Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn

John Hattie, Gregory C. R. Yates

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134643189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

On publication in 2009 John Hattie's Visible Learning presented the biggest ever collection of research into what actually work in schools to improve children's learning. Not what was fashionable, not what political and educational vested interests wanted to champion, but what actually produced the best results in terms of improving learning and educational outcomes. It became an instant bestseller and was described by the TES as revealing education's 'holy grail'.

Now in this latest book, John Hattie has joined forces with cognitive psychologist Greg Yates to build on the original data and legacy of the Visible Learning project, showing how it's underlying ideas and the cutting edge of cognitive science can form a powerful and complimentary framework for shaping learning in the classroom and beyond.

Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn explains the major principles and strategies of learning, outlining why it can be so hard sometimes, and yet easy on other occasions. Aimed at teachers and students, it is written in an accessible and engaging style and can be read cover to cover, or used on a chapter-by-chapter basis for essay writing or staff development.

The book is structured in three parts – 'learning within classrooms', 'learning foundations', which explains the cognitive building blocks of knowledge acquisition and 'know thyself' which explores, confidence and self-knowledge. It also features extensive interactive appendices containing study guide questions to encourage critical thinking, annotated bibliographic entries with recommendations for further reading, links to relevant websites and YouTube clips. Throughout, the authors draw upon the latest international research into how the learning process works and how to maximise impact on students, covering such topics as:

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• teacher personality;

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• expertise and teacher-student relationships;

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• how knowledge is stored and the impact of cognitive load;

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• thinking fast and thinking slow;

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• the psychology of self-control;

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• the role of conversation at school and at home;

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• invisible gorillas and the IKEA effect;

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• digital native theory;

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• myths and fallacies about how people learn.

This fascinating book is aimed at any student, teacher or parent requiring an up-to-date commentary on how research into human learning processes can inform our teaching and what goes on in our schools. It takes a broad sweep through findings stemming mainly from social and cognitive psychology and presents them in a useable format for students and teachers at all levels, from preschool to tertiary training institutes.

PART

1
	Learning within classrooms

CHAPTER

1
	Why don’t students like learning at school? The Willingham thesis

Why don’t students like school? This simple question was posed by noted educational writer Daniel Willingham in his 2009 book of the same title. A simple question, yes. But as we attempt to answer it, we can learn a good deal about the human condition, about learning, about how motivation works, and also about our own minds.

It is important to recognise that Dr Willingham was not suggesting that students actively dislike school. In fact, there is no serious evidence indicating that students, on average, dislike going to school. This aspect has been known since the 1920s, when research surveys were first carried out in this area. The findings remain much the same today. Researchers ask students how much they like school by inviting them to respond to items on a survey instrument. Surveys typically allow responses along a 5-point scale such as −2, −1, 0, 1, and 2, where, minus 2 means strongly dislike, 0 stands for neither like nor dislike, and 2 means strongly like.

There is always an inevitably wide spread of scores, with about 10 per cent to 20 per cent of students ticking the negative or minus side. However, the mean comes out somewhere between 0 and 1. That is, on average, students neither love nor hate school. They tolerate school, or are mildly positive towards the experience. School remains an important aspect of their lives that provides numerous benefits. Overall, the picture is slightly more positive than negative.

A thesis close to the bone

Even so, Dr Willingham’s question cuts disturbingly close to the bone. Teachers are frequently disappointed by the lack of student response to what ought to be richly stimulating activities and experiences. Student apathy and lack of motivation are frequently cited as factors underlying teacher stress, burnout, and lack of job satisfaction. Teachers work hard to provide engaging learning sequences designed to challenge young minds and make them think skilfully. This manifest apathy becomes a serious professional issue, faced by teachers every day, and which, on the individual level, stretches coping resources severely.

It is frustrating for teachers when the level of student response to carefully organised instructional materials is underwhelming compared with the time and effort invested in their preparation. To the beginning teacher, this is a hard lesson to learn. Whether we like it or not, we are human and depend on feedback we get from our students. How we interpret this feedback can determine how well we teach in the future, how motivated we are to go that extra mile. Every teacher has sacrificed a good deal to get to his or her position, and needs to affirm the journey has been worth the effort.

Surely, students ought to appreciate school more?

So let us view Willingham’s question from a different perspective by asking: (a) Why do students not like school more? (b) Why does the average student naturally orient towards the middle attitudinal point? and (c) Why is learning at school so effortful for many students? As teachers and educators, the authors and likely readers of this book tended to enjoy school and its collateral benefits. Collectively, we understood what this game was about, how it was played. When we were students, many of us witnessed undesirable practices. So our generation of professional educators has worked hard to have such practices overturned. Our current crop of students have benefited from reforms and developments in modern attitudes and democratic practices. Such ideas ought to have made the experience of schooling more enjoyable, more stimulating, and considerably more positively affirming, than the experience of previous generations.

Whenever there are deceptively simple questions, there will be a multitude of answers that become possible. Some of these can be acknowledged quickly. Liking for school is aligned with social and emotional factors such as personality and social factors such as the number of friends the individual student has at the specific location. Being at school has numerous benefits. Schooling is an inherently social process, and the attitudes of peers exert a strong impact upon the individual. We tend to align our attitudes to the attitudes of people we perceive as similar to ourselves.

Similarly, family background and parental pressures will play a significant role. For example, in one South Australian study, it was found that students tended to report higher levels of enjoyment at school when their mothers had endorsed a parental style that encouraged children to take greater responsibility. This makes sense in that schools expect students to accept responsibility, so consistency between home and school appears to play a role. Girls often report liking school more than boys and higher ability students more so than lower ability students. Attitudes to school may dip as students move through the high school years, but have often been found to increase again in the senior school years.

Making them think: the demands of the classroom

The answer that Dr Willingham offers, however, in accounting for why students do not like school, is that the human brain does not naturally want to think. Indeed, he notes ‘The mind is not designed for thinking’ (2009, p. 3). This is a provocative argument that initially appears at odds with human characteristics. Thinking is supposedly one key attribute that makes us human. It is what we do naturally and spontaneously. It is the attribute that separates us from other species. Surely, we were born with this massive cerebral cortex specifically so that we could use it to think? From an idealistic view, thinking ought to be fun. Or, if not exactly fun, it ought to be at least inherently rewarding. We all can experience the pleasure in thinking well, in becoming competent, in solving problems, and taking pride in the successful outcomes of our mental work.

However, the notion that thinking is not great fun fits with a sizeable body of opinion within cognitive psychology. Indeed, this theme emerges in a later chapter about being in two minds (thinking fast and thinking slow), referred to as System 1 and System 2 (see Chapter 30). Thinking is a product of System 2, but this system is clunky, and its outputs can involve high levels of uncertainty.

So just why is thinking not much fun? For a start, it requires effort. Human beings are naturally resistant to squandering resources whenever effort is involved. However, do not think of this trait as laziness. Instead, it relates to a careful allocation of personal energies. Effort is a factor that has to be consistent with one’s personal motivation and committed goals. Further, it is tied to one’s self-efficacy level or confidence that we can succeed. To ask someone to invest effort is never a simple request. It involves a cost that they must consider in relation to other demands being placed upon the mind at the same moment in time. We are resource-limited creatures, but thinking uses up resources remarkably quickly. So to resist an invitation to think is not necessarily an indication of laziness. It could reflect a decision to be economical, cautious, or even prudent with our personal resources.

Thinking also involves high levels of uncertainty. There are too many unknowns in this deal. The dominant motive is often to conserve energy and so to avoid initiating actions when outcomes are uncertain. Since there is never any guarantee that thinking will result in a satisfactory result, any invitation to think brings along with it an invitation to be punished through failing to live up to expectations.

Avoiding failure is a robustly strong motive, several times stronger than the motive to obtain an objectively similar level of positive success or reward. Such notions are expressed in terms of two well validated cognitive principles: (a) whenever called on to commit to decisions we are risk-averse and (b) bad is stronger than good.

Difficulties in using the knowledge in our heads

Furthermore, there is the interesting problem of mental availability. Such availability refers to the mind’s ability to have appropriate information on hand and sufficient cognitive resources to deal with the problem at hand. Thinking relies directly on our ability to access information held within long-term memory. Our judgements are linked into, and will be strongly biased towards, whatever information we can immediately recall. But one of the most important attributes of any stored information is the ease that it can be accessed with and then processed. When information is not easily forthcoming, people feel uncomfortable, less confident, and less motivated to act.

Whenever the mind is stressed by difficult recall demands then the fact that difficulties are experienced itself becomes a factor determining how people use the information recalled. As shown in the research of social psychologist Norbet Schwarz, ease of access can produce strange effects. For instance, in one study he asked people to recall past incidents when they were assertive, and then asked them to rate how assertive they were themselves. Half the people were asked to recall 6 incidents, but the other half was asked to recall 12 incidents. People who recalled 6 incidents rated themselves as more assertive than those who recalled 12 incidents. Why? Because it easy to recall 6 such incidents. It is hard to recall 12. Within your mental world, the difficulty of recall determines the value and meaningfulness of the experience. Difficulty of recall becomes more important than the volume recalled. It is known that as information becomes difficult to recall, it becomes unlikely to influence one’s active thinking. Much validity can be expressed in the popular adage ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

We are motivated by knowledge gaps, but put off by knowledge chasms

Central to Dr Willingham’s argument is the role played by curiosity. We are naturally curious animals, well motivated to find out more about our world. While this sounds wonderful, there is a huge constraint placed upon such motivation. We are highly selective in what we pay attention to. This selectivity creates a major problem whenever we expect another person to exert effort in learning or thinking. Any such thinking, as driven by natural curiosity, has to involve successful levels of comprehension, skill mastery or problem solving. There simply is no such thing as ‘general curiosity’. It is something that works only when turned on.

We cannot be curious about all possible things: instead, we are attuned to knowledge gaps. We will seek out and pay attention to things we already know about in an effort to increase our personal knowledge base. But we do so provided the knowledge gap itself is perceived as bridgeable within the short term. In allocating our personal resources, this factor is critical. We strive to close worthwhile gaps, but not chasms. Most of us have little interest in how devices such as computers and radios work. We are unmotivated to find out since the perceived knowledge gap is too high to stimulate interest. We are not motivated by relative ignorance, or by our general lack of knowledge. This lack of motivation to learn things we know little about has been demonstrated even in intelligent college students in laboratory studies.

But we become curious when we can see both (a) a knowledge gap relevant to us, together with (b) the means by which it can be closed. Paradoxically, having some prior knowledge provides impetus for wanting to acquire even more knowledge. This effect is strong if the new knowledge can be acquired in the short term with relatively low cost. Metaphorically speaking, when we build our knowledge, we invest effort most strongly when foundations are already securely laid down. But we show disinclination to start constructio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Learning within classrooms
• Part 2 Learning foundations
• Part 3 Know thyself
• Glossary
• References
• Index