What Doesn't Work in Education?

WHAT DOES'NT WORK IN  EDUCATION? This is a powerful question asked by John Hattie. This question led to the publication of series title "What Doesn’t Work in Education: The Politics of Distraction" in 2015. Through this publication, Hattie answers the questions through four major themes. He points out how good intentions are wasted, identifies fundamental problems, suggests the strategies to get right, and identifies 5 politics of distractions in education system.

1. Wasted Intention

The best intentions and commitments to improve education system is wasted at policy and political play field. Although the desire not make education a world class by improving student outcome exists, more focus and resources id diverted to policies that are politically attractive and motivated decisions rather than on what happens at classroom level. He argued that such decision has little such decisions has little effect on improving student learning. For instance, lots of changes are based on such modest intentions are structural fixes such as spending more money, changing structural design, consolidation, more assessment, more technology, more meeting, and more number of activities in school to mention few. According to Hattie, despite these proposal and changes being typically expensive, evidence shows minimal impact on actual improvement of student learning. further, he defends that such proposal distract us from implementing policies that contribute significantly to actual gain in student learning.

2. The Fundamental Problem

Hattie identifies the fundamental problem in improving student learning outcomes as effectiveness of teachers and expertise of school leaders. This is being empirically explained by citing 36 percent variance within OECD countries (PISA 2009) and 64 percent variance within schools. He asserts that, these variance in teacher effectiveness implies that "...there is much variability among teachers in the effect that they have on student learning."According to him, although teachers, school leaders and parents are ware of this variability, it is most often absent in discussions about policy, teaching, and schools as it involves asking hard questions. Despite the normalized silence, decades of research on what really enhances student learning points to the fact that improving teacher and school leader expertise, ensuring that teachers and school leaders work together on common understandings about progress and high expectations for the impact of their teaching are the key solution to the fundamental problem. 

In conjunction, he asserts that school leaders must focus on developing collective expertise among their teachers, institute systems that have robust discussions to decide the purpose and desired outcomes of their schools and students. According to him, only recognizing, valuing, enhancing, resourcing and privileging collaborative expertise of teachers and schools leaders, a nation can have any chance of becoming one of the top education system in the world. 

3. Getting the Strategy Right

Then Hattie outlines and identifies the fundamental flaw in means and mode of educational assessment. He assets that to measure the learning progress of students, educators and policy makers must agree to avoid use of terms such as achievement standard, tails, gaps and flatlining.
Hattie assert that achievement standard measured against average and normal distribution has and is in-built failure system. Dues to its inherent and in-built system, it result to the believe that teachers schools are not delivering the result despite increased resources. This idea, in many ways agree with Harvard scientist Todd Rose's argument in his 2016 Book "The End of Average". Rose argues that the concept of average person is myth and use of average in educational setting and assessment has no real essence to student achievement.
Further, Hattie affirms the uncomfortable truth that schools can never achieve 100% outcome above the standard and there will never be case where all students exceed the most achievement standard despite being the demand of the school. There will always need students below the average or achievement standard. 

There is a long tail of underachieving. Most often, most of the  resources are mostly and usually allocated to bridge the gap of long tail of underachievement even at the cost of top performers. If we are to rationally do a cost benefit analysis, does long tail of underachieving really deserve all our resources of time, attention, energy and money? Do that particular group  really accrue any measurable academic benefit?  To these questions, Hattie throws a bombshell truth; and the truth is it can't make much difference because there will always be the tail. Rather, on hindsight, the students at the upper end are ignored while the excessive amount of resources is spent on fixing those at the other tail. 

A new piece of jargon that crept into educational lexicon is flatlining. Hattie explains that this phenomenon is illustrated by graph showing status quo in average achievement over the years or even decades often measured against the increase in monetary spending on education and other  trivial matters that may be related to education in some ways. Is flatline really a valid indicator status quo and poor performance? To this Hattie contends that "a flatline for schools means that each year a new group of students enters, and we add a similar amount of value to get these students up to last year’s ‘average’." According to him, educators who achieve consistent high level of performance for each cohort must be lauded. Yet, education system around the word has built system and policies that allows educators to be punished for the flatline even if that flatline is maintained at high standard of student learning outcome. 

In Hattie's view, educators must stop talking about tail, gap and the flatline as there will always be tail, countless gaps, and flatline can be healthy is the average is high. Rather, educational assessment and measurement must be focused on something more dynamic, inclusive and humanistic approach that appreciate the a years progress of students. 

Hattie's work on "What doesn't work in education," argues that the best intention of education is often wasted in politically correct and fulfilling ideologies and policies while the the fundamental problem of actual classroom and professional need of teachers to improve their efficiency are neglected. Further, our educational priorities are misplace while trying to focus on tails, gaps and flatline. 

The next theme or topic "The politics of distraction" deserve a separate post in my blog. 

Note: Few ideas presented in this article may differ from authors intended ideas as this article has been written for personal learning and liking.