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Building Off the “What” and Moving into the “Why” and “How”

Ingham County Leadership Academy

Laura Colligan & Kim St. Martin September 25, 2014

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1.0 Brief review of the “what”

2.0 Unpacking “why”…knowledge acquisition 101

Agenda

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1.0 Reviewing the “What”

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“We need a barometer of what works best, and such a barometer can also establish guidelines as to what is excellent…excellence is attainable: there are many instances of excellence, some of it fleeting, some of it aplenty…” - John Hattie

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Why a Barometer? • Idea was try to take almost everything that has

happened in education that relates to student achievement and put it along a continuum to answer the following questions:

What are the things that enhance student achievement?

What are the things that had some effect on student achievement?

What are the thing that have a negative effect on student achievement?

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Defining Terms

I will use the term, “innovation” to describe the things that fall the continuum

Innovation can be used to define a practice, program, strategy, etc.

There are 138 innovations that are included on the barometer

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Domains

The 138 innovations were categorized into domains:

1. Child2. Curricula 3. Home4. Teaching5. Teacher6. School

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Most of the domains are within the realm of our control. Some are not. The innovations that fall in the home and some for the child domains are not really in our realm of control.

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The Effect Size

Hattie took data from thousands of studies that focused on student achievement and converted that data into a common metric (effect size) so they can be put along a scale (barometer)

An effect size is a measure of strength (of a program, practice, intervention, phenomena, etc.)

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Overall Findings (2009)

The average effect size for all innovations attempted = 0.4

Coincidentally looks like the bell shaped curve

Almost everything “works” (or has above a zero effect size)95%-97% of all the things we do in education have positive effects (influences) in achievement

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Implications

“When teachers claim they are having a positive effect on achievement or when a policy improves achievement this is almost a trivial claim: virtually everything works…” (Hattie, 2009, p. 16)

Setting the bar at zero is a very low bar

Any innovation that has an effect size greater than .15 – but less than .4 is in need of more consideration

Any innovation less than .15 is disastrous

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Updates Since Visible Learning (2009)

Hattie’s analyses haven’t stopped!

Approximately 1,200 meta-analyses have been reviewed

Will be writing the second edition to Visible Learning

The effect sizes haven’t really changed

New innovations will be added to the effect size list

.74

.73

.64

.69

.59

.58

.56

.34

.41

.33

.31

.21

.23

.15

.12.18

.06

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Teacher as Activator vs. Facilitator (updated list)

Teacher as Activator Teacher as Facilitator

Teaching students self-verbalization / questioning (.76)

Inductive teaching (.33)

Teacher Clarity (.75) Simulation and gaming (.32)

Reciprocal teaching (.74) Inquiry-based teaching (.31)

Feedback (.74) Smaller classes (.21)

Metacognitive strategies (.67) Individualized instruction (.22)

Direct instruction (.59) Web-based learning (.18)

Mastery learning (.57) Problem-based learning (.15)

Providing worked examples (.57) Discovery methods in math (.11)

Providing goals (.50) Whole language (.06)

Frequent / effects of testing (.46) Student control over learning (.04)

Graphic / Behavioral organizers (.41)

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We have some understanding about the “what” but why those things?

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2.0 Understanding the Why - Knowledge Acquisition 101

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Crediting John Hattie and Gregory Yates

Hattie and Yates (2013), authors of Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn

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• Think of something you struggled to do.

• If you could turn back time and try to learn it all over again, define what you think you need for mastery.

• Write the themes on chart paper.

Personal Reflection

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• Read the excerpt, “How Knowledge is Acquired” (pp. 113-115) from the book, Visible Learning and the Science of How we Learn.

• Identify things that resonated with you as you reflect on how you learned to do something new.

Activity

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Learning Takes Time

Human learning takes time: [50 – 100 hours of practice to be skillful up to 10,000 hours (8-10 years) to be an expert]

There are certain conditions we need to be able to learn information (to have information stored in long-term memory)

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Conditions for Learning

1. Time, effort and motivation

2. Concentration (spans are short)

3. Distributed practice - more effective than massed practice (or cramming)

4. Prior knowledge - effects are powerful

5. Multimedia input - is important (mind responds to the combination of visual and auditory information)

6. Mind needs to do something with the information

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Factors Influencing Memory Retention

1. Recognize vs. Recall Recognize: information / concept is known (multiple choice test)

Recall: information / concept is known such that your mind can produce, reconstruct, or rebuild the information (test items that involve deeper level processing)

Recognizing is easy and recalling is hard!

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Factors Influencing Memory Retention

2. It is easier to recall information that is given first and last

3. We will forget information at different rates over time

Depends on how information was learned in the first place (rote memorization vs. deep learning)

The mind will shed arbitrary facts very quickly (e.g., phone numbers or bank account #’s)

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Factors Influencing Memory Retention

4. Our minds constantly try to make sense of information (constructive process)

5. Even if our minds forget things, that information can still expedite the learning the second time around (e.g., foreign language)

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Factors Influencing Memory Retention

6. Our minds are subject to interference (this impacts what we gets placed in our memory)

Faulty prior knowledge impacts the interference or creates a misconception

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All of our minds are subject to overload!

Sources of Overload

• Little prior knowledge

• Weak mental strategies to learn the information or inappropriate strategies to cope with information overload

• Unrealistic expectations for learning (goal

too high, over confident)

Sources of Overload (cont.)• Poor instruction, teaching was inadequate,

unable to successfully engage with the learning material

• Learning conditions were not favorable for learning the information (e.g., taking golf but never going on a golf course)

• Anxiety around assessment (tests are not measuring the right things, emotional duress)

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What IS the pathway for learning?

How Information Gets to Long-Term Memory

Multi-store theory

Iconic (Sensory Memory or ultra

short-term memory)

Short-term memory

(Working memory)

Long-term memory

Things we see and hear lasts between less than a second or up to 3 seconds.

• Work bench of our conscious minds.

• Bench needs to stay active or things fall off.

• Problems:1. Capacity – only

can hold a few things

2. Time which things can fall off (be lost)

• Archival • Time does not impact

LTM• Problems:

1. Difficult to load information to LTM

2. Need for efficient strategies to code new information to existing info

3. Retrieval strategies to easily access info.

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• Read the excerpt, “How Knowledge is Acquired”(pp. 120-124) from the book, Visible Learning and the Science of How we Learn.

• As a group, write at least three implications for how to teach a concept or skill (whether it is adults or students)

Activity

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In the next session….Now that we have an idea about the conditions are minds need to acquire knowledge we will talk about what we can do as educators to align instructional methods with how our minds learn…

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Gots Wants