File

Visible
Learning

Glen Pearsall
© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 1

pearsallglen@gmail.com

Visible Learning – An Introduction

Visible learning is a relatively simple idea: We must strive to make student learning
visible to teachers, so they can assess the effect of their teaching on their students.
Moreover, students need to have teaching made visible to them so that they can
eventually become their own teachers and continue beyond school as lifelong
learners. In Visible Learning for Teachers John Hattie argues that visible learning
asks us to “consider teaching primarily in terms of its impact on student learning”
Or as he summarizes it even more succinctly: educators must “know thy impact”
(Hattie 2011.)

I have found in my work with teachers and school leaders that a focus on visible
learning is a particularly powerful way to refine teacher practice. Why is this?

We want teachers to be effective:
Just because you have taught something to the class does not mean the students
have learned it. We want teachers to evaluate the effect of their teaching. We want
them to focus on the impact of their lessons not just the delivery of them. It is, after
all, not whether you have ‘taught it’ but whether your students have ‘caught it’ that
will determine the success of a lesson.

We want teachers to engage, support and challenge all students:
Learning is ‘uneven.’ Students do not all learn at the same pace or have the same
abilities and being able to assess the impact of your teaching on individual students
helps you meet them at their precise place of need.

We want teachers to concentrate their efforts on where it matters most:
There is so much that needs to done to help the ‘whole child’ and so many
competing obligations and time pressure that teachers face in achieving this goal.
Visible Learning puts the student at the forefront of the teachers’ activity and gets
them ask not just ask: is a particular strategy is working?” but “how well is it
working?”

Visible Learning is a power approach to addressing the learning needs of the Whole
Child because it puts the students experience of the learning at the heart of our
discussions about teaching:

What is the best approaches to use with these specific students?

Is it working as we intended? Could we adjust our approach to maximise our
impact?

Building Capacity: Human vs Social Capital

1) Do you buffer staff from Non-Instructional Issues?
Teacher-leaders must guard their staff from undue distractions, buffering them
A) Building from forces that interfere with instructional time. Successful schools let their
Teacher Capacity: teachers teach.
(Developing
Human Capital)
Effective leaders
open classroom
doors. They make 2) Do you define and promote Expert Instructional Practice?
learning visible. Teacher leaders need to have a keen awareness what represents the best use of
They marshal all instructional time. They must understand what expert instructional practice
available resources looks like and actively promote those qualities.
into improving
everyday classroom
teaching and

learning.
3) Do you have an Instructional Practice Focus?
Teacher-leaders have to ensure that teacher development is carefully targeted.
Teams can’t refine every element of practice at once, so they concentrate on
refining one aspect of teacher practice at a time.

B) Sharing Best 4) Have you established Collaborative Routines for staff?
practice: Teacher-leaders encourage the sharing of practice and a collective approach to
(Fostering Social problem solving. They create forums and routines for sharing practice and
Capital) addressing classroom challenges.
Focused leaders do
not just concentrate
on building teacher
capacity - they also
focus on how 5) Do you foster a sense of Collective Efficacy?
teachers share this Successful teacher-leaders explicitly address team beliefs about capacity. They
capacity with their create narratives of success, recognizing and celebrating teacher achievements.
colleagues. They counter deficit model thinking: challenging casual cynicism and reductive
logic.



A System Level Approaches to Visible Learning

Today, I will explore in detail how we use Visible Learning at our individual school
and in our class rooms, but it is worth noting the system level support provided to
teachers that underpins this approach. To do this we need to first understand effect
size. A core aspect of John Hattie’s approach is using effect size to calculate what
school initiatives have the biggest impact on student outcomes. So, what is it?

“Effect size is a measure of the contribution an education intervention makes to
student learning. It allows us to move beyond questions about whether an intervention
worked or not, to questions about how well an intervention worked in varying
contexts. This evidence supports a more scientific and rigorous approach to building
professional knowledge. Effect size is an important tool for reporting and interpreting
the effectiveness of specific teaching practices and interventions.”
(Source: Education Endowment Foundation, 2012.)

Here is a link for short video explaining how to calculate effect size:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VupAofWhZZo

In overall terms, less than 0.3 is considered a small effect, 0.3 – 0.6 a medium effect
and more than 0.6 a large effect. (However, it is worth noting that a mid-level effect
that requires few resources or time might have a more powerful overall effect than
one that is more time and resource intensive because it may be easier to
initiate/maintain.) Hattie argues than in terms of targeting strategies to use in your
classroom schools should be aiming to achieve at least a .4 effect size – this is based
on the average effect size. It is the number beyond which teachers impact has a
noticeable and powerful real-world effect. Remember that 90% of teacher
interventions have a positive effect – so the question schools should be asking not is
did it make an impact but a substantial impact. This number (0.4) should not be a
cut -off line then, but rather a prompt for school discussion about what works best
for their students.

Victoria’s ‘High Impact Teaching Strategies’

The Victorian Department of Education and Training has used this work on visible
learning, effect size as well other work on instructional practice to identify a series
of core strategies for maximizing the impact of your teaching. There are ten of these
strategies - which are colloquially known as the H.I.T.S. Below is a description of the
H.I.T.S. taken from a document made available to all Victorian teachers:

“The HITS are 10 instructional practices that reliably increase student
learning wherever they are applied. They emerge from the findings of tens of
thousands of studies of what has worked in classrooms across Australia and the
world. International experts such as John Hattie and Robert Marzano have
synthesized these studies and ranked hundreds of teaching strategies by the
contribution they make to student learning The HITS sit at the top of these
rankings.

Some teachers will ask, “But will they work in my classroom, with my students?”
Only the professional judgement of teachers, both individual and collective, can
answer that question. For any concept or skill that students need to learn, using
a HITS to teach it increases the chances that students will learn it, compared to
using other strategies. But they are reliable, not infallible. Knowing their
students and how they learn, teachers are well-placed to judge whether a HITS
or another strategy is the best choice to teach that concept or skill.”

(Source ©Victorian Department of Education & Training)

Overleaf is a summary of each of these High Impact Teaching Strategies, that also
lists the effect size associated with each of the H.I.T.S. Many of the schools I work
with use this list as a starting point for a discussion about classroom pedagogy:

• Which of these strategies do teachers in this school already use well?

• Do we have mechanisms for teachers accomplished in these strategies to
pass them on to their colleagues?

• Which of these strategies could we use more often or more consistently?

• Which of these strategies could we use more effectively?

• Of the strategies we could use more effectively, which specific one should we
target as a priority for adding to our everyday classroom practice?


H.I.T.S. Description of High Impact Teaching Strategy
Setting Goals Lessons have clear learning intentions with goals
Goals 0.56
Teacher Clarity 0.75
that clarify what success like. Lesson goals always
explain what students need to understand, and
what they must be able to do. This helps the
teacher to plan learning activities, and helps
students understand what is required.

Structuring Lessons A lesson structure maps teaching and learning
Scaffolding 0.53
Formative Evaluation 0.68
that occurs in class.
Teacher Clarity 0.75 Sound lesson structures reinforce routines,
scaffold learning via specific steps/activities. They
optimise time on task and classroom climate by
using smooth transitions. Planned sequencing of
teaching and learning activities stimulates and
maintains engagement by linking lesson and unit
learning.

Explicit Teaching When teachers adopt explicit teaching practices
Goals 0.56
Time on Task 0.62
they clearly show students what to do and how to
Spaced Practice 0.60 do it. The teacher decides on learning intentions
Direct Instruction 0.59
Teacher Clarity 0.75
and success criteria, makes them transparent to
students, and demonstrates them by modelling.
The teacher checks for understanding, and at the
end of each lesson revisits what was covered and
ties it all together.

Worked Examples A worked example demonstrates the steps
Worked Examples 0.57
Spaced Practice 0.60
required to complete a task or solve a problem. By
scaffolding the learning, worked examples
support skill acquisition and reduce a learner’s
cognitive load. The teacher presents a worked
example and explains each step. Later, students
can use worked examples during independent
practice, and to review and embed new
knowledge.

Collaborative Learning Collaborative learning occurs when students work
Peer tutoring 0.55
Reciprocal teaching 0.74
in small groups and everyone participates in a
Small group learning 0.49 learning task. There are many collaborative
Cooperative learning vs whole
class instruction 0.41
learning approaches. Each uses varying forms of
Cooperative learning vs individual work organisation and tasks. Collaborative learning is
0.59
Cooperative learning vs competitive
supported by designing meaningful tasks. It
learning 0.54 involves students actively participating in
negotiating roles, responsibilities and outcomes.


Multiple Multiple exposures provide students with multiple opportunities to
Exposures encounter, engage with, and elaborate on new knowledge and skills.

Time on task 0.62
Research demonstrates deep learning develops over time via multiple,
Spaced practice 0.71 spaced interactions with new knowledge and concepts. This may
Feedback 0.73 require spacing practice over several days, and using different activities
to vary the interactions learners have with new knowledge.

Questioning

Questioning 0.46
Questioning is a powerful tool and effective teachers regularly use it for
a range of purposes. It engages students, stimulates interest and
curiosity in the learning, and makes links to students’ lives.
Effective questioning yields immediate feedback on student
understanding, supports informal and formative assessment, and
captures feedback on effectiveness of teaching strategies.

Feedback

Feedback 0.73
Feedback informs a student/teacher about the student’s performance
relative to learning goals. Feedback redirects or refocuses teacher and
student actions so the student can align effort and activity with a clear
outcome that leads to achieving a learning goal. It can be oral, written,
formative or summative. Whatever its form, it comprises specific advice
a student can use to improve performance.
Metacognitive
Strategies Metacognitive strategies teach students to think about their own

Teaching problem
thinking. When students become aware of the learning process, they
solving 0.63 gain control over their learning. Metacognition extends to self-
Study skills 0.60
Self-questioning 0.64
regulation or managing one's own motivation toward learning.
Classroom discussion Metacognitive activities can include planning how to approach learning
0.82
Concept mapping 0.64
tasks, evaluating progress, and monitoring comprehension.

Differentiated
Learning Differentiated teaching are methods teachers use to extend the

TI 1.07
knowledge and skills of every student in every class, regardless of their
Piagetian programs 1.28 starting point. The objective is to lift the performance of all students,
Second and third chance
programs 0.5
including those who are falling behind and those ahead of year level
expectations. To ensure all students master objectives, effective
teachers plan lessons that incorporate adjustments for content, process,
and product.

(Source ©Victorian Department of Education & Training)


Case Study: Questioning & Feedback

Strategic Questioning Tool Kit

1. Cold Calling– Sometimes referred to as the ‘No hands up rule’, cold calling is
asking students a question without waiting for them to indicate whether or
not they have the answer.

2. Exampling – Asking a students who has answered a question correctly or
one of their classmates to provide examples to support the response

3. Blank Prompt – Teachers pretending not to understand the problem and
asking students to explain it to them.

4. Inverted Questions – Framing your questions with a statement of fact and
then asking why or how is this the case, as opposed to asking a closed
question to discover that fact.

5. No Glossing Rule – Waiting for students to give you the complete answer,
rather than accepting a partial response and filling in the rest yourself.

6. Question Relay – When a student wants to shrug off a question with a lazy ‘I
don’t know’, you can ask them to listen to two other responses and
determine which is the best response.

7. Second Draft – Asking the class to rephrase a correct answer for the sake of
clarity and precision.

8. Feedback Signals – Non-verbal signals that students can use to demonstrate
to you the extent of their understanding.

9. Elaboration Cues – Questions designed to guide students towards more
detailed and thoughtful answers.

10. Wait time / Pause Time– The two kinds of teacher wait time. The first type
is when you wait after a question to give students an appropriate amount of
time to think of an answer. The second being when you pause after they give
the answer to encourage them to add greater depth and detail to their
response.

Snapshot Feedback

Task Clarity Signals: Traffic light and other routines for checking whether students
understand what is asked of them:

Green – Understood what is required and can proceed
Amber – Understood but would just like to hear it one last time to confirm your
understanding
Red – Did not understand and are unsure how to proceed

Alternatively, if students are reluctant to flag a lack of understanding you might use
the following variation:

Green – Teacher explained it well and you understood what is required and can proceed
Amber – Teacher explained it ok and you understood but would just like to hear it one last
time to confirm your understanding
Red – Teacher did not explain it well and you are unsure how to proceed

Instant Replay Signals: Asking students to place a hand on their chest if they wish
you to have the teacher repeat and clarify what they said. They allow you to closely
monitor the take up rate of student understanding during teacher explanations.

Fist To Five: A good example of how to gauge the extent of student knowledge is to
use the ‘Fist to Five’ Convention. A teacher wanting to ask a class about whether
they should move onto the next topic might typically ask ‘Does everyone understand
this now?’ Too often a handful of ‘yeses’ is taken as evidence that students are
across the detail of a concept or skill. In this situation, it is much better to get
students to indicate the degree of their understanding using ‘Fist to Five’:

A closed fist means they are still very unfamiliar with the concept or skill

A single finger indicates that they have been introduced to an idea.

Two fingers indicate that they still need substantial further practice or explanation
to come to an understanding.

Three fingers means that they have a good understanding of the current example
and should be able to apply it in some other context.

Four fingers means they understand it really well, and feel confident they could
apply it in other contexts.

Five fingers means they have mastered the concept/skill and would feel confident
teaching it to a peer.

Questioning Techniques Sample

Inverted Questions

This style of question involves presenting students with an answer and then asking
them why is it correct. By simply inverting a closed question so that the answer is
included in the prompt, the teacher can create a much richer question:

Closed Question

Teacher: Is the 3 the numerator in the fraction 3/4?
Student: Yes.

Inverted Question

Teacher: The 3 is the numerator in this fraction. Why?
Student: The 3 is the numerator because it tells us that there are three equal parts in
the whole number.
Exampling

Sometimes students will give you the correct answer but only understand the
question in its narrowest sense. Exampling is a technique that teachers employ
when they have already secured a correct answer but want to confirm that an
individual student or the class group have fully understood the process for coming
up with that answer.

Individual - the teacher asks the student who answered for another example to back
up their initial response.

Student – Oh, that happened in the Phillipines, when mum and dad lived in Manilla.

Teacher - Anil, can you think of another occasion when that sort of protest led to a
revolution?

Whole class - the teacher might ask the class group for another example to support
what the individual student has suggested.

Can anyone else think of an example to back up Anil’s answer?

A similar strategy for testing student understanding is the second draft technique.


Second Draft

Typically you use this technique when you want to improve the quality of student
responses. After receiving an initial student response, you ask other class members
to refine that answer.

You might ask them to use more formal language or more precise terms or get them
to phrase it in a more fluent or concise fashion. The important point here is that they
are evaluating the quality of class responses and trying to improve them.

Teacher: How would you best describe this group of elements?

Student: Xenon and Neon are part of that group of special gases that don’t react to
stuff

Teacher: Can someone come up with a second draft of that response, Aaron?

Second Student: Xenon and Neon are part of the family of inert gases that are non-
reactive.

Question Relay

It can be frustrating when cold calling students for an answer if their knee-jerk
response is an unthinking ‘I don’t know.’ A Question Relay is an effective technique
for ensuring that students don’t dodge questions in this way. In this technique when
a student tells you that they can’t come up with an answer, you don’t simply move
on to another person. Instead, you tell them to listen carefully to the next two
responses and consider which of those answers they could have used themselves.

Teacher: What are some of the health problems associated with smoking, Taylor?
Taylor: I don’t know.
Teacher: OK, listen carefully to the next two answers. I’m going to come back to
you to ask you which of them you think is the most accurate.
Carlos, what are some of the health problems associated with smoking?
Carlos: Respiratory problems like emphysema and cancer. Heart problems.
Teacher: Lucinda?
Lucinda: Cardiovascular disease, stroke.
Teacher: Which of those answers might you have used, Taylor?
Taylor: Probably lung cancer or even just heart attacks.


Prompts

Prompts are a quick strategy for responding to inaccurate or confusing answers – or
indeed when a student can offer no response at all. Question prompts are carefully
designed to trigger further thinking in the student. Prompts can remind students of
knowledge and procedures they’re not accessing, help them identify the next step in
an approach or reiterate the value of a ‘rule of thumb’ problem-solving strategy.
Fisher and Frey (2014) offer four main types of prompts. Use the tool below to see
how frequently you use this in the everyday classroom:

Background Process Prompts: Reflective Prompts: Heuristic Prompts:
Knowledge Prompts: Reminders about Cues that encourage Queries that ask
Reminders about facts procedures that students to review students to trial ‘rule of
students have been students should their own thinking. thumb’ problem solving
strategies that might suit
taught but might have employ to address their individual needs.
momentarily errors or
forgotten. misunderstandings.

Remember, adding two I’m thinking about how Look again at the I often put the author’s
negative numbers makes you can use TEEL to problem. Does your name at the start of the
a positive. What might structure a paragraph. response address the sentence. Would your
the answer be? What should you do next? question that was asked? argument be clearer with
an active sentence like
Remember the ’TH’ The last step is to put Check the letter picture. that?
brother is sticking his your name on the picture. Did you remember to
tongue out and spitting. Have you done this yet? copy every part? I remember my spaces
using spaghetti and
meatballs. Have you
remembered your
meatball spaces?


Race the Bell/Clock

A great whole class review activity where students take turns either asking or answering a
question on the topic they have just been studying. The game starts with the whole class
standing. If a student asks or answers a question they can sit down with the goal of the
game being that the whole class is seated again by the time the lesson ends. These simple
rules can produce sophisticated interactions if facilitated carefully:

• Students are often eager to ‘get out’ so there will often be a chorus of responses to
easier questions. To ensure an orderly class insist on getting students to put their
hands up and then use this to your advantage by carefully selecting students to
answer.
• Use the strategic questioning techniques that we discussed earlier today. Don’t
accept incorrect answers for instance - that’s glossing - instead refer the question
back to another student. Do the same with partial or incomplete answers and then
let both respondents sit down when the answer has been fleshed out. This helps if
you have an uneven number of students but also asking a question yourself works
well and will ensure that you don’t have one student left at the end of the game.

Line Debate

A line debate is a classic activity for exploring issues in a dynamic way. It teaches
students to justify their answers and encourages them to see contested views of a
from both sides. The activity is commonly used as a precursor to essay writing.
However it can be used to tease out the nuances of any key question that is central
to classroom inquiry.

Divide the class into an affirmative and negative team and have them stand on either
side of the room. Explain that they are going to have to come up with arguments to
support their assigned side of the debate irrespective of their personal views on the
topic.
Explain the basic rules: Members of each team take it in turns to volunteer their
arguments. If the debater is able to offer a new argument to support their side they
can select one of the opposition team to join their team. (If a class member changes
sides three times they are “locked” and can’t change sides again. This avoids able
debaters being “ping-ponged” back and forth across the room incessantly.) If the
debater or the rest of their team cannot offer an argument the teacher/umpire will
nominate someone to joins the opposition team.

Conduct the debate. It is crucial that you have a means of noting down all the points
that are made. (This might mean recording the debate or assigning students to act
as scribes.) When finished, ask students to reflect on the topic and outline their own
viewpoint. Encourage them to use the answers recorded on the board as stimulus
and examples to support their point of view.


Cue Sheets
A cue sheet is a list of carefully-crafted sentence starters that have been designed to
help students focus on the process of their reading. Instead of asking narrow
questions about aspects of the text, they require students to note the development
of their own perceptions as they read. This moves students beyond recall to analysis
and interpretation. Cue sheets remind students to move beyond ‘what?’ in their
note-taking to ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ and provide a structure that is open-ended enough
to support student reflection without producing generic, narrow or formulaic
responses.


Ranking Work Samples

Putting exemplar responses in rank order is a simple way to introduce students to
some of the key underlying skills for using a rubric well. Students should justify
their rankings as this is where the explicit learning is derived in this activity.


Exit Passes

An exit pass is a short sharp exercise for getting feedback at the end of the lesson.
Give students an index card and ask them to answer a prompt that tests the
conceptual understanding of your lesson. Dylan Wiliams (Embedded Formative
Assessment 2011) offers the following examples of classic exit pass questions:

• Why can’t you have a probability greater than 1?
• What is the difference between mass and weight?
• Why are historians concerned with bias when analyzing historical sources?

Another approach to exit passes is to get students to summarise what they have just
learned. (Getting them to do this in an exact number of words is a highly engaging
version of this approach.)

Hinge Questions

A Hinge question is carefully targeted question that can be used mid-lesson to check
for conceptual understanding across a class group. Typically, it is used at a juncture
where you are either about to move on to a new concept or ask students to apply a
concept you have just taught. They allow teachers to assess whether they need to re-
teach or recap a concept or whether they can proceed with the next element of the
lesson.

Hinge questions usually take the form of a short, multiple-choice question that
students can answer within a couple of minutes and a teacher can process the
answer within approximately thirty. Teachers who routinely use hinge questions
know that they take some time to compile but ultimately save class time as they are
incredibly helpful in ensuring that you don’t just teach an idea but that students
learn it.

Which word/s of the following sentence are adverbs?
“He quickly realized his inept running style meant it was unlikely he
would ever be a professional athlete.”
A) Quickly, professional
B) Unlikely
C) Quickly
D) Quickly, inept

Formal Formative Assessment

Instant Quiz
Students grade their work based on ‘rule of thumb’ heuristics. These are usually
yes/no questions about desired aspects of practice for which they are given a
nominated number of points. This activity reminds students of the value of
particular elements of the task criteria and is a valuable teaching strategy because
this can be done in such a short space of time.

Give yourself one point if your first word has finger-spacing.

Give your partner three points if they have shown their working out for every problem.

Give your partner twelve points if they have secondary and primary sources

Give yourself two points if your topic sentence refers to an idea not just an event.

Give yourself two points if your sentence is ordered Subject, Verb, Object.

Give your partner one point if they have used the preferred style of using footnotes.

Closed/Open Practice Exam (Red/Blue Test)
Students complete the same test two different ways. First, they complete it under test
conditions with a blue pen. Then with their red pen they revise their answers with
reference to their notes.

70/30 Test
Students are provided with a test that has been completed by the teacher. The teacher
has answered 70% of it correctly but has deliberately answered 30% of the test
incorrectly. Students are then expected to correct the test and identify the mistakes.
This is an engaging strategy with which to teach students to self-correct.

Confidence Exam
Formative exam exercises are very useful tools for helping teachers identify areas
where students ‘approximate competence.’ A confidence exam makes this aspect of
the testing process explicit to students. In this style of exam, students quickly review
each question in a test providing a mark out of ten to indicate how confident they
are in being able to answer this question correctly. Often teachers who use this type
of assessment then get students to complete the test and give themselves a second
mark: How confident that your answer is correct?

Visible Teaching & Reflection: Addressing Teacher Belief

Human behavior is heavily proscribed by context and the contours of our own
impulses. Indeed, contemporary research into thinking and decision making has
proved repeatedly that humans in any area of endeavor are not rational actors -
coolly making decisions based on reason – but individuals are heavily swayed by
emotional beliefs and cognitive bias. (Kahnemn 2013) We are all, the research
suggests, “predictably irrational.” (Wilkinson 2007.)

Contemporary writing about educational leadership has been slow to address these
findings. Many models of school change, for instance, rely on the presumption that
simply presenting a new initiative or program will be enough to alter deep and long
held attitudes about how students learn best. The presumption being that simply
explaining why something is best practice will lead to teachers automatically
adopting this belief.

This is not realistic. Leaders should aim instead for a more achievable goal:
Encouraging teachers to trial a new practice. If this has a positive effect with their
classes, then teachers will be more likely to change their beliefs.

How then might we organize change initiatives so that they reflect this
understanding how teacher’s beliefs change?

The Hypothesis Model

A hypothesis model of school change reframes the leaders' role from the
implementation of change initiatives to that of organizing the testing of those
initiatives. It is a powerful way for helping teacher to know thy impact.

In this model, teachers and their leaders formulate a data-driven hypothesis about
how a key aspect of teacher practice or student experience might be improved. They
then test the validity of that hypothesis in the classroom: Was there evidence that
the strategy worked? Were there any unintended consequences of using the
approach? Was it easy enough to implement so that it could become part of your
team’s everyday practice? etc.

This approach is built around three key steps:

Collecting Data Firstly, teachers explore student-learning needs by collecting and
synthesizing a wide range of data from multiple sources. A key role for teacher-
leaders here is to solicit and collate this data. For this to be effective we must move
beyond employing only system-level and summative assessment data and drill
down into classroom data that is focused on the everyday, formative experiences of
students.

Developing Hypotheses Secondly, teachers carefully interpret the data to establish
the areas of potential student improvement and develop a hypothesis how we might
achieve this goal. Framing these proposals as hypotheses ensures teachers resist
‘closed interpretations,’ testing their presumptions and reflecting deeply about what
approach to take to respond to the findings in their data.

Testing Hypotheses Thirdly, teachers try out changes to their instructional practice
to review the validity of their hypotheses. Did they have a tangible effect on student
performance? Does the approach need to be adopted, modified or abandoned? It is
crucial that this evaluation is data–driven: using benchmarks, objective
measurement and concrete evidence to assess how effective this approach has been.

This approach has a number of significant benefits:

• It represents a more realistic model of how change can be realized for
teaching teams. Instead of leaders having to change beliefs or defend new
initiatives – their role becomes assisting teachers to trial a single piece of
new practice. Extensive research in the field of decision-making has clearly
identified that this kind of approach - trialing a single initiative that is outside
of current sense of how you operate – is the single most effective approach
for changing people’s minds. (Weinshcenk 2013)

• It establishes an evidence-based approach to professional reflection.
The Hypothesis model helps teaching teams avoid the trap of an ‘assertion
culture:’ a set of default behaviors where saying you do something starts to
replace actually doing it. Instead, teachers can make objective assessments of
their own performance and enter into non-attributive discussions about their
colleagues’ work.

• It is strategic in nature, asking teachers not to share the same belief but
to establish an agreed approach. A shared team vision is not something
that can be imposed – it must be built. The Hypothesis model offers teachers
a ‘layer of protection,’ encouraging them to discuss their personal views in a
safe, professional manner. It offers team leaders a method for exploring and
evaluating the breadth of their team’s opinions - a collaborative process for
developing strategic clarity.

The hypothesis model is a collaborative, evidence-based approach that offers
teacher-leaders a practical way to facilitate


Classroom Observation Case Study - Peer Coaching

“What does matter is teachers having a mind frame in which they see it as their role to
evaluate their effect on learning.” John Hattie

Classroom classroom observation is a powerful toll for helping teachers reflect on
their practice and make their teaching more explicit for their students. The classic
peer coaching model has three key components:

1. Discussion & Planning: Teacher and coach discuss a teaching goal identified
by the teacher. All of the conversation is confidential. They create a plan on
how to work on this goal in the classroom context. The teacher is in charge of
all key decisions.

2. Observation: The coach observes or co-teaches a lesson focusing on the skill
goal identified by the teacher. The focus is exclusively on the set goal. This
narrow-cast goal is often measured using a tool for recording this specific
data.

3. Reflection: The coach and the teacher reflect on the lesson example and
explore what elements of the lesson went as planned and what was
unexpected. They do not use a deficit model for assessing teacher practice.
They identify areas of potential change and affirm good practice

Discussion & Planning:
The prospect of having your lesson observed can be a source of anxiety for many
teachers. These teachers worry about being judged. They fear the unrepresentative
lesson where something goes wrong that normally wouldn’t happen but to an
observer might seem like an everyday part of their practice. They are concerned
that they will be expected to teach not in their own style but as their colleagues do.

The prospect of being an observer can be similarly fraught. For some teachers the
only thing worse than having someone appraise your class would be to have to
judge a fellow teacher’s class. They are concerned they might offend a colleague and
are uneasy about the presumption involved in offering advice to a fellow teacher.

The discussion and planning phase addresses these concerns by framing the
coaching experience not as subjective appraisal but as data driven reflection:

Peer Partnerships Focus on Reflection Not Judgment
From the first moment the partners meet, it must be made explicit that the coach’s
role is not to give unsolicited advice but act as a sounding board. The discussion and
planning phase is an opportunity for the teacher being coached to explore their own
thinking.



The teacher takes responsibility: They own their own goals - even if they emerge
from a larger framework. They own the data that is produced. The process is for
them.

The Peer Partner’s role is foster this process. They provide the teacher with
questions that help elicit reflections (“What would you like your students to do
better than they do now?”) encourage them to articulate their thinking and test their
presumptions. And offer suggestions if prompted.

Peer Partnerships Establish Narrow Cast Goals

Peer reflection tends to work better when it is carefully targeted. Open ended,
unrealistic or amorphous goals and make it difficult to concentrate your efforts on a
particular piece of practice and hard to gauge the extent of subsequent success or
failures:

“I will improve engagement in Maths in my Year Five class.”

Peer partnerships start as a wide-ranging discussion about teaching but should
funnel towards a ‘narrow cast’ goal:

“I will increase the average number of opportunities to respond (OTRs) I offer students
when introducing a new problem-solving technique.”

Many schools use a S.M.A.R.T. pro-forma to help teachers and their partners
formulate their Narrow Cast goal.

Peer Partnerships Employ Evidence Not Impressions

Perhaps the most important aspect of the discussion and planning phase is to
identify the type of evidence the teacher-coach will collect for their partner. This
agreement ensures that the process is not one of arguing about subjective opinions
but rather a data driven discussion about how the teacher can get the most out of
their teaching. Agreeing on a form of evidence, also assures the teacher being
observed that the colleague’s focus will be exclusively on observing the aspect of
their practice that they have nominated. It means that the data collected is much
more likely to be relevant, avoiding unnecessary conversations about its validity.
Employing a data tool to use in the observation phase is perhaps the most effective
method for achieving this goal.

Question Stems for Planning Conversations

The pre-observation discussion is an important part of the feedback conversation.
Typically, this conversation is a relaxed informal affair. One thing coaches can do to
prepare for these conversations is think about what kinds of questions they can ask
to help their colleague clarify their goals. Below are some stems that you might
serve as a starting point when planning your questions:

What are you working on at the moment?

What would you like the students to do better than they currently do?

Are there any patterns of student behavior that you think need addressing?

What are your hypotheses about why this happens?

How could we test that hypothesis?

What data tool could we use to measure that?

Can we come up with a narrower goal?

Could we break that goal into smaller part?

What do you hope will happen?

What do you worry might happen?

If this didn’t work what’s Plan B?

How will you differentiate for different abilities?

What is your learning intention?

If you don’t meet your goal, why would that be?

What information would persuade you to try something else?

What is your aim?

What factors influenced your planning here?

DOT CHART SURVEY: Affirmation vs. Commands

An ‘Affirmation versus Commands’ dot chart survey is a revealing activity for
reviewing your use of praise in the class room. You use it to record all your
interventions in a lesson under the loose categories of affirmation and commands.
Praise, problem solving and using student work as a model fit under the former,
coercion, correction and admonishment under the latter.

A dot chart is easy to use:

• Before you start the class read again the sample interactions listed at the bottom of the sheet. Establish
clearly which types of interactions you view as affirmations and which as commands.
• Conduct your class, while a peer observes your lesson. Dot the columns to record each interaction as
an affirmation or a command.
• Review your performance with a colleague: What was the ratio of commands to affirmations? Did this
reflect your goal? Did you always choose the nature of each intervention? Could you use subtly alter
your use of affirmations and commands?
Dot the appropriate column every time you complete on of the class room interventions listed below:

Affirmations Commands
Any time you acknowledged successes or endorse behavior Any time you tell a student what to do, giving
from your students you wished encourage. instructions and challenging off task behaviors.

“That was a fast transition guys. Excellent.” “Everyone get in pairs and then line up against the
wall.”
“Have a look at Li’s answer here – this is how this
question should be approached...” “Could everyone please look this way?”

“I can see that you ask three people before you asked “Come here. You are not to speak to me like that
me. Good use of initiative.” again. Is that understood?”

“This group alerted others to the rallying call. Well “Stop it Michael. That is not appropriate.”
done.”


Flawed Data Tool:

SOLWAY SECONDARY COLLEGE
HURDLE REQUIREMENTS: Learning Intention? Curriculum Outcomes Success Criteria?

Links?
COMMENT: To What Extent did the lesson introduction address these learning standard procedures? (Include
examples that you observed of each of these essential elements.)

GENDER MIX OF TEACHER- Group: Male: Female:
TO-STUDENT
INSTRUCTION:
3 MIN TIME INTERVAL SAMPLING: List the number of students who are on and off task at the moment of sampling.
Comment on the types of off task behavior that are evident
7 MIN TIME INTERVAL SAMPLING: List the number of students who are on and off task at the moment of sampling.
Comment on the types of off task behavior that are evident
RATIO OF TEACHER Questions Comments Ratio

COMMENTS TO
QUESTIONS
COACH COMMENTS

Mapping Teacher/Student Interactions
This is a simple tool for mapping teacher movement and teacher-to-student
interaction over the course of an everyday lesson. (Sometimes more experienced
teachers break up these interactions even further into teacher-initiated and student-
initiated interactions.)

Teacher 6
Desk
Key:
Spoke to Individual Student: X
Addressed Whole Class: X

Focused Task Time
This data tool is a simple way of estimating the total amount of class time devoted to
students work as opposed to teacher instruction. This 50 min lesson has been
divided into 2min blocks. At the end of each two period, simply color in the square
with a pen or high lighter if student work time exceeded teacher talk during that
time frame.

N.B. For collaborative activities such as question and answer sessions you may
choose to divide the square diagonally down the middle, coloring half of it to
represent this shared use of class time.


Assessing Student Initiative

High performing teachers foster a culture of independence in their classes. When
students are unable to proceed with a task, they engage self-help routines rather
than simply looking to the teacher to resolve the issue for them... It is tempting to
solve all classroom problems yourself but cueing student to employ these self-help
routines reduces teacher work load and build student initiative. This is particularly
important in practical subjects such as the Arts and Applied Learning environments.
How often when approached by a student to ‘fix’ an issue do you check that they
have exhausted all self-help options before offering your assistance?

Self-Help Reminder Teacher Intervention

“Have you checked you ‘Book, Board or “What you do is…”

Buddy’ before you asked me?” “The answer is…
“Did you C3B4 Me?” “I’ll show you how to do it.”
“Who is the student coach for this
task?”


Wait/Pause Time Tick Chart
Subtly adjusting your use of pauses in the classroom can can have a profound effect on your
student learning:

• Consciously lengthening the pause after you ask a question gives students more
time to think of an answer. It also elicits a far higher number of student responses.
(Raising the average wait time up to as little as 3 to 5 seconds can triple the average
number of respondents in your class.)

• Similarly, pausing after a student has responded to a question often creates room
for the student to add detail or a qualifying statement to their answer. This leads to
student responses that demonstrate greater depth and encourages self-correction
amongst students. How do you use wait/pause in your classroom?

Use the chart below to map your use of pauses when you ask questions of your class?

WAIT TIME WAIT TIME PAUSE TIME
<2 Sec. >2 Sec. >1 Sec.

Reflection

Conversation is at the heart of coaching. Indeed, many definitions of teacher
coaching describe conversation as coaching. De Haan calls it “a method of work-
related learning that relies primarily on one on one conversations.” Christian
Nieuwerburgh defines coaching as a “managed conversation.” Reflection is a crucial
phase of the coaching cycle: The post-observation discussion is where many
teachers clarify their thinking, affirm their practice or identify potential changes in
technique.

It is the role of the teacher-leader to ensure that these conversations are as
supportive and rigorous as possible. They set the parameters that shape the goals of
peer coaching:

Coaching Conversations Should Be ‘Triangular’ Conversations. They are not
conversations where a coach gives advice top advice to a colleague from a position
of authority.

They are collaborative conversations where colleagues investigating the data they
have collected together. Coaching conversations take place, figuratively and literally,
side by side with data between you.


Coaching Conversations Centre On Effective Questioning

Teachers are problems-solvers and there is an obvious temptation to treat a
coaching session as opportunity to fix and instruct rather than explore and discuss.
However, coaches don’t advise – they question and listen. Offering teachers model
question stems is a powerful way to foster this. Providing peer coaches with
clarification and elaboration questions reminds them of the key aspect of their role:
encouraging their colleague’s self-reflection. Good coaches help teachers find their
own voice.

Many schools encourage teacher observers to keep a list of question stems in front
of them during coaching session as way of ensuring that they concentrate on teasing
out their colleagues thinking and giving them concrete means to help meet this goal.
Below are examples of question stems list that you might find useful:

Tell me more…

How did you feel about that?

Was that a representative lesson with those guys?

What did you want to concentrate on from that lesson?

What were you pleased with?

What have you done in similar situations?

Did the students respond as you expected?

What has worked in the past?

Go on…

Why was that?

What did you notice about the data?

What stands out when you look at that the data tool?

If you did that lesson again what would you do same?

If you did that lesson again what would you do differently?

If I taught lesson what would you advise me to be mindful of?

Coaching Observations Should Be Non-Attributive.

Emphasizing the importance of questioning, ‘nudges’ teachers away from lapsing
into ill-thought out appraisal. However, inevitably observers will be asked about
their perspective of a lesson. This can be tricky. Characterizing other people’s
experience, whether in a positive or negative light, involves a subtle level of
presumption: “This what you’re like.” We call this attribution.

Attribution can make people uncomfortable. Witness for instance the way teachers
often reject even low-level praise: this is not always modesty but sometimes “an
instinctive response to being typecast – even positively,” by someone else. (Steve
Forman http://www.steveforman.com/robert-kegan/)

Non-attributive praise by contrast “characterizes the speaker’s experience, and not
the person being appreciated.” (Forman) A non-attributive observation involves
describing your experience of the lesson rather than commenting on your
colleague’s performance:
Attributive: “Your good at getting them to take turns”

Non-Attributive: “I noticed the way students always put their hand up.”
Obviously, using a data tool helps facilitate this approach. However, it can feel
counter-intuitive and takes practice to learn. Teacher can help teachers hone this
skill by not only defining “attributive” and “non-attributive but by providing
teachers with model non-attributive observations and exercises in which they can
rehearse framing their observation in this way.
Asking teachers to identify attributive and non-attributive observations from a list
of statements is a good way to introduce this:
• It was great how you got them to take turns

• That group was asked three times before they gave an answer

• I have had those lesson too – everything goes wrong from the outset

• Terrific lesson. Are they always that good in Maths?

• I noticed the way students always put their hand up

• Brilliant. There was nothing I could have done better.

An effective follow up is to ask them to change the attributive statements they
identify into non-attributive ones. Both these exercise work best in groups of three.

Appendix One: Word Cloud


Appendix Two: Third-Stage Correction Tools

How do I get students to be more actively involved in the assessment cycle?
Instead of … You might And then Specific approaches you might try to include . . .
try… students …
Laboriously Minimalist Mark some Partial Correction--You identify the general area
correcting marking, aspects of where a student has made a mistake and the student has
every single providing their work to locate and correct the error:
student error focused themselves * Error Flagging
feedback * Error Counting
* Double-Ticking
Shared Correction--You and the student divide the

responsibility for annotating work, writing a general
comment:
* Student-Generated General Comments
* Student-Generated Annotations
Targeted Correction--You annotate a selected section

of the student work, rather than the entire piece:
* Model Correction
* Student-Nominated Feedback
* Single-Criterion Feedback
Always Getting Review Mid-lesson Student Exemplars: Pause the lesson so

collecting students to their work the class can review a model answer and then revise
work to make work making their work based on what they have seen.
sure students together real-time
have advice during revisions Mid-Lesson Cooperative Feedback: Pause the lesson
on how they midlesson and so students can take turns looking at each other's work
might pauses refinements together.
improve it at
a later date Swap and Choose: Ask your students to create
multiple pieces of work and then, with a partner, to
identify the most successful example.
Always using Alternative Have to

traditional grading focus on Growth Scores: Replace absolute scores with scores
grading schemes that how closely that show how much students have improved:
schemes that emphasize they * </=/>

tend to the followed * Group Marks
encourage importance your advice
students to of reflection and how
concentrate and revision much their Rewarding Revised Responses: Use scoring systems
on their grade work that give students marks for how closely they have
rather than improved followed assessment advice:
the feedback * 50/50 Grades
* Second-Chance Marking Table
Double- Just giving Annotate Oral Feedback Stamp: Mark relevant sections of
marking--that students this the types of students' work with a stamp that asks them to
is, giving advice but feedback summarize your verbal feedback when you give them
students establishing they receive advice during the lesson.
feedback (via some as a way to
peer- and conventions make the Colour Highlighting: Ask students to use a different-
self-marking, for feedback different coloured pen or font to highlight what they have
classroom annotation types more learned from feedback.
advice, and explicit and
conferencing) more Feedback Codes: Have students annotate their work
but later visible with two-letter codes to indicate what types of feedback
having to they received while they were completing this work.
give this
feedback in
written form
to
demonstrate
that you have
done it
Always Presenting Have to Error Cluster: You present your students with a piece
identifying students with review the of corrected work and a table of common types of error.
and their mistakes They then review each mistake you have highlighted
explaining to corrected they made, and classify what type of error it is.
students the work and a looking for
types of table for patterns of
errors they collating error
have made error types

Source: Fast and Effective Assessment: How to reduce your workload
and improve student learning (Pearsall 2018)


Appendix Three: The Power of Routine

Habits shape behaviors. Indeed, in a classroom context routine is almost always
more effective in shaping behavior than teacher intervention. If we can establish
norms that apply to the whole class – or indeed the whole school – then we can
spend less of our limited teaching time on challenging individual behaviors.

This is even more important when trying to create a homework culture. Routines
help instill the kind of personal discipline required for completing homework there
is no teacher supervision and many opportunities for distraction. It is worth briefly
exploring how habits work, to better understand why routine is so important for
you and your classes. The research on habits suggests that they are best understood
as having three components. Charles Duhigg deftly summarizes these in his book
The Power of Habit: (2013)

• Cues: These are the triggers that put your brain into automatic mode and
which habit to use

• Routine: The physical, mental or emotional pattern of behavior that you carry
out unconsciously once you have been cued

• Reward: The reward that you receive at the end of the routine that helps your
brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering.

“Over time, this loop… becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward
become intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges.”
It is the automatic aspect of this routine that makes it so powerful. What defines
good or bad habits is their unthinking nature. It simply takes less effort to perform a
habit than it does to make a series of conscious decisions. For this reasons routine
are essential for classroom teachers – when behaving well and learning effectively
are the easiest options more often than not students will adopt those habits.

Inflection Points

It is instructive to examine those key moments when we don’t manage fully
implement the agreed-upon school routines. These moments are known as
inflection points. Understanding when routines start to break down and having
strategies to steer past these moments is a good way to get the most out the
transitions checklist.

What are the inflections points where you own work routines break down?

Selected References
Fisher, D & Frey, N. (2014) Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment

Techniques for Your Class Room. ASCD Alexandria, Virginia.

Goodwin, B. et al (2018) Unstuck: How Curiosity, Peer Coaching and Teaming Can
Change Your School. ASCD Alexandria, Virginia.

Hattie, John (2009) Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating
to Achievement. Routledge New York, New York.

Hattie, J. (2012) Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning.
Routledge Oxford U.K.

Leahy, S. Wiliam D. (2015) Embedding Formative Assessment: Practical techniques
for K-12 Class Rooms. Learning Sciences International. West Palm Beach, Florida.

Pearsall, G. (2014) The Literature Toolbox: An English Teacher’s Handbook TLN
Press. Melbourne, Australia

Pearsall, G. (2018) Fast and Effective Assessment, Hawker Brownlow, Melbourne,
Australia

Ritchhart, Church, Morrison (2012) Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote
Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. Josey-Boss,
San Francisco, California.

Wiliam D. (2011) Embedded Formative Assessment.. Solution Tree Press
Bloomington, Illinois.

Victorian Department of Education and Training (2017) High Impact Teaching
Strategies: Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/documents/school/teachers/support/highimpa
ctteachstrat.pdf

Glen Pearsall’s book Fast and Effective Assessment is available from Hawker
Brownlow: http://www.hbe.com.au/118002.html

Hos other publications and apps are available from The Teacher Learning
Network Press: https://tln.org.au/shop/

Glen’s video master class on behavior management is available from TTA:
http://tta.edu.au/products/1946/5673



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HURDLE REQUIREMENTS: Learning Intention? Curriculum Outcomes Success Criteria?

RATIO OF TEACHER Questions Comments Ratio

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 24

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 26

“Have you checked you ‘Book, Board or “What you do is…”

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 27

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 29

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 30

Attributive: “Your good at getting them to take turns”

• It was great how you got them to take turns

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 31

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 32

Shared Correction--You and the student divide the

Targeted Correction--You annotate a selected section

Always Getting Review Mid-lesson Student Exemplars: Pause the lesson so

Always using Alternative Have to

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 33

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 34

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 35

Fisher, D & Frey, N. (2014) Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment

© Glen Pearsall Fast and Effective Assessment ASCD 2018 36

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