SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Good teaching, not money, is the answer

When I first grasped the crazy teaching methods being used at my son’s school more than 20 years ago, I started spending hours in the local university library trying to find out what the research said about these methods. There was precious little to be found back in 1988, but that’s certainly not the case any more. Right now, I’m reading a book called Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement, a book that looks at thousands of studies of “good idea” educational influences, boils them down into 138 categories, and then ranks them in terms of their effectiveness. I would be happy to look up your pet reform and tell you where it ranks and what its standard deviation is. To give you an idea, the top influence is self-report grades, with a d of 1.44 and the bottom influence is student mobility, with a d of -0.34. Phonics instruction is #22, d of .60 (anything over .40 is considered powerful).

Having looked at more than 800 meta-analyses of education research, together comprising thousands of studies, the author concludes that teachers are among the most powerful influences in learning, and goes on to explain what good teachers do. Then he writes:

“Note what is not said. There are no claims about additional structural resources, although to achieve the above it helps not to have the hindrance of a lack of resources. There is nothing about class size, about which particular students are present in the school or class, or about which subject is being taught - effective teaching can occur similarly for all students, all ethnicities, and all subjects. There is nothing about between-school differences, which are not a major effect in developed countries. There is little about working conditions of teachers or students - although their effects, though small, are positive, and positive means we should not make these working conditions worse.” (p. 239)

Here’s a table from the section that reports on how much more effective active and guided instruction is than unguided, facilitative instruction. 

TEACHER AS ACTIVATOR                       d

Reciprocal teaching                                0.74
Feedback                                              0.72
Teaching students self-verbalization         0.67
Meta-cognition strategies                        0.67
Direct Instruction                                    0.59
Mastery learning                                    0.57
Goals - challenging                                0.56
Frequent/effects of testing                      0.46
Behavioral organizers                             0.41

Average activator                            0.60

TEACHER AS FACILITATOR

Simulations and gaming                         0.32
Inquiry-based teaching                           0.31
Smaller class sizes                               0.21
Individualized instruction                         0.20
Problem-based learning                          0.15
Different teaching for girls and boys         0.12
Web-based learning                               0.09
Whole language - reading                       0.06
Inductive teaching                                  0.06

Average facilitator                           0.17