SITE LINK: Teaching and Learning Toolkit (Education Endowment Foundation site)
What is it?According to their mission statement, the Education Endowment Foundation is "an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement." Based out of England, the foundation offers guidance reports built on evidence from research, but the most immediately applicable product they offer for interested teachers is their Teaching and Learning Toolkit (whose highest-ranking recommended practices are posted to the right). While there are a few terms that may not be familiar to those of us on this side of the pond, the overall reports are short, otherwise clear and accessible.
These categories are fairly broad, perhaps more so than in John Hattie's research, but you get more specifics when you click through the links below (by clicking on the images for each approach). Below, link the EEF's most high-impact approaches and try to determine whether there is additional support for these approaches from the work of John Hattie (Visible Learning), which is summarized on its own page, with links to explanations of how his effect size calculations work. But first, we have some background links that can make more sense of the numbers, should you be interested. Where should teachers begin?The Australian Society for Evidence-Based Teaching has some very helpful articles and resources that will help you make sense of this page of EEF findings and the page on John Hattie's findings.
1. "A Quick Guide to Educational Research for Busy Teachers"
This introductory article does a great job of establishing some of the basics. Be sure to click through the "Read more" links at the end of each of the 3 sections, since they contain important details. 2. "A Crash Course in Evidence Based Learning" This page provides a number of links to helpful articles on a number of areas of research. 3. "Effect Size Conversion Table" (pdf) You can use this to make a conversions of months progress (which EEF uses) to effect size (which Hattie uses). Below, we provide estimated conversions for you, but this could be a helpful resource for the future. To visit Visible Learning Plus, click here. |
FOR THE FULL LIST, which you can configure to rank according to cost, quality of the evidence base, or effect on learning, visit the Teaching & Learning Toolkit at EEF.
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EEF Summary: "Meta-cognition and self-regulation approaches (sometimes known as ‘learning to learn’ approaches) aim to help learners think about their own learning more explicitly. This is usually by teaching pupils specific strategies to set goals, and monitor and evaluate their own academic development. Self-regulation means managing one’s own motivation towards learning. The intention is often to give pupils a repertoire of strategies to choose from during learning activities."
Level of support from Hattie's work: STRONG
Hattie lists 9 strategies under "Studies emphasizing student meta-cognitive / self-regulated learning"; every single one of them is rated at either "Potential to accelerate" or "significantly accelerate" student achievement. Transfer Strategies lead the way at 0.86 effect size, Evaluation and Reflection are at 0.75 and Metacognitive Strategies are 0.60, among others. 8 months' progress equates to an effect size in the 0.62 to 0.69 range, so the findings of Hattie and EEF in this area fit relatively well. |
EEF Summary: "Homework refers to tasks given to pupils by their teachers to be completed outside of usual lessons. Common homework activities may be reading or preparing for work to be done in class, or practising and completing tasks or activities already taught or started in lessons, but it may include more extended activities to develop inquiry skills or more directed and focused work such as revision for exams.."
Level of support from Hattie's work: IT'S COMPLICATED
Homework - with elementary and secondary levels lumped in together - comes out to 0.29 effect size (Hattie), which equates to about 4 months' progress (a little short of the EEF estimate). However, as explained here (scroll down to "Fundamental Fact 3"), Hattie's effect size is significantly different at elementary and high school levels (where effect size is estimated to be in the 0.5-plus range - which would actually exceed EEF's findings, which would be between 0.36 and 0.44). EEF agrees on the split in homework effectiveness by level, rating primary homework at just +2 months in learning gains. |
EEF Summary: "Mastery learning breaks subject matter and learning content into units with clearly specified objectives which are pursued until they are achieved. Learners work through each block of content in a series of sequential steps.
Students must demonstrate a high level of success on tests, typically at about the 80% level, before progressing to new content. Mastery learning can be contrasted with other approaches which require pupils to move through the curriculum at a pre-determined pace. Teachers seek to avoid unnecessary repetition by regularly assessing knowledge and skills. Those who do not reach the required level are provided with additional tuition, peer support, small group discussions, or homework so that they can reach the expected level." Level of support from Hattie's work: SOLID
Hattie's latest effect size listing actually rates mastery learning as even more effective (0.57) than EEF's +5 months learning progress (effect size between 0.36 and 0.44). |
EEF Summary: "Peer tutoring includes a range of approaches in which learners work in pairs or small groups to provide each other with explicit teaching support. In cross-age tutoring, an older learner takes the tutoring role and is paired with a younger tutee or tutees. Peer assisted learning is a structured approach for mathematics and reading with sessions of 25-35 minutes two or three times a week. In reciprocal peer tutoring, learners alternate between the role of tutor and tutee. The common characteristic is that learners take on responsibility for aspects of teaching and for evaluating their success. Peer assessment involves the peer tutor providing feedback to children relating to their performance and can have different forms such as reinforcing or correcting aspects of learning."
Level of support from Hattie's work: SOLID
Hattie's latest effect size listing actually rates peer tutoring as even more effective (0.53) than EEF's +5 months learning progress (effect size between 0.36 and 0.44). |
EEF Summary: "Reading comprehension approaches to improving reading focus on learners’ understanding of the text. They teach a range of techniques that enable pupils to comprehend the meaning of what is written, such as inferring the meaning from context, summarising or identifying key points, using graphic or semantic organisers, developing questioning strategies, and monitoring their own comprehension and identifying difficulties themselves (see also Meta-cognition and self-regulation)."
Level of support from Hattie's work: SOLID
It is tricky to compare reading comprehension strategies across both sources since some of what is included in EEF's summary is measured separately in Hattie's research (for example, summarization as a learning strategy has a 0.79 effect size, which is excellent). That said, Hattie posts a 0.47 effect size for reading comprehension strategies, which roughly correlates to +6 months progress (a bit higher than EEF's estimate). They both agree such approaches - broadly speaking - can indeed be helpful. |
EEF Summary: "Collaborative or cooperative learning can be defined as learning tasks or activities where students work together in a group small enough for everyone to participate on a collective task that has been clearly assigned. This can be either a joint task where group members do different aspects of the task but contribute to a common overall outcome, or a shared task where group members work together throughout the activity. Some collaborative learning approaches also get mixed ability teams or groups to work in competition with each other, in order to drive more effective collaboration. There is a very wide range of approaches to collaborative and cooperative learning involving different kinds of organisation and tasks, but this summary does not include Peer tutoring, which is reviewed separately."
Level of support from Hattie's work: STRONG OVERALL, BUT IT'S ALSO COMPLICATED
As noted by EEF, this category covers a great deal of ground, but Hattie's latest effect size list supports the idea that the range of collaborative and cooperative learning strategies are likely to have a positive impact. However, there are several different listings by Hattie that could apply: collaborative learning (0.34, or +4 months), cooperative learning (0.40, or +5 months), cooperative vs. competitive learning (0.53, or +7 months), cooperative vs. individualistic learning (0.55, or +7 months). Plus, a couple collaborative learning strategies with very specific protocols come out with large effect sizes in Hattie's work: Jigsaw method (1.20, or >+12 months) and Reciprocal Teaching (0.74, or +9 months). |
What about digital technology?EEF Summary: "The use of digital technologies to support learning. Approaches in this area are very varied, but a simple split can be made between:
Level of support from Hattie's work: DIFFICULT TO SAY
It is very difficult to extrapolate from one source (EEF) to the other (Hattie) here because, as noted for other categories above, a whole bunch of approaches are lumped into this EEF category while Hattie breaks several of these out into separate categories. With that caveat, let's note that EEF's +4 months' progress has an estimated effect size range from 0.27 to 0.35. Next, let's look at some of Hattie's findings on "implementations using technologies." Here are some listings that do fit in the same range: Gaming / simulations (0.35), Online and Digital Tools (0.29), Technology in Mathematics (0.33), Technology in Reading / Literacy (0.29), and Technology with High School Students (0.30). So, these findings generally (and I mean, generally!) match. Hattie finds some uses of technology more effective than +4 months' progress (Technology with Learning Needs Students, 0.57; Technology in Subjects Other Than Literacy, Writing, Math and Science, 0.55; Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 0.48; Technology with Elementary Students, 0.44; Technology in Writing, 0.42), while others land below EEF's range (such as Programmed Instruction, 0.23; One-on-One Laptops, 0.16, and Web-Based Learning, 0.18). |
What not to do (-4 months learning effect)EEF Summary: "Pupils who do not reach a given standard of learning at the end of a year are required to repeat the year by joining a class of younger students the following academic year. This is also known as “grade retention”, “non-promotion” or “failing a grade”. For students at secondary school level, repeating a year is usually limited to the particular subject or classes that a student has not passed.
Repeating a year is very rare in the UK. Repeating a year is relatively common in the USA where the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) recommended that students be required to demonstrate a set standard of achievement before progressing to the next grade level. Students can also be required to repeat a year in some European countries including Spain, France and Germany. In some countries, such as Finland, pupils can repeat a year in exceptional circumstances, but this decision is made collectively by teachers, parents and the student rather than on the basis of end of year testing." |