Posts Tagged ‘visible learning’

We have been approached by a number of teachers over the past few months to discuss the value of streaming students in ability groupings as a way of improving performance. There is also a big push amongst education unions to lower class sizes as a way of again improving performance of students. The logic behind such requests is that, given the increasing variance of competency that is occurring in classes (can be up to 7 years variance between students) , then reducing class sizes or streaming students in to approximate ability groups would enable a teacher to better be able to provide the point of need teaching for the students.

Rather than entering into what can be quite an emotive debate we thought we would extract what John Hattie uncovered in his synthesis of meta-analyses book Visible Learning. We have created a brief summary of the appropriate meta-analyses followed by the conclusion Hattie drew from studying the research. For more detail see his book. The effect size one would look for to decide whether it is worth pursuing is d > 0.4)

1.  Ability Grouping [14 Meta-analyses, 500 studies, Effect -Low (d = 0.12)]

• Fundamentally about whether classes are heterogeneous or homogeneous in ability of achievement
• Tracking
  • At the Upper School level about undertaking different courses
  • At the Middle School level students normally tracked in some subjects (normally English and Maths) and not in others
  • At Earlier Levels typically students take the same subjects as each other but the orientation or pacing of the instruction is intended to match the differing ability levels of the students
• Essence of the research shows that tracking has minimal effects on learning outcomes and profound negative equity effects
• However, there was also qualitative evidence that low track classes (i.e for lower competency students) were more fragmented, less engaging, and taught by fewer well-trained teachers. This points to the quality of teaching and the nature of the student interactions as the key issues not the compositional structure of the classes.
• Hattie points out that there might be some benefits if the lower tracked classes were taught by well-trained teachers and were more stimulating and challenging.

2.       Multi-Grade / Multi-Age Classes [3 Meta-Analyses, 94 studies, Effect -Low (d = 0.04)]

• Multi-age classes include students from more than one year level who are taught in the same classroom by the same teacher. This is common in small schools, developing nations, and also by some schools to allow for “more flexible grouping and learning styles, and having students work cooperatively and collaboratively”
• Research essentially shows that no significant difference to single-grade results in achievement or affective outcomes
• Part of issue is that teacher rarely capitalise on the multi-grade or multi-age arrangement to promote learning to from peers. Instead they tend to teach distinctly different curricula, maintain grade levels, and deliver separate lessons to each grade-level group

3.       Within-Class Grouping [2 Meta-Analyses, 129 studies, Effect – Low (d = 0.16)]

• Defined as “a teacher’s practice of forming groups of students of similar ability within an individual class”
• Research showed for high ability students (d ~ 0.29) compared to the remaining students (d ~ 0.16)
• It is more beneficial for large class sizes (> 35 students gives d = 0.35) than smaller classes (< 26 students gives d = 0.06 – 0.22)
• The beneficial effects are more associated with small group learning and instruction

4.       Small-Group Learning [2 Meta-Analyses, 78 studies, Effect – Medium (d = 0.49)]

• This differs from within-class grouping in that it typically involves assigning a task to a small group and then expecting them to complete this task (only research done is at tertiary level)
• Small group learning had significantly more positive effects than individual learning when
  • Students had group work experience or instruction
  • Cooperative learning strategies were employed
  • Group size was small
  • Small group learning led to greater self-esteem among undergraduate students

John Hattie’s Summary of the effects of grouping (page 95)

• “… that instructional materials and the nature of instruction must be adapted to these specific groups”
• “Simply placing students in small or homogeneous groups is not enough”
• “For grouping to be maximally effective materials and teaching must be varied and made appropriately challenging to accommodate the needs of students at their differing levels of ability”

Final Note

One note that we must add in to this if your school is going down the path of grouping students in some fashion of form. This is a school structural issue that is not addressed in the research. One of the barriers we have found to make such groupings work is the timetables. If you are going to provide the appropriate teacher resources and skills to this model then schools really need to address their fundamental timetabling structures and how they use teacher resources within a school. This is a particularly thorny issue in secondary schools as teachers are quite often teaching across many year levels and timetables are scheduled to suit this need rather than student learning needs. Most secondary schools would need to explore how they are going to manage their staff structures and budget.

An example of a timetable we saw in a New Zealand school (Years 5 – 10) allowed for groupings (and thus allowed for the placing of teacher experience and resources at the points of need) is shown below. Notice that the day is broken into 3 blocks and the actual time assigned to particular KLA would be up to the team of teachers.

Most of the teachers I work with, in schools all over Australia, have for some time included Learning Goals or Learning Intentions in their planning and use these with their students. Some teachers use WALT (What Are we Learning Today?) or simply begin with the phrase ‘Today I am learning to…’ In some learning spaces, the Learning Goal has a designated space on a whiteboard or noticeboard so that the students can refer to it as they work. If the learning community is further along on their journey, the teacher will make more explicit use of it – asking students to share how they’re going, having students set their own learning goals with support from the teacher and peers and making time for students to purposefully compare their learning against their learning goal and consider ‘where to next?’
What fewer learning communities are doing is breaking down the Learning Goal into chunks of skill and understanding, so that the students can step through the process in a much more explicit way. Success Criteria can provide highly effective ‘road maps’ for student learning as they unpack the Learning Goal in such a way that each skill or piece of knowledge required to fulfil it, is made clear to the student. Success Criteria are a series of ‘I can’ or ‘I am able to’ statements that allow the learner and the teacher to see how the learning of a new skill or concept breaks down from beginning to completion.

Success Criteria should form the backbone of our assessment because they allow the student to demonstrate their understanding according to very clear and specific indicators. This means a more efficient pathway from between learning and assessment for the teacher – the student is assessed against the Success Criteria that is appropriate for their point of need – and a clearer, shared understanding of what is required for success.

Some examples (at middle primary and middle secondary level):
Learning Goal: ‘To Understand how trees breathe’
Success Criteria:
• I can describe how trees breathe
• I can show how trees breathe in a drawing or diagram
• I can share one interesting fact about how trees breathe

Learning Goal: ‘To compare democracy to dictatorship using a suitable graphic organiser.’
Success Criteria:
• The graphic organiser I have chosen fits my purpose
• I am able to explain democracy and dictatorship clearly
• I have generated at least five points of comparison’
• I have supported my comparison with a combination of reliable print and e-texts

Note how the Success Criteria is written in student-friendly language, which reflects the process of co-construction of the Criteria by the student and the teacher. Developing and using Success Criteria in this way also empowers the student and they work using indicators that make sense to them, towards a Learning Goal that they have genuinely processed at a meta-cognitive level. In every school I have worked in, teachers and students who have embedded Learning goals AND Success Criteria into their routine experience higher engagement, a strong sense of empowerment and have helped create the opportunity for each student to experience success, through using a learning roadmap that is appropriate to them.

For more on using Learning goals and Success Criteria as discussed by Visible Learning guru, Professor John Hattie, read his latest book ‘Visible Learning for Teachers’ and sign up for our term 3 Visible Learning Workshops – dynamic, informative and highly practical sessions designed with real teachers in mind!

Cathryn Stephens