Visible learning with James Nottingham

So - today i went to an all day event with all the teachers, in the equivalent to my county.

James Nottingham spoke about visible learning, all day. James Nottingham is the practical side to the research that John Hattie conducts.

The first thing that struck me really, was that he had the option of asking questions on todaysmeet, a concept which i will explain in a future post, as well as twitter and of course in person.

The whole concept evolves around the effect sizes of various factors. Here are a few:

WATER  - has a an effect size - but it is less than the average ( which is 0.4). However - according to the numbers, the numbers suggest that for a student to consume more than 2 litres of water a day has a positive effect in their achievements. I don't know if this is a placebo effect, Nottingham suggested that the best ideas are "born on the can" ;)

CHANGING SCHOOLS - has en effect size equivalent to that of being set back half a year. So children switch schools often, they will be set back by half a year, on average, each time.

HOMEWORK - Homework has an effect size of 0.29 . It is positive, but it isn't even average. So why are we spending so much time on it? Younger kids effect size to homework is 0.01 - That means that for younger kids - drinking 2 litres of water has a more positive effect on achievement than homework does! For teenage kids, the effect size is 0.54. That means it has a more than average effect on achievement but not as high as home preparation - the flipped classroom style. Which has 0.9 - that's more than the equivalent to an entire years advantage!

These are just numbers, and as impressive as they may be - they don't compare to these coming up. Here is "Hattie's top ten effect sizes for achievement" -

To read these numbers, Nottingham explained that the average was 0.4, and that this was equivalent to a year. This means that 0.8 is a two year advantage and 1.2 is a three year advantage.

10th place we have FEEDBACK, comes in at 0.75

9th place: TEACHER CLARITY, comes in at 0.75

8th place: COMPREHENSIVE INTERVENTIONS FOR LEARNING DISABLES STUDENTS , comes in at 0.77

7th place: CLASSROOM DISCUSSION, comes in at 0.82

6th place: MICRO TEACHING, comes in at 0.88 - Micro teaching is filming/documenting your own lessons and then reviewing these (with a colleague)

5th place: PROVIDING FORMATIVE EVALUATION, comes in at 0.9

4th place: TEACHER CREDIBILITY, comes in at 0.9

3rd place: RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION, comes in at 1.07

2nd place: PIAGETIAN PROGRAMS, comes in at 1.28 - We've passed a three year advantage! By this influence/factor individualisation and differentiation is meant - as well as ideas like Vygotskys zone for proximal development

1st place: ASSESSMENT CAPABLE STUDENTS, comes in at 1,44.

Assessment capable students - students being able to assess their own work. How might that be done you ask?  Students need to be able to answer the following questions.

What am i trying to achieve?
How much progress have a made so far?
What are my next steps?

Nottingham had a cute example of this that i would like to share with you.

The example is set in a classroom of 4 year olds, that are being assigned the task to paint a picture of something that they saw on the way to school that day. The teaches says "Today we are going to focus on 2 things. First, we are going to fill the whole page, so that's the whole page from corner to corner - we don't just want a picture up in the corner of the page. Second, we are going to use at least three colors in our picture. "

Now - we've set the stage and they are able to answer the first of the three questions, and reflect on the remaining two.

Nottingham approaches a boy that's drawing a picture and asks him what he is doing. The boy is able to tell him that he is painting a picture. When asked which kind of picture, kids without specific instruction may not be able to elaborate - but this kid can tell you that he is painting a picture from something on the way to school, that takes up the entire page and that has at least three colors.

Now Nottingham asks him what he has painted so far, the kid can elaborate that he hasn't taken up the entire page yet, so he's going to draw a tree, and that he is still missing a color.

So naturally the kid knows that these are his next steps.

This kind of teaching is set with very clear goals - enabling students to take charge of their own progress. It forces them to take responsibility for their own learning.

Nottingham explained that he later heard two 4 year olds have a lively debate about wether 3 shades of red in fact was three colors or not. Without this kind of goal oriented, self assessment type of learning, a discussion like this may not have happened - and an opportunity for learning would have been lost.

Nottingham raised many issues throughout the day. Such as the problem with praising achievement over progress. This doesn't mean that achievement is bad - but progress is better.

I'll probably have more thoughts on the issue, so now i think i'll go find one of his books to explore them further.

I hope you found this useful - please feel free to comment if you feel that i am unclear ;) .