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Product reviews for Outstanding Teaching: Engaging Learners
John Hattie, Director, Melbourne Education Research Institute, Melbourne Graduate School of Education
Books in education tend to be dry, academic tomes or full of anecdotes usually premised on “do what I did”. Outstanding Teaching is neither -” it is based on a rich analysis of thousands of videos of successful teachers, is imbued with a sense of fun, but has some very serious messages.
What a treat -” Outstanding Teaching, is an engaging book emphasising the core qualities of teaching while making it sound fun. Griffith and Burns emphasise the Big Four; Challenge, Autonomy (but they mean students having the space in classrooms to learn), Feedback (to teachers), and Engagement (full absorption in learning). To link these, they use the notion of flow, which requires that the tasks are appropriately challenging, teacher input is minimal, the class have the necessary learning skills, success criteria or goals are clear and worthwhile, feedback is immediate, and tasks are intrinsically motivating. These are among the top influences that I also found in my synthesis of meta-analyses.
Many have become upset with my own comments about the power of teacher quality, so if only they read this book to see what quality looks and feels like. They spare no punches about what is in the power of teachers: not only the choice of curricula but the management of classrooms, the skill of listening not speaking, the placing of student learning at the centre, receiving feedback about their impact, and taking responsibility for triggering engagement by students in learning -” whilst enjoying it all. They emphasise rapport, imagination, competence, choice, curiosity, relevance, challenge, and fun. [With two exceptions I agree (I see little evidence supporting student choice -” teachers need to lead in progressing students upwards in their learning and not leave it to students otherwise the rich can get richer and the poor stay poor) and would argue that some of these triggers come from being successfully engaged (not as precursors to successful engagement).]
I understand Outstanding Teaching is the first book in the planned Outstanding Teaching series -” bring -˜em on.
What a treat -” Outstanding Teaching, is an engaging book emphasising the core qualities of teaching while making it sound fun. Griffith and Burns emphasise the Big Four; Challenge, Autonomy (but they mean students having the space in classrooms to learn), Feedback (to teachers), and Engagement (full absorption in learning). To link these, they use the notion of flow, which requires that the tasks are appropriately challenging, teacher input is minimal, the class have the necessary learning skills, success criteria or goals are clear and worthwhile, feedback is immediate, and tasks are intrinsically motivating. These are among the top influences that I also found in my synthesis of meta-analyses.
Many have become upset with my own comments about the power of teacher quality, so if only they read this book to see what quality looks and feels like. They spare no punches about what is in the power of teachers: not only the choice of curricula but the management of classrooms, the skill of listening not speaking, the placing of student learning at the centre, receiving feedback about their impact, and taking responsibility for triggering engagement by students in learning -” whilst enjoying it all. They emphasise rapport, imagination, competence, choice, curiosity, relevance, challenge, and fun. [With two exceptions I agree (I see little evidence supporting student choice -” teachers need to lead in progressing students upwards in their learning and not leave it to students otherwise the rich can get richer and the poor stay poor) and would argue that some of these triggers come from being successfully engaged (not as precursors to successful engagement).]
I understand Outstanding Teaching is the first book in the planned Outstanding Teaching series -” bring -˜em on.
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24/09/2012 01:00
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