Inside the Secret Moves of Expert Teachers with John Hattie

S5 E1 of Schoolutions Teaching Strategies starts with Professor John Hattie, renowned for his groundbreaking Visible Learning work. After analyzing 2,500+ studies with 200 million students, Professor John Hattie discovered something shocking: there's virtually no correlation between teaching experience and effectiveness after 5 years. So what separates expert teachers from the rest?

In this eye-opening conversation, Hattie reveals that expert teachers are "nosy" - obsessed with understanding not just IF students got the right answer, but HOW they're thinking. They constantly ask three essential questions (watch to learn more) that transform their impact on student learning.

Discover why one expert coach reduced feedback by 80% while making it 80% MORE effective, and learn the specific mindframes that turn good teachers into exceptional ones.

This isn't about adding more to your plate - it's about recognizing the expertise that's already within you and learning how to access it.

Key Takeaways:
✅The shocking truth about teaching experience vs. expertise
✅Why "nosy" teachers get better results
✅The 3 questions every expert teacher asks daily
✅How to make feedback 80% more effective with less effort
✅The mindframes that separate expert teachers from the rest

Episode Mentions:  

• Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning
• Why are so many of our teachers and schools so successful? (video)
• John Hattie on Visible Learning and Feedback in the Classroom (video)
• National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
• Hattie’s 10 Mindframes
• Professor Graham Nuthall's Legacy
• Antonia Cameron - Joyful Learner Routines
• Daniel Willingham 
• Kenneth R. Koedinger
• Jim Knight - The Instructional Playbook

Chapter Timestamps
0:00 Introduction: The "Magic" of Expert Teachers 
3:00 Meet Professor John Hattie 
5:00 What Makes a Teacher an Expert? 
11:00 Experience vs. Expertise: The Shocking Truth 
15:00 The Power of Being "Nosy" in Teaching 
22:00 The Three Essential Impact Questions 
25:00 Rethinking Feedback: Quality Over Quantity 
32:00 The Student's Perspective on Feedback 
35:00 Reducing Feedback by 80%, Increasing Effectiveness by 80% 
38:00 The Danger of Praise in Learning 
40:00 Supporting High-Achieving Students 
42:00 Call to Action: Celebrating Teacher Expertise

📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com 
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

Olivia: [00:00:00] Welcome to Season five of Schoolutions Teaching Strategies. If you've ever wondered why some teachers just seem to have that magic touch with students, while others struggle, despite years of experience, today's conversation will completely shift how you think about teaching expertise. 

I'm talking with Professor John Hattie whose research analyzing over 2,500 studies with 200 million students revealed something counterintuitive. After five years, there's virtually no correlation between teaching experience and teaching effectiveness. So what separates expert teachers from everyone else then. Here's where it gets interesting and maybe a little uncomfortable.

Expert teachers are what Hattie calls “nosy.” They're obsessed with understanding not just whether students got the right answer, but how they're thinking. They [00:01:00] constantly ask themselves three essential questions: What did I actually teach well today? Who did I really have an impact on and How do I know the effect was significant?

One expert coach Hattie worked with, reduced his feedback by 80% while making it 80% more effective. What's the secret? He stopped trying to correct everything and focused solely on information that his students could hear, understand, and act on to get better. And let's remember, this isn't about beating yourself up as a teacher, it's about recognizing that the qualities of expertise are already within you. You just need to know how to access and develop them, and that starts with getting comfortable, being curious, even nosy about your real impact on student learning. Let's jump [00:02:00] in.

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive. 

I am Olivia Wahl, and I am humbled, I'm honored, and frankly, I'm beside myself that I have the privilege of being in conversation with Professor John Hattie today. Let me tell you a little bit about John. Professor John Hattie is an influential educational researcher known for his groundbreaking Visible Learning research. It's a synthesis of over 2,500 meta studies covering more than 200 million students.

This project identified what works best for learning in schools. John, your [00:03:00] books have been a beacon for me for other coaches, educators all over the globe, and a book I lean on often. I have it right here, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on (Student) Learning, and I have shared with you that I want every teacher to be able to hone and recognize their own qualities of expertise because I believe every teacher has them. Um, two videos I use often of yours. One is a TED Talk you gave in November of 2013, and it's called Why are so many of our Teachers in School Successful? I want everyone to see this talk that you gave.

Um, and then another video it's a four-minute video of goodness. It speaks to what Visible Learning is and feedback. But something you say, every time I watch this video, teachers gasp and they [00:04:00] write down word for word. And you say, it's not so much about what teachers do, it's how they think about what they do. So, that's what we're gonna talk about today and, um, I just can't thank you enough for taking the time to have this conversation. Welcome. 

John: Thank you, Olivia. It's a pleasure. I love talking about the stuff, so thank you for doing this.

Olivia: And also the fact that you have awakened at 6:00 AM to have this conversation speaks volumes of how important it is to you, so I, I'm grateful. Um, let's jump in and just talk about the chapters I lean on the most in Visible Learning. 

Chapter three around teachers being the major players in the classroom, as well as chapter seven around feedback. And when I think about the idea of what makes a teacher an expert in your mind, I'd love for you to identify that [00:05:00] and then we'll kind of tease that out over the conversation. So what makes a teacher an expert for you?

John: Well, that quote about, it's less what teachers do, it's more about how they think they do underlies what I think is expertise. Um, it is very easy to take the first run at the work and say, Hey, if you do these particular things, like give lots of feedback, success criteria, they have probabilities. If you do those high impact strategies, you have a higher probability of influencing students. What matters it's your implementation. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: What matters are those moment-by-moment decisions you make to do this rather than that, like I worked for the, um, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards for many years when I was living in the US and I, one of my jobs was to review all the videos of the best teachers across the country.

And you, you, you could see teachers, two teachers doing exactly the [00:06:00] same thing, same methods, same book, same strategies but one had an incredible impact and one didn't. And it's those ways of thinking. And so what we've been doing is trying to formulate and identify them and we call them mindframes; ways of thinking.

And we have identified, you know, 10 of them. Um, I'm sure there's more, but trying to get to the big ones and the other, there's actually one repeated 10 times, Olivia, and that's the first one. When you walk into a classroom and you say, my job here today is to evaluate my impact. The students are the beneficiaries. Now that begs the question of what do you mean by impact? 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: Um, and for us it's a lot. It didn't necessarily only achievement, even though that's in, in the equation, it is progress to achievement. It is that sense of belonging. Like the biggest predictor of adults’ health, wealth, and happiness is not achieving at school.

Speaker 3: No.  

John: It’s the number of years of schooling. So can is your class in an [00:07:00] inviting place that students wanna come back to? I have this sort of, um, crazy idea that if I was the superintendent, I'd lower the school leaving age to 10 because suddenly schools would find ways to make it inviting for kids to come back – that’s got some perverse side effects so I wouldn't do that. But my point is, do we have a sense of belonging? Do we teach kids the strategies to learn that and at the right time? 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: Um, and have they, do we teach respect for self and others? Do we teach them the skills of working at alone and working in groups? That's what I mean by impact. And then what I would argue highly effective teachers do is they continually monitor their teaching to improve that impact. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: Um, you, we have others, like every time you do an assessment, if you don't learn yourself what you taught well, who you taught well, and how much, then the assessment probably isn't that much worth it. But that’s the point of assessment. 

John: Do you engage in the appropriate balance of dialogue and monologue? We have um, [00:08:00] An app that we've been using over the years, so we know to the decimal point across 20,000 teachers that teachers talk 89% of the time. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: That's not dialogue. 

Olivia: No, it's not. 

John: The notion of feedback, and I know we're gonna come back to are we as teachers able to work collectively with our colleagues about our impact? And so I could go on and look at those 10, but what we've been doing over the last few years is Olivia, we, we created a bit of a, a monster here that we have 10 mindframes for teachers, for school leaders, for assessment, for students, for parents, and so on. And so we said, what's the core underlying those mindframes? And we've come to this notion called the Values of Thinking. And I like the term because it emphasizes what we value. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: It also emphasizes a way of thinking. It's not evaluation as an action that we do at the end. Nothing wrong with that. It’s the value statements, the value, um, demands that we make during the session.

And my wife, who's a professor of evaluation, [00:09:00] who's, um, writing a book on this keeps telling me, I make it too hard. And so one day I said to her, make it easy. tell me in a sentence, what's evaluative thinking? And she said, evaluative thinking is when teachers are nosy. Olivia, I wanna know what you're thinking right now.

I wanna know what's going on. I wanna understand how you made that mistake. I wanna understand how you got that right. And I'm gonna have to do that - I'm gonna have to be nice to you. I'm gonna have to build up trust with you. I'm gonna have to be clear with you. I'm gonna have to challenge you and do it in a way that's acceptable.

I'm gonna have to find ways to tell you that you've made mistakes without seeing that as an embarrassment. And so I'm gonna get really, really nosy and know a lot about you to be an effective teacher. So those are the attributes of how we think. Of course, what we do is important. Of course, what we teach is important, but the attributes of expertise is related to how we think.

Olivia: And with all of that said, I think another way of looking at being nosy is around [00:10:00] curiosity. I think passion and curiosity are just invaluable from the child as a learner, but also for the grownup that is facilitating instruction in the class. And what's interesting to me as I've unpacked the work is you differentiate between expert and non-expert at times, but there's also the word experienced that gets bounced around a lot. 

And I, in my heart of hearts, do not believe that a teacher has to have years of experience with content understanding to be impactful. Uh, I think if they are curious, if they're nosy and if they are learning alongside their children, they will have a profound impact if, if they're reflective as well. So it's just fascinating to me.

John: Lemme come back to reflective 'cause I'm not sure I agree with that one, but [00:11:00] come back to the other statements you made. Uh, yes, the, the correlation between expertise and experience after five years is close to zero. Um, and of course, you can see that expertise even in first, second, third, fourth, fifth year teachers.

Um, not as much, but you can see that, um, we, we did a kind of an existential study a few years ago where we had data on about a thousand adults who identified their best teacher and why. And when we analyze that, it came down to two major reasons. The first one, that's the one you've just said. They turned you onto their passion and the second one was - and it was an and/or, and/or they saw something in you you didn't see in yourself.

Olivia: Ah, 

John: Expectations. Lemme comment on the reflection one. 'Cause that's one I'm not so sure about. Like Graham Nuthall did some pretty impressive work. Um, very systematic work in classrooms every day of the year for years and years. And one of his findings was 80% of what happens in your [00:12:00] classroom you don't see or hear.

So I worry about reflection being teachers, reflecting on the 20%. I worry about reflections like at six o'clock for me this morning. I go up, I looked in the mirror, I saw what I saw. Not that kind of reflection. If reflection as you go like Alice in Wonderland through the mirror and see how others see you, see how your students see you, see how your colleagues see you. That makes the difference. And like in our, in our implementation work, we don't, we argue that it's a sin to go in a class and watch a teacher teach. But we spend a lot of time in the classroom helping you see that other 80% - your impact on your students.

Olivia: Okay… 

John: And so I worry about reflection. Um, I know where you're trying to get at and I try to get at the same thing. I haven't come up with it - maybe you can help me come up with the best word here. I want teachers to look at themselves like, I dunno about you Olivia, but as [00:13:00] a teacher, I have very strong bias towards self-confirmation.

Um, I look around the room to a student asking me a question, and I assume when they ask a question, all the students would've asked that question, and all the students understand the answer. That's bias. That is not - and if I reflect, oh yeah, I'm good at asking questions. Well, no. I might be good at asking questions, but I'm not very good at hearing the right questions. I'm not very good at hearing the right answers in terms of the students understand it. So help me here. Not reflection please, but something more about self-critique. 

Olivia: Well, and and I wonder too if it comes down to using student work more?

John: Yes!

Olivia: And so, right. I think that is where the heart of this also is, because if it's not cognitive, what we're hearing students say, what would they're writing down, engagement-wise, then we really have no idea what our impact is. So if we use student work, that's a glimpse, but the students [00:14:00] have to trust us. They have to be willing to take risks to put themselves out there on paper. 

John: Oh, totally. 

Olivia: And not play the guess what, um, thinking game of what do you want the response to be? 'Cause we have many compliant students. I don't want compliant students. I want kids that push back, that question me. And so I think that vulnerability as educators. When I say reflective, what I'm speaking more to is when do I take the time every day to ask how do I know if my impact was…

John: Correct? That's it..

Olivia: On what it was on children. So that's, it's that, that moment of pause every single day throughout the day is an educator as a coach for our leaders to say, what was my impact today?

John: Like I, I call the word Visible Learning and you know, the criticism is, correctly, learning isn't that visible? It's all up here (points to head). 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: But the reason I called it that is 'cause I [00:15:00] want that to be more visible. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: The students are desperate to know, Olivia, how did you do that? 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: And we as even adults, even as teachers, we don't have a very good vocabulary about how we think.

Olivia: Right. 

John: But every day your students are saying, how does you do it? And we tell 'em. And that's nothing wrong with that, but that's all we do. Sometimes we have to listen. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: And hear how they're going about their processing, which is, as you say, it's through their work. It's through how they think, it's through how they make errors. It's through many of the attributes. And you talk about compliance and, and unlike you, I do want some compliance, but not too much. And I'm at this, and I'm at the stage now of my life where, you know, it's, I'm in luxury. I have seven grandchildren. Um, four of them have just started school in the last couple of years. And it's frightening to see. How much compliance there is and they want to be compliant at that age. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: But it's terrifying to see them go from that [00:16:00] 4-year-old curious, why is it like this granddad? Why is it like that? Let's try this. No fear of mistakes. It's kind of part of the enjoyment -within I was gonna say within six months with one of my granddaughters on the very first day. Um, she went totally…

Olivia: It gets quelled… 

John: Before she went to school, she knew her alphabet, she could spell her name. She knew her numbers up to a hundred. She was very proud of all this.Coming, coming home from school on day one, she said, I can't do any of that, because she saw someone in the class who was better and it was all over.

The teacher told them all the time about what they didn't know and what they were going to do, and she very compliant little 5-year-old. It was terrifying. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: To watch that immediate. Immediate, now that's going overboard. And so like you, I, there's a moment when they need to be compliant and there's a moment where they need to be, as you said, they need to push back. They need to ask the right questions. They need that curiosity. 'cause that's the essence of why they wanna come, why they wanna learn. 

Olivia: One of my very brilliant colleagues in the States, Antonio Cameron, has [00:17:00] created a series called Joyful Learner. It would bring you such joy, um, and especially for your grandchildren. And what, there are different routines that actually can be utilized across all content areas, across all ages, but their routines based in mindfulness and joy, pure joy, and it's risk-taking it’s, looking at different self-regulation. It's watching, it's interacting with each other, sometimes through drawing when you actually cannot talk.

But it's that idea of taking risks and what we find is, the younger the child, the more willing they are to jump in and play with these different tasks and ideas. And then scarily as the adult, everyone's looking around the room to say, oh, I don't wanna give the wrong answer. I, that's too scary to me. So I, I think that that idea of parallel practice.[00:18:00] 

John: Yes

Olivia: The grownups in the building, not just within a classroom. Yeah. That you have to model that behavior, that willingness to question, to be curious and to not always be right. And I do believe there are ripple effects for colleagues. 

John: Well, it's the same. It's the same when you supervise a PhD thesis. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: If you had joy and fun and your PhD, it reflects and the students can pick that up. There is something I don't wanna raise though. 'cause you know, joy is important, but as Dan Willingham has pointed out, learning is hard work, learning is tough. Learning is sometimes a grind and it's hard to call that joy. But the argument we make is that we have to engage those students, and particularly those practices that consolidate learning in a way that they see its impact.

Olivia: Yes. 

John: And therefore they're prepared to do it because it's just not joyful. Like if you have to sit down and edit something. Or mark an assignment. Sometimes it's just hard work. Sometimes it's hard to use the word joy. [00:19:00] But I know as an academic marketing assignments was the thing that was the least joyful for me. But I had to do it.

Olivia: Right. 

John: I had to focus and I had to concentrate. And so I worked out, you know, strategies. At the end of five ones I allowed myself to go and get a coffee or go and do some crossword or go in outside or whatever. And so I was very behavioral modifying of my behavior. 'cause I knew it was important.

Olivia: Yes. 

John:  But it wasn't enjoyable. 

Olivia: Right? 

John: And so there's that side of what we have to do as teachers too. Teach the kids that there are times where they just have to grind, they have to overwork, they have to pour into it. It's kind of like my, my career, I spend 30 or 40 years as a, as a coach of cricket. Not very popular in the us but um, as Robin Williams said, it's, it's baseball on Valium. And in, in that sport you have to overlearn things because in the game, I don't want them to think.

Olivia: Ah, flow. 

John: I want them to automatically do something when they see the ball coming down in this particular position, I want to automatically go into the square cup 'cause you haven't got time to [00:20:00] think in the real game. And it's kind of ironic, isn't it, that in classrooms we are successful when the kids don't know they're successful. 

Olivia: Yes. Yes. Well, and you're also speaking to flow though.

John: Yes!

Olivia: And so something to be said with these routines I just mentioned is it's taking three to four minutes to do exactly what you just said you do for yourself as self-regulating learner. It's grabbing a cup of coffee, it's going for a walk it. This is actually clearing the mind. And so flow starts to happen and then you can do the hard work. But if you're stressed, if you're looking for a dopamine fix because of a device, you're not going to be able to focus on that hard work. So that's kind of interesting. Um, yeah.

John: A recent article come out by Kenneth Koedinger, which I think was quite stunning, where he showed across 1.3 million kids that no matter what your ability, we all need five to seven opportunities to learn something before we learn it. [00:21:00] And it repeats what Graham Nuthall showed about 30-40 years ago. Um, and one of my worries in classrooms is many kids get one chance.

Olivia: That's it. 

John: That's it. And so how do you as a teacher make five to seven opportunities to learn something joyful? It's hard work, but it's the right work. 

Olivia: Yeah, I, I concur. And, and then I also think it's critical parallel practice again, that teachers do their own assignments, that so they can see the learning through their children's eyes. So. What, in your meta study analysis, in your work, how can we help teachers develop that, that empathetic, uh, capacity to be able to see their students? 

John: And the, the empathy is, is the core notion, and it's, you know, can you stand in the shoes of students? And I wanna focus it around the three impact questions: What did you teach well, and what did you not teach well? And so that requires you to [00:22:00] hear it through the student's voice. It requires you to see it through the student's work. It requires you to be observant and engage in that evaluative thinking. 

The second one is, Who did you have impact on and who did you not? Like every single class. Some kids get it, some kids don't, and it's not necessarily a function of probability. It helps, but it's not just that. And what does it mean to get it? Which is why we are so obsessed about making the success criteria transparent, upfront. Students shouldn't have to guess. 

Olivia: No. 

John: What the teacher wants, and again, I'm watching one of my, um, 7 year olds at the moment. She thinks what the teacher wants is pretty low and neat. Um, and no, and then she gets reinforced for that. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: And I keep saying to her, no, but tell me about how you're thinking. No, grandad. Well, I did, and I've got pictures sitting on the desk here that they did, um, on Monday when they all came down. And they're very, very proud of it. But I wanna know what was going on, what [00:23:00] they're aiming for. Yeah. I'm very nosy. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: And sometimes they, they back up say, no, no, look at the picture and I can look at the picture and I can see it, but what's going on here? So the certain question is, Who did I have an impact on? Who did I not? And the third question is, How big was the effect? I know this one of the hardest ones, but looking at students' prior work. And then looking at this subsequent work, if you can't see the improvement, you, you can't answer that question positively. 

Olivia: No.  

John: Now here, here's the hard one though, Olivia, that one of the tasks we do, which requires incredibly high trust, is bring along two pieces of student work. So, two months apart and have a discussion, is that two months growth? And having sat in those workshops, sometimes I'm convinced that the work two months later is not as good as the work at the beginning. It has to be called. 

Olivia: Yeah.

John: Otherwise that teacher's gonna go back and think that cruising is okay, just doing the work's okay. And it's a tough call. And this is why the work is so hard. [00:24:00] We actually need, I need to understand, Olivia, how you think. I need to have a judgements. It is so much easier for me to watch you teach and, oh, you could've done a bit more of that 'cause I would've done that, or you could've done that, or whatever.

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: But going that next step and looking at. Those three questions. So in terms of your, your, your query about what strategies it relates to helping teachers see their impact about what, who, and how much? 

Olivia: And I would even add to that, what has been insanely helpful for the teachers and other coaching colleagues I'm working with. We've looked at chapter seven, Visible Learning around feedback, the four levels of feedback, because what I find is in the elementary buildings, in the States, teachers, they confer often with students. They are as. Asking questions. What I though find in middle and high school teachers are not conferring as often with students.

And so if we look at the task process or task product level, the process, look [00:25:00] at self-regulation leading to self, that has been so illuminating for educators to pause and ask themselves, what, what are the levels of questioning I'm even engaging with students around? So that's been very, very interesting work.

John: And, and just using that as a, one of the interesting things for me at the moment is looking at the skills needed to use AI. And the first one is questioning - probative questioning.

When I look at the evidence, uh, we do ask as teachers, you know, 150, 200 questions a day that require less than three-word answers. But what's fascinating is how many questions does a class ask about their work they don’t know the answer to? Uh, they're ruling out things like, can I go to the toilet? What page am I on.  The answer’s two.

And so questioning are what teachers do and kids know that every question the teacher asks, they know the answer to. So they think that's what questioning is. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: And that is not what questioning is when you use AI, if [00:26:00] you ask AI the wrong question, it will give you an answer that looks good, but you've asked the wrong question.

And I keep reminding people. The the main program people know about is chatGPT. It's about its chats. It's about a discussion, it's about a series of questions and answers. It's about evaluating quality, like who's in charge of quality control in the classroom. Every kid will tell you it's the teacher.  With artificial intelligence, it has to be the user. 

And so I think that you, you, you're, you're raising this thing about questioning, and I'm absolutely a hundred percent behind you, but sometimes we forget that the quality of the students’ questions as skills in which they have to ask questions is a better indicator of our impact about questioning than the answers kids give.

Olivia: Oh, that is absolutely huge, what you just said. And so just to then think, how are teachers gathering the questions that students are asking, because that would be so [00:27:00] insightful as to their level of understanding, I think, as well. 

John: Yes.

Olivia: And that that I, I have to even process what you just said because that's really big. That's big. 

John: But I'm a bit, yeah, we we're, we're about 30 minutes into this now and we haven't mentioned one thing that, uh, you know, we touched on before we started this here. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

John: I have not worked in a school yet, and yet we've worked in 10,000 schools over the last 10 years. I've not seen a school yet where these teachers are not ever-present. What we're talking about is common. It is in our schools now. And what keeps me going is I see this excellence at every school. The problem in education is that the variability within the school about expertise is the problem. And this is where leadership becomes pretty critical, uh, to have these discussions.

'Cause it's so much easier to ignore them and just say, it's about what we do, it's about the resources and hey, it's the students. If you don't only send me the right students, et cetera, et cetera. [00:28:00] I keep going in this game simply because I see excellence. I know you see excellence in the business. 

Olivia: I do.

John: And one of the things that we do is to sort of, to come back to your, your question about how to do this, is do we have the courage to reliably identify these teachers with these attributes and make their voice dominant, privilege their voice, privilege their thinking? 

Olivia: Yes! 

John: Both in the staff room and in the classroom. And I would argue, Olivia, that the biggest problem in education is the lack of courage. 

Olivia: Uh, I, I would agree with you and I also think teachers right now, especially in the states, do not feel seen or heard or valued.

John: Correct.

Olivia: And what they are being measured by. It's, when we say success, it is not what teachers value as success. And so, if in my mind, if we can identify and use the dimensions of expertise that you've outlined, I want everyone to have access to that because they already have it within them. [00:29:00] And so it's great. 

John: They do, but, but let, let me query on one thing. 

Olivia: Yes.

John: You’re right. We are very good at bashing up teachers. You know, every problem in the in, in the United States, schools will fix it. Teachers will fix it, and every problem they created. But here's my problem of any profession, I think teachers are the best at denying their expertise, and it comes from their kindness. Look, the kid did the work, the parents gave the support.

Principal gave me the right kids. One of the hard things I want school leaders to do is to get teachers to acknowledge that when you have success, they caused it. Now, I could have gone the opposite and said, when they have failure, they caused it. We are good at that. But I want - when success…

Like the example I use is at 1900, what percentage of the world was literate and numerate? 14. 1-4%. At 2000, what percentage of the world was numerate and literate? 86%. And the question I ask is, why, why? Why, Olivia do we go from 14 to 86% of one century? Surely [00:30:00] that's gotta be the hallmark of the 20th century. It's dramatic.

Olivia: Right!

John: Why? Because of a teacher. When I ask audiences that they usually, oh, it's the curriculum was the spread of knowledge. It was the Internet, it was the textbooks and getting teachers to acknowledge us, and this is where often we start at our work. If you're not prepared to acknowledge excellence in your, you are the cause of success. What about the cause of failure? It's you too. And that's where those nosy teachers are good. They wanna know, Olivia, what you did wrong, so they can fix it. 

Olivia: Yeah. This is the, it's also reminding me too, of the whole lens of coaching and um looking at your effect sizes alongside, uh, Jim Knight's playbook work.

John: Yes.

Olivia: And that's, we've been trying, um, where I am in New York State to have a Regional Coaching Initiative. So we're creating one mega [00:31:00] playbook that we're all evolving and adding to and looking at research. And something that was fascinating around feedback, particularly, is that teachers really struggle with collecting feedback, with giving timely feedback.

Um, especially I would again say at middle and high school because they have so many students, different sections of students. So I did want to ask you, because this is a question that coaches and teachers thought, oh my gosh, you get to speak with John Hattie, um, around just how should feedback - timing, focus, and delivery alter or be adjusted based on the students themselves? 

John: Yeah. Like feedback is one of the more powerful influences and yet, a third of our feedback is zero and to negative. 

Olivia: Right. 

John: And so it is, it is. It is a tough one. And what we've been trying to do is understand that variability. And one of the what, for [00:32:00] example, when we ask teachers about what they mean by feedback, they talk about making corrections, uh, making connections, um, you know, giving commentary about the work giving critique. 

But when you ask students, they have one answer that's none of those. Feedback to students is about how can I improve? Kids are improvement engines and if they don't get improvement feedback, they would argue and they'll actually, I, I've sat kids waving pieces of paper of feedback 'cause teachers give lots of feedback and they'll say, I got no feedback. And what they mean is I got nothing to help me improve. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: And so one of the most powerful things about feedback is to ask, is there improvement information? Uh, we, we did a study, uh, with university students where we took about 3000 assignments. The students got it in, they got a mark, they got feedback, and we controlled that feedback. And they resubmitted. Those students who went up on the resubmission was almost entirely a function of whether there was improvement feedback as opposed to correct(tions). 

Now. Don't get me wrong, there's [00:33:00] nothing wrong with correction. There's nothing wrong with telling students where they're going and how they're going. It's the credibility, but students are feedback engines. The second thing, and, and this is a, a mistake I made in my own research, is we, we keep focusing on the questions you said, how do we increase the quanlity, the quantity, the timeliness, and we forgot, it's all about the student's interpretation. And so effective feedback is feedback that's heard, understood, appraised and activated. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: And so a simple way is, you know, spend all your Sunday writing all your comments, give it back to your students, wait a day, so it's not just short-term memory. Then ask your students to jot down some bullet points of what they understood by the feedback you gave them. Olivia, it's very sobering. 

Olivia: It is. 

John: A lot of kids, there's nothing. So why did you waste Sunday? So what I want you to do is to spend a lot more time listening to the student's interpretation. Like this year, Janet and I have, [00:34:00] uh, 40 years of, um, being together. It's wonderful. 

Olivia: Congratulations. 

John: But the reason for success is I'm the world's best selective listener. I know when she gives me feedback, it costs, I have to do it again. And like many of your students, they have learned it's easier not to hear it. Yeah. When I get a C on my assignment, I say, oh, I did, well, I got a C, I passed. I should be saying, how do I get better? And I want feedback from you, Olivia that helps me get a B and an A before the assignment.

So feedback, focus on, is it improvement-focused? Listen to the students, whether they hear it, whether they understand, whether they can activate it, and then that's what you maximize. Like interestingly, we're doing some quite a bit of work with, um, expert level coaches. Uh, in fact, I'm doing a session today with FIFA in Switzerland with their expert coaches.

And one of the thing, one of the teams that we work with here in Australia, which is a, you know, a high-profile team. The coach argues that over the last five years since he started this work with us, he has [00:35:00] reduced feedback by 80% and increased its effectiveness by 80% and don't think that more is better.

Olivia: That's, yes!

John: It's what’s understood. 

Olivia: No, John, we just did this with a class of middle school students. It was so fascinating. It was testing time coming up, and we gave the students different samples of writing because test preparation is abysmal. No one really enjoys it, so we wanted to actually make it purposeful for a learning lab.

We gave the students all different samples, different 1, 2, 3, 4 scores. And we asked them to offer feedback to the writer that would be improvement-based feedback. And we did this over a couple of different days. The first time they were offering feedback, it was “great job.” It felt very praise based. Um, and so then we coached around, wait a second, what does this writer know to do next based on “great job” or “I like this.” 

And so it [00:36:00] also uncovered the lens of teachers do want to make students feel good, and yet we know praise can be very dangerous as well. So I, I'd love for you to speak to that because that was gobsmacking to some of the teachers that we've been doing this work with.

John: Look. Olivia. I'm happy for you to spend the next half, half hour praising me. We all love praise, um, and our argument is there's nothing wrong with praise at the right time. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: The problem is that when you're in a feedback situation about the work, about how we think and about what we do, praise can dilute it. Like if I say to you, Olivia, that you know the question you asked half an hour wasn't appropriate, it wasn't fine enough, blah, blah, blah, but I really enjoyed what you're doing, et cetera, then I come back to you two days later and say tell me about the feedback that he gave you. 

It's no surprise that you remember the good stuff. It dilutes. Now, I don't want anyone going away saying we have to be horrible to kids. It's not like that at all. [00:37:00] This praise is a form of motivation. It's okay. 

Olivia: Yeah 

John: But I just want you to separate it. What you just told me there is so powerful. Like teaching students how to give feedback really helps us understand our notions of feedback. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: And when kids say “that's good.” “You did a great..” Tell me more about this. And you say to them, well, how would you feel if you got that information? It's really, really powerful. Um, and I just think that whole, now I take a line that I don't think kids have any right to do any marking of the work. Um, but I do also take the line that the one of the best ways to help them in teaching them to give feedback. Make sure up front they know what an A looks like. Give them worked examples, give them a rubric, make it clear, and if that helps them in their marking, why aren't we doing that for their own work? 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: Why aren't we telling them right up front that at the moment you're working at the C level? Let me show you what a B looks like. Let show you what an A looks like. It shouldn't be a secret. 

Olivia: No, it, it shouldn't. It shouldn't. And it should also [00:38:00] be accessible for students that are already hitting the A to know what's coming next, because that idea of improvement, we focus so heavily on our striving students that we also need to support students that are already thriving - your granddaughter, for example, going into kinder already knowing all this information, she should be supported and enriched as a learner, just alongside all other students. So I think that's fascinating. 

John: A colleague here in Melbourne, we did it, created scenarios that went around many, many schools and asked teachers to react. And the scenarios only differed in terms of what you said: Were they above average or below average? And what he found is that teachers have an incredible number of strategies for kids below average. 

Olivia: Yes.

John: Above average? Just do more. And I've argued here in Australia that we are not as good with kids above average as we are with kids below average. And so I do worry that, and your example of, you know, someone getting an A or a hundred percent - that tells me as a teacher, the work was too easy. 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: There's nothing wrong with getting a [00:39:00] hundred percent, but you're right. It's, I'm happy you got that now 'cause you've mastered it. Um, you're in the 80 to a 100 percent zone, which is mastery. Now we're gonna do this, which is more complex and more difficult. And you watch the kids' face more, harder? 

Olivia: Yes. 

John: Well, that's why we have to turn them on to that joy of learning. That it is hard work and so, yes. Nothing wrong with getting a hundred percent, but I do worry that we are not as good as those kids above average as we think we are. Like, in my language, they cruise. 

Olivia: They cruise. And it comes to a point in time where the work does get hard. 

John: Yes.

Olivia: It may not be in middle or high school, it may be at university. And then what happens? Because when the work gets hard, those students don't know what to do. So, um, it's that grit and the risk taking or the, the celebrating mistakes I think as a culture of learners that can help with that. 

John: Well take gifted kids. Why is it that the majority of gifted [00:40:00] kids do not become gifted adults? Less than 2% of child prodigies going to be gifted adults. 'Cause my argument is in their teen years where they're forced to do work outside their area of expertise, they have none of those skills.

They're embarrassed. Their parents won't let them get anything less than an A. They just want to focus on their narrow sense of expertise and this that's okay, but they do fall over. They don't have that ability to fail, they don't have that ability to make errors. They don't have ability to get up off the ground, uh, in areas outside their expertise. And I think that's a, a sad tragedy. 

Olivia: Yeah, I would agree. And so to wrap this conversation, I want to go back to something that you said, and I know you believe and I believe as well. Um, I think these qualities, this idea of expertise is within all educators. And if I can give any call to action, um, moving forward in education in general, I love the idea of leaders of buildings celebrating teacher expertise and naming for teachers [00:41:00] these qualities that they see in addition to success that they're seeing within children. And teachers deflect way too often to say, no, no, it's the students and we need to hold that and acknowledge it because teaching is very, very hard, complex work, and that's why teachers are brilliant humans in this world. So thank you for uplifting the work of teachers. That's what I'm grateful for you. 

John: Thank you, Olivia. This is hard work, but fun work. It's joyful. But it does mean that we have to continually look at how those teachers are thinking. 

Olivia: Absolutely. Thank you and take good care, John.

Schoolutions Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you always to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. [00:42:00] Thank you to my guest, John Hattie, for sharing how we can access and develop the expertise that is already within us.

Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know what your plan is to start implementing the nosy teacher approach this week. Choose one lesson and ask three students afterward to explain back to you what they understood from your feedback. Then, ask yourself had these three impact questions: What did you teach? Well. Who did you impact? How do you know? The answers might surprise you and transform how you teach. 

Tune in every Monday for the best research, back coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guest that week. See you [00:43:00] then.