Reflections of a Learner of Learners.: FESTIVAL OF EDUCATION 2014

I attended a 'chat' session at the Festival of Education called "Inspired and Passionate Teachers: An Hour with John Hattie". The session was both interesting and to some degree affirming. It gave me 'food for thought' in reflecting on my understanding of best practice and 'expert' teaching.

John Hattie opened the chat session by having an 'open forum' where participants were free to ask questions and share their views about teaching, teachers, research and education in general. Below are notes taken during the discussion:

Are teachers losing their passion due to the demands put on them?

How can teachers work more efficiently?

Systems sometimes add to the problem. How can we get teachers to assess their systems to lesson their load?

What is the best way to get visible learning into schools?

What is it that keeps teachers wanting to come to work?

Many of the answers to these questions John Hattie put purely at teachers feet. The age old adage of 'working smarter not harder' seemed to seep through the thread of the conversation.
Hattie encouraged teachers to:

be evaluative of our practice to ensure we are not wasting time covering things children already know.

know your impact - that is what drives us to be good at what we do.
- Evaluate your impact.

be flexible and have a range of strategies to meet the needs of students - change tact when needed, evaluate as we go, use the data, ask children about how lessons went.

diagnose, don't pre-label.
- Use interventions.
- Strategise for the need.

Discussion then centered around high impact teachers in the classroom:

High impact teachers balance between surface and deep.

Challenge students not do their best, do better.

Use multiple teaching methods. Have a range of strategies, the few they know work and interchange between them.

Listen to feedback from students.

Plan in the light of the evidence of impact.

Teachers to DIE for - Diagnose, intervention, evaluate

In answer to questions around demands put on teachers Hattie commented:

Teachers need to investigate how do you get kids to become their own teachers?

Teachers on average ask hundreds of questions per day to their students...how many questions do your students ask in a day?

How many questions does a class ask per day?... On average 2. This needs to go up.

Collaboration between teachers/schools is imperative to assist with demands.

Collaboration ensures expert teachers share their expertise and spreads the expertise within a staff.

NZ is the most collaborative and competitive country in the world. Kiwis strive to be the best.

All in all I enjoyed listening to what Hattie had to say. I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said. He was adamant that everything was laid at teachers feet...achievement was completely centered around teachers and their expertise. I do believe that social and cultural context play a greater role in achievement than he thinks and consideration must be made in this. Even the most 'expert' of teachers have failings in their classes. I know that most teachers are becoming more reflective and evaluative in their practice and this is adding value to the programmes they are teaching in their classrooms. However I still believe that on any given day, one student can have a detrimental effect on the learning that takes place within a classroom environment. What considerations are made of these students in Hattie's research?

At Tamaki Primary, I was able to come away from this discussion secure in the knowledge that we are on the right track, we do have 'high impact, passionate teachers' on our staff.