"Visible Learning" - making learning processes visible - is his topic: New Zealander Prof Dr John Hattie is considered one of the most influential educational researchers of our time. He will be giving a public lecture at the university on Wednesday, 17 April at 10.00 a.m. (Haarentor campus, lecture hall centre A14, lecture hall 1).
This will be the only lecture in Germany for the scientist, who is travelling through Europe in the first half of the year. The reason for Hattie's visit is that the Oldenburg educational scientist Prof Dr Klaus Zierer has translated Hattie's work "Visible Learning" into German together with the Swiss social scientist Prof Dr Wolfgang Beywl. Hattie, who accepted the invitation of the university's Didactic Centre (diz), will receive the German edition of his study from the hands of the two translators on this day.
Hattie has been a university lecturer in education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne since 2011. In 2009, he published his now world-famous study, which provides indicators for good student performance on the basis of extensive empirical material. Since then, specialised scholars have been discussing it as a milestone in educational research. His theories have also met with broad public interest.
In his lecture, Hattie will present the study, for which he pooled and weighted findings from over 800 meta-analyses. The combined analyses are based on over 50,000 individual English-language studies with empirical data on 250 million pupils. From this, the educational researcher has extracted 138 factors that have varying degrees of influence on learning performance at school. He describes the factors in detail and categorises them into the areas of influence "learner", "home", "school", "curriculum", "teacher" and "teaching". From this, he formulates assessments of currently discussed educational issues such as "staying in school", "open forms of teaching", "homework" and "feedback".
Hattie's core message is that the success of learning processes at school primarily depends on the teachers. They need a broader understanding of the role of their academic appointment. It is important that they request feedback from pupils, evaluate their learning success and thus make learning "visible". "The message that Hattie derives from this for governments is clear," explains Zierer: "We need to invest in teacher training." Zierer is certain that Hattie's study will also have a lasting impact on the educational landscape in Germany in the coming years.