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Robert Marzano and John Hattie have both reviewed the research on which teaching strategies work best. While they used different methods and terminology, they agreed on these 8 powerful strategies.

1. A Clear Focus

Hattie states that lesson goals:

Should clarify what you want your students to learn

Can focus on surface or deep learning (or both)

Must be challenging for the students relative to their current mastery of the topic

May be grouped (i.e. a single lesson may have more than one goal)

Need to be shared with the students

Marzano also found that posing questions at the start of a lesson is an effective way to focus students. For example:

How do you add mixed fractions with different denominators? That's what you must know by the end of this lesson.

What is the difference between elements and compounds?

Why is Persuasive Essay A better than Persuasive Essay B?

When (what period) were Egypt's great pyramids built?

Hattie suggests using questions in a slightly different way:

What are today's lesson goals?

What do I already know that will help me achieve these goals?

What actions will I need to do to ensure I achieve these goals?

See How to Set Lesson Goals to Boost Student Achievement

Strategy 2: Offer Overt Instruction

Robert Marzano claims it is important to explicitly teach your students the things they need to learn. In fact, he found it was the most critical factor (teacher controlled) affecting students' success. You need to:

Tell them what they need to know

Show them how to do things they must be able to do for themselves.

John Hattie did not review explicit teaching per se, but he did find that Direct Instruction was very effective. Direct Instruction involves explicitly teaching a carefully sequenced curriculum. And, it has built-in cumulative practice.

Hattie also highlighted the power of giving students worked examples. More specifically, you should use worked examples when explaining how to multi-step tasks. Marzano also highlights the importance of providing examples and non-examples of the concept you are teaching. For example, when teaching prime numbers it would be useful to highlight:

2 as an example

9, 15 and 21 as non-examples

This helps to avoid confusion with odd numbers.

Marzano also found that you can explicitly teach deeper levels of understanding. How? By using graphic organisers. You should use graphic organisers to show how different ideas were related to each other. For example, you should use them to show steps, cause-effect, hierarchy, lists, comparisons, etc.

Neither Hattie nor Marzano believes that great teaching is nothing more than standing out the front of the class and imparting knowledge. However, both agree that telling students what they need to know and showing students what they need to be able to do are essential aspects of teaching.

For an example of explicit teaching in context see the I Do, We Do, You Do model.

Strategy 3: Get the Students to Engage with the Content

You must teach students what they need to know and be able to do. But, it is also essential to get them to actively engage with the content.

Marzano and Hattie agree that this starts with students' prior knowledge. You need to help them link new information to their prior knowledge of the topic. Students need to engage with the content as soon as they hear it by:

Adding it to what they already know, or

Using it to clarify some of the faulty assumptions they currently hold

Engaging at the Surface Level

When students are relatively unfamiliar with what you are teaching, engagement strategies include:

Generating questions while reading

Taking and organising notes

Summarising

Rehearsal

Marzano also found getting them to work with physical manipulatives is helpful. And, he found that the simple act of asking students simple recall questions works well.

All these strategies are useful, but they only allow students to engage with the content at a surface level.

Engaging at a Deeper Level

Hattie and Marzano also found several ways for students to engage at a deeper level. These include exploring relationships between things using:

Marzano also recommends using analogies, such as:

Persuasive devices are to a writer what tools are to a tradie, or

The Magna Carta offered citizens what a referee offers a game of soccer

These are practical strategies that exemplify the higher levels of the SOLO taxonomy. This is an alternative to Bloom that Hattie advocates.

For further information, see 7 High-Impact Learning Strategies You Must Teach Your Students.

Strategy 4: Give Feedback

It is vital that you give your students feedback after they engage with any new material. This involves:

Highlighting what is right and wrong, or good and bad about their work

Helping students to see how they can improve

See How to Give Feedback to Students: The Advanced Guide See How to Give Feedback to Students: The Advanced Guide
Robert Marzano found that you need to give your students feedback while they still have time to improve. John Hattie agreed with this but went further. He found that:
See How to Give Feedback to Students: The Advanced Guide
Robert Marzano found that you need to give your students feedback while they still have time to improve. John Hattie agreed with this but went further. He found that:

Novice or struggling students need immediate feedback

More experienced and capable students do better when they receive delayed feedback

See The Value of Feedback Infographic
Hattie also highlighted that feedback is a two-way street. Student results provide the basis for both feedback to:

Students on how they can improve

You on the impact your teaching is having

Strategy 5: Multiple Exposures

If you want students to internalize new information, you need to expose them to it several times.

Robert Marzano explored ways to enhance students' vocabulary. He found that it was critical for teachers to expose students to the same word multiple times.

John Hattie picks up on the significance of multiple exposures. He talks about the critical importance of techniques such as rehearsal and review.

Rehearsal means going over the material until you can remember it

Review involves going over things you have learned previously

He also stresses the merit of giving students time to practice doing the things they have learned to do. When spaced out over time, Hattie found that having students practice things led to a 26-percentile improvement in their marks.

On a more cautious note, Hattie warned that practice without feedback could be dangerous. Why? It leads to students internalizing the wrong things.

Strategy 6: Have Students Apply Their Knowledge

Robert Marzano found that helping students apply their knowledge deepens their understanding.

A Deductive Process

Knowledge application is a deductive process. Put another way, students apply general principles to specific case studies or problems. Marzano found that deductive thinking helps students to generalise their learning beyond the topic or task at hand. He advocates:

Teaching students how to think deductively

Giving them guided practice in doing so

Hattie confirmed that deductive processes are much more useful than inductive teaching (i.e. asking students to discover general principles from observing particular situations).

Problem-Solving

Knowledge application also involves problem-solving. Robert found that problem-solving had a significant effect (d = 0.54) on students' understanding. Marzano believes that problems should require students to apply previously learned knowledge and skills. Hattie agrees. When problem-solving is used in this way, Hattie found a similar effect size (d = 0.61) to Marzano. However, when a problem is used to stimulate discovery learning, the opposite is true (d = 0.15). Hattie also emphasized the importance of teaching students how to solve problems.

Strategy 7: Get Students Working Together

They also agree that inter-group competition can increase the effect of cooperative learning even more.

However, neither Marzano nor Hattie believes that cooperative learning should replace whole-class instruction. Nor should it replace individual learning activities.

Hattie highlights the importance of individual students' competence. If students haven't gained enough mastery of the material, they cannot actively participate in cooperative learning tasks.

Marzano adds that if students are to master what they are being taught, they also need opportunities for individual practice and feedback.

Finally, Marzano and Hattie agree that cooperative learning is only useful when you:

Structure it carefully

Keep groups small

Teach students how to work in groups

For further information, read Group Work That Works.

8. Build Students' Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to a student's belief about their ability to successfully complete a task. It is situation-specific. For example, a student may feel confident that they can dance well on stage but be insecure about public speaking.

Hattie & Marzano both found that students' self-efficacy had a substantial impact on how well they did at school. Students who:

Believed they would master fractions were more likely to do so

Saw themselves as poor readers were less likely to improve their reading

The most effective way to boost self-efficacy is for your student to experience genuine success. Scaffolded tasks, such as with the I Do We Do You Do model, help students experience such success.

Students can also gain self-efficacy for a given task through:

Seeing 'similar others' succeed at the task

Verbal persuasion

Yet, these are both less potent than experiencing success.

Marzano & Hattie in a Nutshell

John Hattie and Robert Marzano have each conducted significant reviews of what works best in the classroom.

There are some apparent differences in their work.

They use different terminology to each other.

Marzano uses more isolated strategies, while Hattie combines strategies into broader approaches

Marzano's findings are based heavily on teacher-designed assessments. Yet Hattie's findings make more use of standardized tests

However, as you can see, there is significant agreement between Robert Marzano and John Hattie when it comes to what works best in the classroom.

SHAUN KILLIAN
(MEd., MLead.)

Shaun Killian (me) is an experienced and passionate teacher, as well as a past school principal. After a heart transplant and having both my legs amputated, I am not yet capable of returning to work. Yet, my passion for helping students succeed has led me to use my time to research teaching and associated practices. I then share what I find in practical ways through this website. The greatest compliment I have ever received from a past student was I never left any student behind. That is mission of most teachers and I hope you find the information on this site useful.

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8 Strategies Robert Marzano & John Hattie Agree On

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Robert Marzano and John Hattie have both reviewed the research on which teaching strategies work best. While they used different methods and terminology, they agreed on these 8 powerful strategies.

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Imagine inclusive classrooms where every student thrives. Lead Inclusion provides research-based courses and professional learning on inclusion, universal design for learning, assessment, RTI, and intervention strategies.

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We've been telling students that doing well in school creates opportunities-that showing up, doing the work, and meeting teachers' expectations will prepare them for their futures. Unfortunately, that's a myth.

Far too many students graduate from high school still unprepared for the lives they want to lead. They enroll in college and land in remedial courses, or start jobs and discover they're missing skills they need. We wanted to understand why.

To do this, we followed nearly 4,000 students in five diverse school systems to learn more about their experiences. What we found was unnerving: classroom after classroom filled with A and B students whose big goals for their lives are slipping further away each day, unbeknownst to them and their families-not because they can't master challenging material, but because they're rarely given a real chance to try.

In fact, most students-and especially students of color, those from low-income families, those with mild to moderate disabilities, and English language learners-spent the vast majority of their school days missing out on four crucial resources: grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations. Students spent more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that weren't appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn't ask enough of them-the equivalent of six months of wasted class time in each core subject. And middle and high school students reported that their school experiences were engaging less than half the time. In classrooms with more access to these resources, students did better-particularly if they started the school year behind their peers.

This lack of access isn't random. It's the result of choices adults make at every level of our educational system. We're asking all adults whose choices affect students' experiences to commit to unraveling the opportunity myth.

Citation: TNTP. (2018). The Opportunity Myth: What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down-and How to Fix It. https://tntp.org/tntp_the-opportunity-myth_web/

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The Myth of Average:  Todd Rose at TEDxSonomaCounty

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CAST is a multifaceted organization with a singular ambition: Bust the barriers to learning that millions of people experience every day. We do this by helping educators and organizations apply insights from the learning sciences and leading-edge practices to educational design and implementation.

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Join us for the 9th Annual CAST UDL Symposium: Through the Lens of UDL, online and in-person in Denver, CO, July 31 - August 1, 2023. Let's co-create a vision for UDL as a lens for our collective work of designing learning without limits.

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Todd Rose: "The End of Average" | Talks at Google

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The U.S. Department of Education’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act website brings together department and grantee IDEA information and resources. The IDEA makes available a free appropriate public education to and ensures special education and related services to eligible children with disabilities.

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Oberti v. Board of Education of the Borough of Clementon

Starting in 1990, we represented the family of Rafael Oberti, a student with Down Syndrome, in their efforts to get Rafael placed in a regular classroom with necessary supports.

The Law Center's 1993 case, Oberti v. Board of Education, established inclusion with supplementary aids and services as the presumption because it is "a fundamental value of the right to public education for children with disabilities." This case established that if placement outside the classroom is necessary, the school district must then include the child in as many school programs with children who do not have disabilities "to the maximum extent appropriate."

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Oberti v. Board of Education of the Borough of Clementon | The Public Interest Law Center

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The Law Center's 1993 case, Oberti v. Board of Education, established inclusion with supplementary aids and services as the presumption because it is "a fundamental value of the right to public education for children with disabilities."

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Yacine Hakmi and Ashraf Meguellati from Algeria walk us through the successful design they use at the STEM Teacher Training program to help teachers become excited about and apply UDL in their classrooms.

Rene shares how he brought UDL into his high school in Houston, TX when he was the principal and how the framework continued to influence his leadership as he moved through other districts and positions. BONUS: He shares a crosswalk of the intentional outcomes of UDL, PBIS, and International Baccalaureate used at his high school.

Continuing the UDL district implementation series with Fond du Lac Schools, Shannon Schultz offers a deep dive into their UDL Readiness Rubric.

Gina shares a lesson she taught in May of 2020 at the height of COVID lockdown. It reconnected her students with the great outdoors, supported their social emotional learning, and maintained their academic rigor all while using the digital learning environment. It was all planned using the UDL framework.

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We have 2 informative Podcast series. Our UDL in 15 Minutes - The Podcast is our original podcast where educators and UDL leaders share their experiences and thoughts on implementing and using UDL. This Podcast series can be found below on this page. Our UDL Research in 15 Minutes - The Podcast is our newer [...]