Learning
Edition 07 | July 2025
Bookmarked
Discover thought-provoking book recommendations tailored for educators. Each pick includes
a
concise synopsis and actionable takeaways to inspire and enrich teaching practices.
Overview:
Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn pairs John Hattie’s landmark ‘visible learning’ evidence with Gregory Yates’ clear explanations from cognitive psychology. Drawing on more than 800 meta-analyses (covering millions of children), the authors examine memory, attention, motivation, deliberate practice, feedback and mindsets—then translate the findings into day-to-day classroom advice. Published in 2013, the book helps teachers base their decisions on solid research rather than prevalent practices or guesswork.
Why Teachers Will Find This Useful:
- Evidence you can trust: Every strategy rests on a sizeable pool of studies, so you know why it works.
- Cognitive science made clear: Memory, retrieval, and motivation are explained in plain language with direct classroom links.
- Sharper feedback: Learn to give comments that show children their current position, the goal, and the next step.
- Myth-busting: Popular ideas such as learning styles, brain-based ‘left v right hemispheres’, and multitasking are calmly but powerfully debunked.
- Visible progress: You gain practical tools for setting transparent goals and success criteria so children can track their own learning.
Why We Recommend It:
Reading Hattie and Yates feels like having a research team on call. The prose is direct, and each
chapter ends with ‘Implications for the classroom.” No gimmicks—only tested principles. For
teachers swamped by new initiatives, this book acts as a filter: keep what works, drop what doesn’t.
It
hands power back to teachers, inviting you to study your impact, adjust quickly, and make
learning visible to children and parents alike.
Interesting and Actionable Takeaways:
- Retrieval beats re-reading: Low-stakes quizzes strengthen long-term memory far more than passive review.
- Struggle signals growth: Effortful learning—‘desirable difficulty’—builds durable neural connections.
- Surface—deep-transfer: Effective lessons move from basic facts to deeper understanding and finally to applying ideas in new contexts.
- Feedback three-step: Ask ‘Where am | going? How am | going? Where to next? —and train children to ask the same.
- Feedback Loop Speed: The shorter the gap between action and correction, the faster the improvement curve.
- No evidence for learning styles: Matching tasks to a preferred ‘style’ makes no difference; clarity and challenge do.
Zoom-in Excerpts:
“The major message, however, is that rather than recommending a particular teaching method,
teachers need to be evaluators of the effect of the methods that they choose.”
Explanation:
This line gets to the core of Visible Learning. It shifts the focus from what you teach to how well it
works. Instead of following one-size-fits-all methods, pay close attention to what your learners are
showing you. Are they engaged? Are they progressing? When you regularly reflect, gather feedback
and adjust your approach, you make learning visible—and more effective—for every pupil.Key
Strategies Teachers Can Use:
- Start with a retrieval warm-up: Open lessons with a short quiz on prior content to strengthen memory links.
- Share success criteria: Make the learning goal and what ‘good’ looks like explicit before practice begins.
- Think-aloud modelling: Demonstrate your reasoning while solving a problem so children glimpse expert thinking.
- Use spaced practice: Revisit key ideas over weeks—not in one block—to cement understanding.
- Teach peer feedback: Structure peer review around the three feedback questions to build metacognition.
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