Factors Impacting Learning

Effective instructional leaders often examine actions within a school through the lens of evidence=impact, what do teachers/students do and what is the impact on student learning. John Hattie, Viviane Robinson and a group of educational researchers analyzed data of over 800 meta-analyses from thousands of studies on every aspect of school and instruction. From this research, they were able to quantify the effect size on learning from each action/evidence on the impact on student learning. They called this Visible Learning, what action was observed and the effect size or impact it had on student learning. The research produced data on over 250 aspects/actions' impact on student learning in terms of effect size. The researchers concluded that if educators knew which factors produced the greatest positive gains in student achievement, they could do more of the effective practices and fewer of the negative or ineffective practices. It's important to note that these aren't meant to be done in isolation.

Using the most effective practices with the highest positive impact on student learning as part of as part of systemic instructional coherence is an effective practice of instructional leaders. The Principal's Playbook adopted Common Instructional Framework and High Impact Instructional Strategies are aligned with the most positively impactful effect sizes for each action within a school framework and aligned for systemic instructional coherence.

252 Influences And Effect Sizes Related To Student Achievement

John Hattie developed a way of synthesizing various influences in different meta-analyses according to their effect size (Cohen’s d). In his ground-breaking study “Visible Learning” he ranked 138 influences that are related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects. Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40. Therefore he decided to judge the success of influences relative to this ‘hinge point’, in order to find an answer to the question “What works best in education?” Originally, Hattie studied six areas that contribute to learning: the student, the home, the school, the curricula, the teacher, and teaching and learning approaches. (The updated list also includes the classroom.) But Hattie did not only provide a list of the relative effects of different influences on student achievement. He also tells the story underlying the data. He found that the key to making a difference was making teaching and learning visible. He further explained this story in his book “Visible learning for teachers“. John Hattie updated his list of 138 effects to 150 effects in Visible Learning for Teachers (2011), and more recently to a list of 195 effects in The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education (2015). His research is now based on nearly 1200 meta-analyses – up from the 800 when Visible Learning came out in 2009. According to Hattie the story underlying the data has hardly changed over time even though some effect sizes were updated and we have some new entries at the top, at the middle, and at the end of the list.

"Assigning blame never fixed a problem", but people are quick to play the blame game when students underform academically. Instructional leaders and great teachers realize they are the variable that impacts student learning. The shift for increased student achievement is grounded in the belief that the school sees itself as an effect agent of change and the perception of the teachers believe that the faculty as a whole can execute courses of action required to positively affect student achievement.