Blog Five, Theorist: Hattie

Hattie

John Hattie bases his educational psychology on the ‘Outcome’ based education style. His work reflects on the teachers and the students striving to reach set goals and stresses the importance of teacher effectiveness. Hattie believes that data must relate to what teachers are teaching and what students are learning. Outcomes must have a sense of achievement and progression. This article details Hattie’s view on teachers and the relation between research and how they teach their students. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6543(199624)66%3A4%3C507%3ATRBRAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C

Hattie bases a lot of his work on ‘active learning’. This is learning by actively engaging in reading, writing, problem solving, discussion and similar activities (Krause, 2003 pp. 106). This theory is very logical and relevant to today’s educational practices. As teachers we use resources such as the Board of Studies to look at Syllabus pages that are all outcome based. Students rely on being taught outcomes to complete exams such as the School Certificate or the Higher School Certificate. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_sc/

Hattie also refers to teaching need to be varied and be taught in different styles. This will eventually enhance affective learning and the students and teacher will benefit from it. Through Hattie’s theory as teachers we can identify essential representations of the subject and can guide learning through classroom interaction. It is a great way of monitoring learning and a chance to offer feedback to both student and teacher. It allows the teacher to guide the student to learning outcomes and can give affective attributes to their teaching style. I feel that I would incorporate Hattie’s theory into my teaching, as it is a more recent theory that relates to todays students and classrooms.