.
21:42
But no, I actually I really loved it.
21:44
There was a,
21:46
a teacher I worked with a while ago who, who taught history here,
21:49
and she and I would talk often, and she was like,
21:51
I want to go into all these
21:52
different classrooms and try to teach there
21:54
because I don't think it's about subject knowledge.
21:56
I think it's about good teaching tactics and that sort of thing.
21:58
And so we always kind of bounced around the idea.
22:01
And I remember there was one time
22:02
where actually we did flip, and I went into the history
22:04
classroom and she came into the biology classroom.
22:07
How did that history lesson go, John?
22:10
I'm so good at history, people.
22:11
You know, we're really impressed.
22:13
And, you know,
22:14
let me be sure that for a moment, John, because you're on to the answer here.
22:17
But what you teach? Biology.
22:20
And what happened when you went into that
22:21
history teacher class, how did you prepare?
22:23
Yeah, I mean, I really reframed what I thought was important within teaching.
22:28
And I think what I love that
22:29
you just mentioned a moment ago, you said I could be wrong.
22:31
And I think that's something that I have really tried to take on in the last,
22:36
I don't know,
22:37
I guess, over my career and just recognizing that I don't know everything
22:40
and I don't have to know everything I need to be able to adduce
22:44
to bring out what my students might know and what they could understand.
22:47
And so when I went into that classroom, I just really thought, what are the
22:50
what are the prompts? What are the questions?
22:52
The ways in which I could get these kids to kind of engage in this
22:55
and tell me about it?
22:56
You know, because I'm walking in, I'm not a history expert,
22:59
but I can get you to know some stuff.
23:01
I can get you to explore what you already know
23:03
and then verbalize that to me.
23:04
So it was really about, yeah, kind of flipping it around me and like,
23:08
I hand up in the air, I'm not the expert. Tell me about it.
23:11
Yeah.
23:11
And I guess that that's the idea with when you have the subject matter
23:15
expert, it's a crutch that you can lean on and that you're not going to
23:20
feel the need to maybe,
23:22
it's like I have all this knowledge that I just need to impart on you, rather
23:26
than like being a bit more critical of, like, what do I need to do with the class?
23:30
How do I make this more interactive?
23:31
Because it's not just I'm the expert and you need to learn from me as we're
23:36
we need to create this environment where we're all learning together.
23:39
I think that probably changes things quite a bit.
23:42
You're kind of getting there.
23:46
No, you could just say no. John. Nope.
23:50
Both are wrong.
23:51
I worry, John, when you were talking there
23:52
that you almost accepting that it was okay,
23:55
that subject matter knowledge doesn't matter.
23:56
I was actually suggesting it's better not to have it.
23:59
I know I'm saying the evidence shows that doesn't matter.
24:01
That doesn't mean to say
24:03
that I'm advocating that you shouldn't worry about it.
24:06
In fact, I worried about that because that was your question.
24:09
What have I worried about?
24:10
So Kelly went into classes of five and six year olds, and she measured
24:13
teachers knowledge of the science of reading.
24:16
She also monitored what was happening in their classrooms.
24:19
And so you can imagine, she had teachers that had incredible amount
24:23
of knowledge on the science of reading and some that didn't have much knowledge.
24:27
But what happened was the interaction with what happened in the classroom.
24:30
In the classroom, if you are a teacher where you talk
24:35
89% of the time, you ask 120 questions a day, that requires three answers.
24:39
You don't allow kids to ask questions.
24:41
You point out mistakes to kids and ask them to fix up.
24:44
Then subject matter knowledge is irrelevant.
24:46
You only need to be one page eight of the kids, but
24:49
if you talk less and get the kids to talk more,
24:52
if you allow the kids to ask open ended questions,
24:55
it exposes you dramatically and subject matter knowledge matters dramatically.
25:00
So it's an interactive effect.
25:01
Like we've spent close to $1 billion here in Australia over the last
25:05
15 years, taking mass primary teachers out, giving them more maths and science.
25:09
No effect.
25:10
Because they go back and teach the same way.
25:12
You got to worry about the teaching.
25:14
So does subject matter knowledge matter?
25:16
Yep. At a particular circumstance, when the nature of teaching
25:20
is much more dialogical, it doesn't matter when it's more logical.
25:24
So that's what I love doing.
25:25
And like I'm working at the moment.
25:28
Why does having an animal, a dog in a classroom have quite a reasonable effect?
25:32
.2.3 effect on achievement.
25:35
And I've delved into that and looked at in a thousand ways.
25:38
And my best explanation is it's got nothing to do
25:40
with all the article citing the dog as calming and kids like that.
25:44
It's simply the teacher
25:45
and the nature of the teacher that chooses to have dogs compared
25:48
to those who don't.
25:49
So dog people are better people.
25:51
Yeah, that's that's what I heard.
25:52
Dog people are better than cat people.
25:54
That's that's the point?
25:56
You can have a horse in the class and see what happens.
25:59
But the other one, and I'm not going to go into it
26:02
is class size trying to understand why it's a small effect, which it is.
26:06
But the other one that's probably more germane to what
26:09
we need to talk about today is that,
26:12
many, many, many others have shared this and I've just replicating it:
26:16
the biggest source of variability is within your school.
26:20
Whereas all our debates in education or across schools.
26:23
And I ask you and your school, you know,
26:26
you have teachers with variable impact, we don't solve it.
26:29
We look over and say, no, the problems,
26:30
the curriculum, the problems, the resources.
26:32
The problem is the leadership.
26:33
The problem is the schools down the road.
26:36
The more you can start looking at it.
26:37
And that's what we do in our work.
26:39
When we go into schools and we do implementation.
26:41
And of course, you've got to do it with high trust.
26:44
If you do it shaming and blaming, you know what's going to happen.
26:46
So you build high trust.
26:48
You form a coalition of those that are having high impact,
26:51
and you invite the others to join.
26:53
That's the biggest issue. That's the hardest issue.
26:55
But that's the one that keeps surprising me is how often
26:59
politicians, parents, educators see, the problem is the school down the road.
27:04
Are you an IB educator wanting
27:06
to improve your practice and needing a just a bit more support getting there?
27:10
Have you ever wanted to learn more about a specific aspect of the DP program, or
27:14
ask a question to an educational theorist about a specific IB aspect?
27:18
IB Unplugged is the place for you.
27:20
Simply visit kognity.com/ibunplugged to submit your question to us,
27:25
and have your question explored in more detail in an upcoming episode.
27:29
And now, back to the show.
27:32
Okay, I want to I want to dive into that
27:34
a little bit more, make sure I understood that so
27:37
often we are saying, let's fix the curriculum, or let's look at the,
27:41
you know, what's happening next, as opposed to
27:44
if I heard that correctly, we want to make sure that teachers
27:46
feel safe and able to essentially say what you said.
27:50
I might be wrong about this, and how can I get better
27:52
in my own teaching in an authentic way that's non-threatening,
27:56
that allows them to essentially reflect on best practice
28:00
and change the way that they're doing things in the classroom?
28:02
Did I get that right?
28:03
Except for the last part. I couldn't care less.
28:06
I couldn't care less how you teach.
28:08
I think one of our faults, as we've been obsessed with teaching,
28:10
I'm obsessed about what the impact of your teaching.
28:13
And it's a totally different set of questions.
28:16
I want to know what you taught well, what you didn't teach well, who
28:20
you taught well or who didn't teach well, and how much growth you've got.
28:23
I want to see the evidence about that.
28:25
I want to see the evidence from the test scores, from the kids assignments,
28:28
from the assessments, from the teacher noticing the student voice.
28:31
I also want to hear a compelling argument because it's less
28:34
what you do and more how you think about what you do.
28:38
So in our jargon that we're using at the moment, we want evaluative teachers.
28:43
We want evaluative students who ask the same thing.
28:46
And of course, being greedy, it is about something.
28:49
But I think our mistake is we've been too obsessed with teaching
28:53
and we're not obsessed with learning.
28:54
For example, in the 12,000 teachers that we have in our database from,
28:59
our classroom observation, 12,000 hours, which is almost a kids lifetime at school.
29:05
How many times
29:06
in that 12,000 hours, does a teacher think aloud
29:09
or ask a student to think about?
29:11
Zero.
29:12
I call my work visible learning, not because learning is invisible.
29:16
Our job is to make it visible and we don't.
29:19
And I think this is really my obsession.
29:23
I want classrooms to be about learning.
29:25
Like your kids are sitting there all the time and saying,
29:28
how did you do that?
29:30
And when you tell them,
29:31
we tell them we don't think aloud.
29:33
When was the last time you made a mistake in the classroom and talked about it?
29:37
And I know in our Western world, we don't want to embarrass kids.
29:41
We don't want to affect their self-esteem.
29:43
So our niceness kills us.
29:45
Like my four year old, I babysit every week.
29:47
He makes mistakes all the time.
29:49
He points out my mistakes. We talk about it.
29:51
There's no embarrassment. That's called learning.
29:54
I watched my six year old. She said, you've made a mistake.
29:56
You've got it wrong.
29:57
Do it again! As if it's a punishment.
30:00
Come on guys, why aren't we having schools as learning organizations?
30:05
Why do we keep going on about teaching?
30:07
Again, I'm greedy. I do want both.
30:11
But what I like about that is
30:12
it's more about framing the position in mind for the teacher there.
30:15
So we're shifting how we think
30:18
about like well, one if I'm thinking aloud.
30:21
So students brought up a question.
30:23
So I'm like that I don't understand okay. Let me let me walk it through.
30:26
Let me kind of invite you into my inner thoughts as I think about how this works.
30:31
And then, yeah, what I love there is that, that sort of mistake.
30:34
So if I make a mistake or mess something up, how do I approach that mistake
30:38
makes a big difference in terms of how the student feels
30:39
in terms of their comfort with making mistakes as well.
30:42
No kid comes to your school to learn that which they know
30:45
is what they don't know. But we don't privilege that.
30:48
We publish it.
30:48
Yeah,
30:50
I think that
30:50
what we're talking about here,
30:52
it also makes me think that in a lot of our other episodes,
30:54
there's been a lot of times where we've laughed at the difference
30:57
of the expectations of the student versus the expectations of the teacher.
31:01
And one of the things is this reflection piece, this feedback piece.
31:04
And I know that that's something
31:05
that you've also thought a lot about and reflected about.
31:08
A lot of students will maybe show their work
31:13
or do whatever it is they turn in papers, they get feedback.
31:16
They're supposed to be reflecting on their learning and thinking about it.
31:19
But then how often are teachers forced to do the same thing?
31:25
How often do we teach the kids how to reflect?
31:27
Yeah, which I think in IB in there is,
31:31
a really strong element of wanting to teach them how to reflect,
31:36
but I think there's also this idea that the teachers should also be
31:40
reflecting, and schools need to make the space for that, too.
31:45
So yeah, I was wondering if you could just kind of talk about that,
31:48
of the idea of how impactful, because it seems like
31:51
with a lot of your work, you're saying, like a lot of the learning happens
31:54
when the teachers are learning from the feedback as well.
31:58
And a lot of learning happens when students are listening to each other
32:01
for good and bad. Yeah.
32:03
And like as you said with IB and there are quite a few programs
32:06
around the world where they teach those skills.
32:08
Now the argument we put is it's got to be taught in the context of the subject.
32:12
It's not a generic skill being critical and reflection and math is different
32:15
to being critical reflection of English because the content matters.
32:19
And so looking at that and I'm not,
32:22
I have to say, I'm not the greatest fan of the concept of reflection.
32:26
I even said that what happens in the classroom
32:28
a teacher doesn't see or hear.
32:30
So why would I care about the reflection on the 20%?
32:33
A lot of novices don't know what they don't know,
32:34
so why would I privilege what they could reflect on what they know?
32:37
I want to also help them critique.
32:40
I want to help them reflect.
32:42
And this is like there was a great meta analysis
32:45
a few years ago on student control over learning. Zero effect.
32:49
We don't have control of our learning.
32:50
You don't have control over your learning.
32:52
I listen to other people.
32:53
I go to classes, I read books.
32:55
Now I have other resources out there.
32:58
And so the metaphor we use is
33:00
we want kids to be taught how to drive their learning.
33:03
And sometimes that means seeking help.
33:05
And that's something that's often
33:06
not welcomed in the classroom when kids seek help,
33:09
I mean, when you ask a kid, did you understand that?
33:11
They say no?
33:12
Could you explain it again when they've said that the fifth time
33:15
I watch this in the class and I was in Alaska
33:17
last year this, kid asked, no, I didn't understand it.
33:20
And I thought, oh, she's got to get told off.
33:22
And the teacher, without a blink explained it in a different way.
33:25
He says, do you understand it now?
33:26
She's no, I don't four times she said no.
33:30
And then she's I think I'm getting it.
33:31
That is too rare.
33:33
And it's that no, I should have that exploring aloud.
33:37
So go away for reflection and say thinking aloud,
33:41
exploring aloud, wallowing in an era.
33:44
And like,
33:45
think of it the same way that kids play their computer games or their video games.
33:49
They want multiple opportunities.
33:51
They want feedback.
33:52
They want to know what success looks like, so they could use the feedback.
33:55
They want it to be high trust.
33:57
They don't want errors is as seen as mistake.
34:01
And all of us,
34:02
no matter what, we love the 80 kind of 20 rule.
34:06
80% we know, 20% we don’t.
34:08
That challenge physics the most exciting.
34:10
We need to challenge our kids.
34:14
I want to pick up on what you mentioned just before with regard to,
34:18
you know, you want students
34:19
to be the drivers of their learning and kind of what you were alluding to.
34:23
They're kind of knocking on the door of this idea
34:25
of almost inquiry based learning, right?
34:27
And students driving with their questions, they're figuring out,
34:30
here's what I want to know.
34:32
And here's how I kind of make that happen.
34:34
Now, I teach in an area where inquiry leads to a lot of this, but
34:38
there's some difficulties with that, too.
34:40
So I wonder if you could comment on like,
34:43
when and how do we approach inquiry based learning?
34:46
Because as you've said before, content matters.
34:49
They've got to know some stuff before they can start asking questions about it.
34:52
So how do we navigate that sort of space?
34:55
We can also do the opposite.
34:57
We we can get kids to do problems to find out what they know and don't know.
35:00
Then go and teach that.
35:02
So it's not a not a one way street.
35:04
And it's, I think, extending the metaphor,
35:09
like I'm
35:09
writing some work at the moment of how AI feedback could revolutionize what we do,
35:15
because what we're doing at the moment is we're doing
35:16
what we're doing for the last 20 years better, but
35:20
feedback is something that is given by the teacher, received by the student.
35:24
How do we make it a dialog?
35:26
How do we make it in the moment?
35:27
How do we make it about how you think as well as what you do?
35:30
And there are incredible opportunities to do that.
35:33
That kind of comes to your notion job is that we have the tools right now
35:37
to be able to do this in the classroom, to create more of a dialog.
35:41
And the other part of it
35:43
is you can do that in groups of students, not just one on one.
35:47
Like I think using AI as individual coaching, it'll do okay.
35:51
But it's not the not the answer. It's the
35:54
it's seeing how other kids make a mistake.
35:56
It's watching Courtney and watching how she thinks
35:59
because she got it right and I want to watch her how she does it.
36:02
I want to ask, why did you do that? How did you do that?
36:05
As much as I want to ask the teacher, as much as I want to ask AI.
36:08
So I think again it's about how we create those high trust inviting classrooms
36:13
where kids feel they belong, where it's safe to make mistakes,
36:17
and then make sure there are., Like the great study last year.
36:21
All of us, regardless of our probability,
36:24
need 5 to 7 opportunities to learn something before we get it.
36:27
Most kids get one.
36:29
How do you create those multiple opportunities?
36:31
So I think there's a real richness out there.
36:33
And like the reason I keep going,
36:36
even though I retired from my university job many years ago, is
36:40
I see this in action so often as I go around the world.
36:43
It's there now.
36:45
I'm not talking about some utopia, and like when you look at my data
36:50
and you see the percentage of schools and students and teachers
36:53
that are in that zone where the kids are making more than a year's growth,
36:56
for example, there are stunning number there in your school.
37:00
Excellence is around us.
37:01
Why is it, guys, the educators are the best at denying our expertise?
37:06
Why do we keep seeking the Holy Grail?
37:08
We haven't. We've just got to be better listeners.
37:13
That really hit home for me because
37:15
I've been kind of hearing this, you know, thinking about this whole conversation.
37:18
What I'm hearing is create a really inclusive environment where people belong.
37:23
And that what you just mentioned, I think is one of the more important keys to it.
37:27
If I become a better listener, then I have the opportunity
37:30
to try to draw out from the kids and and help them feel more comfortable.
37:34
I suppose if I'm constantly talking
37:37
then maybe I'm shutting down their own personalities.
37:40
And that's true in the classroom and the staffroom.
37:43
Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense.
37:45
One of the things that I think is also this balance, or maybe you're going to say
37:50
greedy - need it both, is also there is a lot
37:54
that has that people have to say about direct instruction.
37:57
Either they're like, I am, I am miss inquiry
38:02
and I don't do any direct instruction, or they're like, you guys over there.
38:06
There is not enough structure in your classroom.
38:08
I stick to direct instruction.
38:10
What are your thoughts on kind of what does good
38:13
direct instruction look like in a classroom right now?
38:16
Well, firstly, like in the 2009 book, I struggled with all the different
38:20
teaching methods
38:22
and it was only in the school that I think I worked through what was going on
38:26
and what I want to address first is the level of complexity
38:30
that we're teaching the kids. Now, remember I'm greedy.
38:32
I do want the kids to know facts, knowledge, procedures and rules.
38:37
I also want them to be problem solvers, make connections, and do relationships.
38:41
And it turns out direct instruction has very high effects for the content.
38:46
It's quite low for the problem solving.
38:48
And no surprise, the problem, the discovery,
38:51
the inquiry is not very good with the content,
38:55
but it's very good with the problem solving.
38:57
So it's not on the raw.
38:59
It's when and I think we won't employ anyone on our team who says, oh,
39:03
a problem solver teacher or I'm an explicit instruction
39:06
because the kids need both, and we're going even stronger than that
39:09
and saying we need to separate out the assessments and have to.
39:13
What about the content?
39:15
What about the type two activities?
39:18
Two success criteria? Because kids learn.
39:21
Yeah, my grandkids have already learned by age eight
39:24
what's valued in classrooms is knowing lots.
39:27
And I want them to know lots, but I want them to use up.
39:30
So the notion is it's a matter of when you do direct instruction,
39:35
when you do explicit instruction.
39:36
Now here's one of the dilemmas.
39:38
We know explicit instruction is much more effective
39:41
when the object of the exercise is to pass a test.
39:44
Because most tests, 90 plus percent of items we ask
39:47
and tests are about and measured in the test.
39:49
And the feedback is about the facts and the content.
39:52
I don't think that's what any of us want.
39:53
And I know, and I bet you don't want that.
39:55
So that's why I'm separating them out and saying very clear to the kids,
39:58
like if you if you did my course before I retired from Melbourne,
40:02
the first assignment was calculating an effect source.
40:05
I want the students to do it or say, how easy was
40:08
the second assignment was interpreting them.
40:10
I wanted that too.
40:11
I knew if I put them together that all walk away and say he cares about us
40:16
calculating effect sizes.
40:17
And I do, but I want more.
40:20
And so that's why I think we need to separate them out.
40:22
The more we put them together,
40:23
the more the kids are smart and they realize how to play the game.
40:26
Just know lots.
40:28
Nice.
40:29
So so what's kind of a simple win on that?
40:32
Like you mentioned,
40:33
it's it's all about when am I going to do some of the direct instruction?
40:37
When am I going to be allowing
40:38
the kind of deeper problem solving, critical thinking part of that?
40:42
What's kind of a simple win for any educator out there
40:45
in terms of how to scaffold that into their lessons?
40:48
I mean, how do we achieve this?
40:49
Well, I think the answers to I think we need to be
40:51
quite explicit to the students what we're doing.
40:53
We're separating it out.
40:54
We're going to talk today about the content.
40:57
We're going to talk tomorrow about the interpretation or even within the lesson.
41:02
You say,
41:03
like the first 20 minutes is about content,
41:05
the next 20 minutes is about interpretation.
41:07
Back to 20 minutes about content.
41:08
You can vary, but I'm making it very clear to the students that the activity
41:12
they're doing is about the content or about the processing.
41:15
And I think we it's also a good
41:19
practice for us
41:20
to make sure that we're seen to value both.
41:24
And I think this is a bit like as we did we developed the New Zealand
41:27
Assessment Scheme. 25 years it's been in place.
41:30
They all get an assessment for this surface
41:34
as part of every assessment.
41:36
This is how we need to really separate them out.
41:39
Of course they go together, but if you put them together,
41:43
all they care about, all they know
41:45
and all that's valued is the content, and I don't think that's good enough.
41:49
I like that so much of what I'm taking from this right
41:52
now, John, is just that create good environment.
41:56
Create a space where kids feel included, where they can ask really good questions.
42:00
I'm taking away from this the idea of, you know, I can have both of these things.
42:04
I can be greedy.
42:05
I don't have to be either or about any of these practices within teaching, but
42:10
maybe it's better for me to signpost it and get a good idea of like,
42:14
now we're doing direct instruction, and now I want to do some problem
42:17
solving and helping the kids be, like aware of that one.
42:20
And then two, they can possibly collaborate into that as well.
42:26
I'm wondering,
42:26
is there any other sort of final message or something
42:29
you'd really want to make sure that people know that
42:32
maybe they can't read in your books,
42:33
or they can't see in the work that you've published,
42:35
anything you feel like educators need to know this
42:38
so they can have a really positive impact in their classrooms?
42:41
Well, the one that stunned me a few years ago
42:43
was saying the employment rate all of graduates from high school
42:46
and universities in the US over the last 50 years, and those students
42:50
who have high content and high social skills are employable.
42:54
No surprise those students who have low content, low
42:57
social skills are unemployable, but in the middle, employers
43:01
would much prefer to have a graduate with social skills and less knowledge
43:06
that a student has high knowledge and less social skills.
43:09
I don't think we're very good at teaching students how to work in groups.
43:13
I think there are very specific skills.
43:15
We know from the Peyser study that the thing kids hate in
43:17
the classroom is when the teacher says, now we're going to put you in groups.
43:21
I know what happens when I go on a group.
43:22
I see Courtney or John in my group, and I know that the smart ones
43:25
are my successes shutting up, being quiet, not interfering with them.
43:29
That's hopeless.
43:30
As a measurement person, you have to have a school for the group,
43:33
work at a school for the individual's contribution to the group.
43:36
And if I came into your schools and saw high stakes assessments,
43:39
not including some collaborative group work,
43:42
I don't think you're making the students employable.
43:44
That is not part of our psyche.
43:46
That's not part of who we are.
43:47
That's not part of curriculum.
43:49
We see group work as something to do on the why not taught for.
43:53
And you know this as employers, when you get individual rogues
43:58
who don't know how to translate, communicate and work with each others,
44:01
those are the ones you want to get rid of.
44:03
And I think that's the message that I think we need to look at right now,
44:08
what we're doing in our schools. Like in our world,
44:12
it's a strange world we're in, and we are a very I, I, I world.
44:17
We need to teach the way we need to teach those skills.
44:19
And probably the most important skill is can we stand in the shoes
44:23
of another teacher?
44:24
Can our kids stand in the shoes of another student?
44:27
That social empathy is so critical for the success of students as citizens
44:32
and as learners.
44:33
Yeah, no, I think that makes so much sense as something that definitely resonates
44:36
with me.
44:37
I think when I'm when we're talking with teachers is always
44:41
there's a most teachers do want to do better work.
44:45
They want their students to have a better experience.
44:48
One of the things that I think blocks them a lot of the time
44:51
is this feeling of innovation fatigue.
44:55
I think, is the way that you've referred
44:56
to it of like if they're like, yeah, I want it.
45:00
I want to teach group work,
45:01
but how on earth can I add this on to everything else?
45:05
And there's always this, this friction of I wish I could do more.
45:08
I don't have time. I want to do more.
45:10
But God, I'm tired of learning new tools or new ways of teaching.
45:15
And do you have any advice for teachers trying to really make room for impact?
45:21
Besides, obviously not just, well, just work harder, stay longer.
45:27
My first answer is the direct answer.
45:29
And that is,
45:31
time is not the issue because those teachers
45:33
who are doing it have the same time, same curriculum, same kids.
45:37
But then your point also is we are terrible in this business.
45:40
We add on, we add on, we add on.
45:43
And unfortunately, often in schools we accept and do more and more
45:46
that society wants all of us.
45:48
And so now is you know, we've tried to address this de implementation.
45:51
How do you stop things.
45:53
And what we try and do in our practice is we do time in motion studies.
45:56
We walk around and see and it's unbelievable, like 90 plus
46:00
percent of what teachers and principals do, they choose to do themselves.
46:04
And it's not common across all of the principals and teachers.
46:08
Let me give you a simple example.
46:09
I noticed, John, on the background.
46:11
You've got posters on your wall there, Courtney. You don't.
46:14
Now, the example we used was teachers
46:17
who spent a lot of time putting stuff on the wall.
46:19
So we took the kids out of the classroom
46:21
and we asked the kids what was on the wall.
46:22
They had no clue.
46:24
No, there's nothing wrong with putting stuff on the wall.
46:26
Just don't get obsessed about it.
46:27
It's not going to make a difference to anything.
46:30
And so there's just so many things we do and like the number of assignments
46:34
and assessments we give kids because we have to follow the day.
46:38
Like one of the major
46:41
absences in my work, I think, in all research, is there's very
46:44
little research on how do you evaluate the quality of lesson plans,
46:48
which every teacher worries about, every day.
46:50
Isn't it
46:51
stunning that there's all the stuff, how to write lessons, a lesson design,
46:55
but to measure the quality?
46:56
And I think we we've done a poor job in academia
46:58
and helping teachers understand what's working and what's not working
47:01
well,
47:03
but I really do
47:04
strongly recommend that you and I do this in every other industry,
47:08
you bring a time in motion person in to see what you do.
47:11
Like, we know principals.
47:12
They have 80 to 120 things a day none of them planned.
47:16
How do they set systems up so that things don't come to them?
47:20
Now the general principal says my door is always open.
47:23
That's a huge mistake. It can't be always open.
47:25
You'll never worry about the things that matter,
47:27
because all of us will dump things through your door.
47:30
And so how good is your front desk at triage?
47:34
How good is the deputy school leaders at triage of the system?
47:38
So I think there's a lot of things here.
47:40
And when you look at what teachers do, again,
47:43
one of the things we say is asking them to do more or different isn't the answer.
47:47
Ask them to think.
47:49
Tom Guscott showed many times.
47:51
The way you get them to think differently is to get them to do differently.
47:55
And that's where professional learning becomes so powerful.
47:57
I love this and I'm excited about the idea of let's bring that
48:01
more to our teachers, let's bring that more to our cultures,
48:04
basically our school cultures, you know, really investigating
48:07
why am I doing the things that I'm doing and how do I know that they are working?
48:12
Can I be more evaluative about the practices
48:14
I've kind of found myself into?
48:15
And am I just am I just here, or have I planned for them directly?
48:21
Yeah, you've given me a lot to really think about and consider here, John.
48:24
The one that I like that medicos do, and it's normal for them.
48:28
They welcome the second opinion.
48:30
Yeah that's interesting because we at Kognity
48:32
we do professional development with schools and we have one
48:36
we have somebody that actually will sometimes go in and sit in a classroom
48:40
and they'll give the they'll do the classroom observations.
48:44
And it's like,
48:44
I haven't had a classroom observation since my first year of teaching,
48:48
or it's like I've just been off doing my own thing, or they'll go do
48:51
professional development externally, but not in the classroom.
48:54
And I think it's those kind of moments that really matter
48:57
and that really make a big difference.
48:59
And it comes to the point you just making is that that we inflict stuff on teachers
49:04
to ask them to do different when many of them are doing
49:06
a great job now, and we shouldn't be asking them to change,
49:10
and that one of the things we find that we work in schools
49:12
is the schools come and say, I want visible learning.
49:14
I want this, and we say, no.
49:16
What is the problem to which visible learning is the answer?
49:19
And doing a really good diagnosis,
49:21
because we know from many different studies that teachers and schools
49:25
choose to improve that which they are already doing
49:28
well, the one that you get small dividends,
49:31
are you prepared to look at what you're not doing
49:33
well, so we have a process
49:35
we use the schools to look at them, to interpret what they're doing well,
49:39
what they're not doing well.
49:39
And we're saying, hey, we want to sustain this and we want to change this.
49:44
And I think that's part of the other problem.
49:45
But you say with the implementation, and I'm saying with Time in Motion studies
49:50
that what's the best things to stop?
49:52
So you that are not having the effect so you can spend the time and resources
49:56
and attention on the things that matter?
49:58
John, thank you so, so much for giving us
50:01
your time, your expertise, your insights here.
50:04
I think I've learned a ton right
50:05
now, and I'm excited to bring some of this to our own school context.
50:09
And I'm sure that,
50:10
I'm sure that some of our listeners and teachers right now
50:13
are going to find that useful as well.
50:14
It's a real, real privilege
50:16
getting to chat with you here about these things,
50:18
and I just can't thank you enough for taking the time to chat with us.
50:21
Pleasure. Thank you.
50:22
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast hosted by John Patton
50:25
and Courtney Marline and produced by Katilina Gaffney.
50:28
Be sure to subscribe or follow and share with your fellow IB educators.
50:32
If you'd like to submit a topic, request or a question,
50:35
please do so on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
50:38
Let's keep the conversation going
50:40
and support each other in teaching with confidence, creativity, and joy.
50:44
See you next time.