John Hattie - Visible Learning: Feedback

John Hattie began his career as a teacher in primary and secondary schools, before moving into academia. His PhD is in measurement and statistics, and he has spent his career using these methods to better address educational questions. He has worked at the Universities of New England, Western Australia, North Carolina, Auckland and now Melbourne.

John is Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne and co-director of the Science of Learning Research Centre. He is chair of the Australian Institute for Teachers and School Leaders, honorary professor at the University Durham and Auckland. He is past-president of the International Test Commission and associate editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology and Nature: Science of Learning and serves on the board of 28 journals.

He has supervised 200 thesis students to completion (and is most proud of this) and published and presented over 1,000 papers. His hobby is collecting meta-analyses, aiming to evaluate the relative impact of various interventions. This led to Visible Learning (2009) and now 14 related books, translations into 24 languages, workshops around the world and a mission to more deeply understand the underlying story as to the most important influences.

In September 2001, he met Shirley Clarke in Chester, UK and was so impressed with her skills at translating research into teacher friendly books, he asked to work with her which has led to a best-seller about formative assessment in New Zealand. He has gained from the critiques of his work by Shirley that have sharpened claims and arguments, leading to this book.

Co-writing a book 17,000 kilometers apart is fun it heightens the writing. It leads to continual debates and it makes the rare face to face meetings (dinners) all the more fun. This book has had a long gestation we both considered feedback as a critical determiner for enhancing student and teacher learning many eons ago. But the variability was so great. How come about one third of feedback is negative and the same feedback in some situations is powerful but in others detracts? We both explored these notions in the research, in the lab and in the classroom. We developed models and theories, we moved from research to practice and practice back to theory. So many critiqued, questioned, offered ideas and advice. It took 15 years of collaboration before we both felt confident we were ready to put pen to paper.

I thank my colleagues at the various universities I have worked at, my current PhD students, my Visible Learning partners around the world ( Cognition , Corwin; Challenging Learning , Osiris, Bazalt, Onderwijs-Advies) and the many who email with constructive critique. In particular, Luke Mandouit, Cam Brookes and Mark Gan have sharpened these ideas.

I have been with Janet over 30 years and she remains my best critic, provider of feedback and love of my life. Her greatest skills include patience, love, fortitude and good fun and she is the best thing that ever happened to me followed by my family: Joel, Kat, Kyle, Jess, Kieran, Alesha, Edna, Patterson and grandchild Emma.

We thank our Routledge team, especially Bruce Roberts, who has overseen many of the VL books, ensuring they are well edited and presented and he has become a long-time friend.

John Hattie

I thank those colleagues from way back when who gave me opportunities to conduct national research projects at the Institute of Education in London and saw the value of combining research with practice, (a rare thing in the nineties) especially Caroline Gipps, Peter Mortimore, Denis Lawton and Barbara MacGilchrist. Chas Knight, the Hodder editor of all my books so far, deserves special thanks, as his excellence and understanding of what I wanted to achieve played a great part in their accessibility and popularity.

In my ongoing work with many schools and teams of teachers trialling formative assessment strategies, I wish to thank Seamus Gibbons and Gary Wilkie who have worked with me from young teachers to school leaders of excellent schools and along the way have contributed invaluable insights about the real world of formative assessment in action, also Kim Zeidler from the University of East Kentucky who purchased 1000 copies of my latest book for her students, so convinced was she of the power of formative assessment, and invited me to work with teachers there. The subsequent knowledge gained about the nitty gritty of the American school widened my horizons, as well as the two years living in Wisconsin working with educators.