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Visible Learning's List of Influences Ranked by Effect Size

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Visible Learning's List of Influences Ranked by Effect Size

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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.

Below you can find an updated version of our first, second and third visualization of effect sizes related to student achievement.
Order VL for Teachers!

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Hattie effect size list - 256 Influences Related To Achievement

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Hattie's updated effect size list of 256 influences across all areas related to student achievement.

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SOLO = Structure of Observed Learning Outcome

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Education Week - Peter DeWitt's Finding Common Ground

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Assessment is one of education's new four-letter words, but it shouldn't be, because it's not assessment's fault that some adults misuse it. Assessment is supposed to guide learning. It creates a dynamic where teachers and students can work together to progress their own understanding of a subject or topic. Assessment should be about authentic growth.

Testing in the U.S. is very different from assessment. I know that sounds absurd but tests have more finality here. When it comes to testing, we have a love affair with multiple choice or true and false. We test whether they know the right answer...or not. Lots of tests are made of hard questions and easy ones. How deeply they know the answer doesn't matter, just as long as they know it. State tests focus less on what students know, and more on what teacher's supposedly taught.

When it comes to assessing student learning, most educators know about Bloom's Taxonomy. They use it in their practices, and feel as though they have a good handle on how to use it in their instructional practices and assessment of student learning. In our educational conversations we bring up Blooms Taxonomy, and debate whether students have knowledge of a topic, and if they can apply it to their daily life.

Interestingly enough, Bloom himself has been quoted as saying that his handbook is " one of the most widely cited yet least read books in American education". We are guilty of doing that from time to time. Its human nature to tout a philosophy that we may only have surface level knowledge of, which is kind of ironic when we're talking about Bloom's Taxonomy.

For a more in depth understanding of Bloom's, the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University website says, " Here are the authors' brief explanations of these main categories from the appendix of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Handbook One, pp. 201-207):

According to the @LeadingLearner Blog, " it (Bloom's) was revised in 2000. In Bloom's original work the knowledge dimensions consisted of factual, conceptual and procedural knowledge. Later the metacognitive knowledge dimension was added and the nouns changed to verbs with the last two cognitive processes switched in the order.

The criticism with Bloom's is that it seems to focus on regurgitating information, and that anything goes. A student can provide a surface-level answer to a difficult question, or a deep answer to a surface-level question. It may show a student has an answer, but does it allow for teachers and students to go deeper with their learning, or do they just move on?

According to Pam Hook, " There is no necessary progression in the manner of teaching or learning in the Bloom's taxonomy." If we want students to take control over their own learning, can they use Bloom's Taxonomy, or is there a better method to help them understand where to go next?
Going SOLO
A much less known taxonomy of assessing student learning is SOLO, which was created by John Biggs and Kevin Collis in 1982. According to Biggs, " SOLO, which stands for the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome, is a means of classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling us to assess students' work in terms of its quality not of how many bits of this and of that they got right."

According to Biggs and Collis (1982), there are five stages of " ascending structural complexity." Those five stages are:

For a better look, here is a diagram provided (with permission) by John Biggs

If we are going to spend so much time in the learning process, we need to do more than accept that students " get" something at " their level" and move on. Using SOLO taxonomy really presents teachers and students with the opportunity to go deeper into learning whatever topic or subject they are involved in, and assess learning as they travel through that learning experience.

Through reading blogs and research, one of the positives sides to SOLO is that it makes it easier for teachers to identify the levels, and therefore help guide students through the learning process. Ad for my unschooling friends, this has implications for all students, whether they are within the four walls of a school or outside of them.

John Hattie (Peter is a Visible Learning Trainer) is a proponent of SOLO Taxonomy, and has broken it down to an easier way for students to understand which gives them the ability to assess their own learning. Hattie suggests that teachers can use:

No Idea - equivalent to the prestructural level.

One Idea - equivalent to the unistructural level

Many Ideas - equivalent to the multistructural level

Relate - equivalent to the relational level

Extend - equivalent to the extended abstract

Lastly, Hook goes on to say, " there are some real advantages to SOLO Taxonomy.

These advantages concern not only item construction and scoring, but incorporate features of the process of evaluation that pay attention to how students learn, and how teachers devise instructional procedures to help students use progressively more complex cognitive processes.

Both teachers and students often progress from more surface to deeper constructs and this is mirrored in the four levels of the SOLO taxonomy.

The levels can be interpreted relative to the proficiency of the students. Six year old students can be taught to derive general principles and suggest hypotheses, though obviously to a different level of abstraction and detail than their older peers. Using the SOLO method, it is relatively easy to construct items to assess such abstractions.

Unlike the experience of some with the Bloom taxonomy it is relatively easy to identify and categorise the SOLO levels.

Similarly, teachers could be encouraged to use the 'plus one' principle when choosing appropriate learning material for students. That is, the teacher can aim to move the student one level higher in the taxonomy by appropriate choice of learning material and instructional sequencing.

Connect with Peter on Twitter. For other blogs about SOLO see @LeadLearner's Redesigning Classrooms Using Solo to Increase Challenge

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What's Our Best Taxonomy? Bloom's or SOLO?

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Assessment is one of education's new four-letter words, but it shouldn't be, because it's not assessment's fault that some adults misuse it. Assessment is supposed to guide learning. It creates a dynamic where teachers and students can work together to progress their own understanding of a subject or topic.

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Also check out #wodb on Twitter

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with special thanks to Christopher Danielson and his Which One Doesn’t Belong - A Shapes Book.

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with special thanks to Christopher Danielson and his Which One Doesn’t Belong - A Shapes Book.

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kwhittemore@larsontexts.com

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@KWhittemoreBIL

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These personal whiteboards are ideal for a variety of activities.Less expensive than commercially purchased dry-erase boards, students can use the boards for easy practice, or insert printed materials and keep a clean copy for later use. Boards also