Teaching: Complexity and Making a Visible Difference
Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[Permission to
reproduce granted in authorship is acknowledged]
Teaching is complex work. It
involves making an enormous number of decisions each day. All but the most
trivial decisions require consideration of factors that interact with one
another in seemingly countless ways.
Many decisions arise unexpectedly:
decisions about responding to conflict among students, unexpected
interruptions, unpredictable misbehavior, etc. Many decisions can be
anticipated: decisions about lesson content, sequencing, selection of
illustrations and examples, questions, etc.
On its own, instruction is
massively complex--too complex to rely on experience alone. Discerning what
works and what does not by examining one’s experience would be like looking for
a blade of grass in a corn field. Carefully planned and executed studies are
helpful guidance but relying on a single study would be foolish. It would be
ideal if the carefully planned and executed study was repeated many times under
the same conditions. There are unfortunately too few carefully planned and
executed studies that have been replicated multiple times.
Instructional decision-making is
too important to be left to the imperfections of our own experience or even to
a single study however well it might have been performed. Although imperfect, looking across studies of
the same topic can provide more guidance. Over the course of the last 30 years
or so, meta-analytical work has provided needed guidance for policy and
practice, despite the difficulty of distinguishing the signal from the noise in
the complex classroom environment.
John
Hattie points out that any number of decisions a teacher might make can
lead to some observed change in student performance because in education
“almost everything works.” He recommends that, to minimize the risk of adopting
policies and practices that may only make a marginal difference, teachers adopt
practices that have a visible impact.
In his books, especially in his
2009 book Visible
Learning, Hattie reports the results of his meta-analysis of studies that
purport to address the same phenomenon and identifies practices that have a
visible impact on student achievement. All
the practices Hattie enumerates that make a visible difference in student learning
are, as one might expect, associated with how teachers teach rather than the
conditions affecting their work. That
doesn’t mean that working conditions are unimportant, but it suggests that the
preparation, support and professional development of teachers are where most of
the attention should be directed.
Hattie identifies way-points to educational
excellence that are specifically focused on teachers and teaching. They are:
1. Teachers are among the most powerful
influences in learning.
2. Teachers need to be directive,
influential, caring, and actively engaged in the passion of teaching and
learning.
3. Teachers need to be aware of what
each and every student is thinking and knowing, to construct meaning and
meaningful experiences in light of this knowledge and have proficient knowledge
and understanding of their content to provide meaningful and appropriate feedback
such that each student moves progressively through the curriculum levels.
4. Teachers need to know the
learning intentions and success criteria of their lessons, know how well
they are attaining these criteria for all students, and know where to go
next in light of the gap between students’ current knowledge and
understanding and the success criteria of: “Where are you going?”, “How are you
going?”, and “Where to next?”.
5. Teachers need to move from the
single idea to multiple ideas, and to relate and then extend these ideas such
that learners construct and reconstruct knowledge and ideas. It is not the
knowledge or ideas, but the learner’s construction of this knowledge and these
ideas that is critical.
6. School leaders and teachers need to
create school, staff-room, and classroom environments where error is welcomed as
a learning opportunity, where discarding incorrect knowledge and understandings
is welcomed, and where participants can feel safe to learn, re-learn, and
explore knowledge and understanding. (Hattie,
2009, P. 238-239)
Because teachers are the greatest influence
on student achievement, governments that want to improve outcomes should make their
preparation, support and professional development a priority.
__________________
Hattie, John. (2009). Visible Learning. Abingdon,
Oxon: Routledge.