About ten years ago, I open my first classroom door of the day to a class taking an exam. I walk over to a student…here is the conversation that ensued.
Me: What are you doing?
Student: Taking a test.
Me: What is the test on?
Student: Chapter 4
Me: What is chapter 4 about?
Student: Huh, uh, hmm…
Me: What did you learn in chapter 4?
(The student flips to the first page of the test.)
Student: This is what we learned? (Pointing at the title of the test)
Me: Is the test hard?
Student: (Student starts laughing) Yes…most likely because I don’t know what the test is on.
The class in question…AP Government.
There are four questions I ask students when I do a classroom visit:
- What are you doing?
- What are you learning?
- Why are you learning it?
- How do you know that you learned it?
These questions are asked in succession. In 12,237 classroom visits, Antonetti and Garver (2015) found that 93% of the students could articulate what they were doing in a class, but only 33% could articulate what they were learning. Further, only 9% could articulate why they were learning something and a mere 4% could articulate what success looked like.
Clearly, students know what they are doing in their classrooms but struggle to articulate what and why they are learning. And, very few know what successful learning looks like.
For the student above, she knew she was taking a test but had no idea what she learned for the test. For her the learning intentions were “Chapter 4.” Is it any wonder she was struggling on the test?
Questions two, three, and four create the foundation for teacher clarity which has an effect size of 0.75. Simply, teacher clarity has the potential to accelerate student achievement.
Learning is most successful when teachers see learning through the eyes of their students and students see themselves as their own teachers (Hattie, 2009, 2012). Teacher clarity is at the heart of visible learning. Fendick (1990) broke teacher clarity into four components:
- Organizing instruction
- Explaining content
- Providing examples and guided practice
- Assessment of student learning
Hattie (2012) frames clarity as the teacher communicating the learning intentions and success criteria so teachers and students know where they are going in the lesson. Learning intentions and success criteria provide clarity for students so they know where they are going, how they are going, and where they will go next. This helps students to become assessment capable learners (Hattie, 2016) and allows teachers to teach in the gaps between the learning intentions and success criteria by providing targeted feedback and scaffolds to students.
So back to the questions and how they fit into teacher clarity.
- What are you learning? This question is asked to see if students can articulate learning intentions. With an effect size of 0.44, students articulating learning intentions has the potential to accelerate student achievement, increasing a student’s chances of success by 55% and placing them in the top 67% of their peers.
- Why are you learning it? This question is asked to see if students can articulate relevancy. With an effect size of 0.59, students articulating relevancy has the potential to considerably accelerate student achievement, increasing a student’s chances of success by 79% and placing them in the top 72% of their peers.
- How do you know that you learned it? This question is asked to see if students can articulate success criteria. With an effect size of 0.64, students articulating the success criteria has the potential to considerably accelerate student achievement, increasing a student’s chances of success by 88% and placing them in the top 74% of their peers.
If students do not know what they are learning, why they are learning it, and what success looks like, teachers cannot provide targeted feedback and the necessary scaffolds to help students achieve. And students will not be able to self-regulate and become assessment capable learners.
“When learning is organized and intentional, and when the learner knows what he or she is learning, great things can happen. When students don’t know what they are learning, don’t care about their learning, and have no idea if they are learning, great things are unlikely to happen” (Fisher, Frey, Amador, & Assof, 2019, p. xiv).
References
Antonetti, J. & Garver, J. (2015). 17,000 Classroom Visits Can’t Be Wrong: Strategies That Engage Students, Promote Active Learning, and Boost Achievement. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Fendick, F. (1990). The correlation between teacher clarity of communication and student achievement gain: A meta-analysis (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Florida, Gainesville.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., Amador, O., & Assof, J. (2019). The Teacher Clarity Playbook, Grades K-12 (Corwin Literacy). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.
Frey, N., Hattie, J., & Fisher, D. (2018). Developing assessment-capable visible learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Hattie, J. A. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.
Hattie, J. A. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on teachers. New York: Routledge.
Categories: Education Research, Teacher Clarity, Teaching and Learning