John Hattie, Visible Learning. Pt 2: effective methods. 

My motivations exactly. You may be interested in my book 'Fundamentals of Teaching' - which brings the evidence together. www.routledge.com/The-Fundamentals-of-Teaching-A-Five-Step-Model-to-Put-the-Research-Evidence/Bell/p/book/9780367358655

@@oakbellUK From @Alison , Many thanks. Such idiocies as neuromyths of learning styles, and ability grouping, and testing with no feedback loop as to the validity of testing methods, or even a pre- stated desired outcome, is driving me nuts ! Having said that - I can quite see the stultifying effect of neo-liberalism on teaching, and what outcomes are valued - but still...... I shall follow up the link 👍🏼

@@alisonl9586 I felt similarly. In about 2008, when I first came across Hattie's work (and Geoff Petty, Marzano etc), I was working in an ordinary secondary school. As part of a training day, in our science department, I got teachers to discuss how you would design an experiment to find out if a particular teaching method was effective or not. To my amazement, half the science teachers felt that such an experiment was not possible because you could not control the variables. I was so stunned by this I didn't, at first, know how to proceed! Later, i realised that in science we ONLY teach about 'control of variables', 'fair test' experiments and never introduce the sorts of experiment done in agriculture, medicine etc where we use large numbers of participants, control-groups, averages, effect-sizes etc. Because we never taught the students these things, many science teachers are unaware of this approach. We see this in the way politicians and journalists have handled the COVID pandemic: they are simply not mentally equipped to deal with probability, time-delay (eg infection>disease>death) and cannot tell the difference between correlation and cause. The situation with evidence in education is far better now than in 2008, but is far from being evidence-based.You will still hear teachers say things like: "I don't agree with that evidence, it's not my experience." (Send a message via the (ebtn.org.uk) website if you'd like a further dialogue.)

I suggest the problem is that evidence disempowers those who currently hold power. Educational leaders have got used to being listened to by staff while they express their opinions and then get staff to act on those opinions. If ordinary teachers discover that there is externally validated evidence then school leaders would have to admit they were wrong. - Difficult. "Progress is made, funeral-by-funeral".

Yes. They are in Hattie's book. Visible Learning.

How does he ignore it?

Lydia C . I had to watch it again,. About 7 mins in he shows a pie chart that shows the biggest variance comes from the student. But his ideology, which he gets from teaching culture is that pupils are equal, so he then almost immediately says, that the biggest variance is the way we teach, did he not see his own chart! Or does confirmation bias blind us? All the techniques he esposes and then stand there and lectures to the audience. Do as I say, not as I do! I remember noticing so many logical missteps when I first heard him, I stopped listening. Great research though and the idea of comparing effect size is fantastic. If we could define the techniques more practically and follow logic to the conclusion it would tell us a lot.

@@jamesmaybury7452 I thought he was aware of that but 'short of doing brain surgery' there's not a whole lot teachers can do to -change- the kids. That's why he focuses instead on the next most important aspect which he can affect: himself. Did I get anything wrong? I would like to know better.

Max J . Practically speaking you are right, we are always better to concentrate on changing ourselves as that is what we have most control over. My comment was picking one of many logical missteps that he makes as he seems driven by ideology rather than logic, which is such a shame from someone who has made a great logical enterprise of comparing effect sizes and some great (if ill defined) analysis. He also makes a fantastically insightful point that ‘almost everything gives a positive effect but we can give up doing things with a small positive effect to concentrate on things with a big positive effect’. That’s why I find it frustrating that he then falls into lazy, illogical, ideological assertions when it comes to the practical outworking of his research. Maybe the example I chose was not the best one to use, but it was the one which most noticeably jarred with me between what his research showed and what he proposed as a conclusion. Like you I should give him the benefit of the unspoken logical adjustment that you mentioned, point taken.

@@jamesmaybury7452 If you'd continued watching you'd have heard him say later in the video that although the student part of the influence is a large one (he also talks about parent, peer, and so on/ shows a chart), the teacher's effect is also very large and really the only thing we have control of so that's what we should focus on.