A tricky book for a number of reasons... John Hattie has synthesized literally thousands of research studies to answer the basic fundamental question: What helps kids achieve in school? This book has attracted much attention in both school settings, the media and academia. While I appreciate the effort (this is a major achievement) I question some of the utility of this book for a couple of reasons. First, being an academic myself, I find that there is an oversimplification of the research. Case in point: Hattie's synthesized research shows that classroom ratio (number of kids/number of teachers in a classroom) is not an important issue to consider when one is interested in improving academic achievement in kids. I know a bit about this research and what it really says is this. If you have a classroom with 28 kids, reducing to 23 or 22 will not have a meaningful effect on kids' academic achievement. In this respect, Hattie gets this right. However, almost all research shows that when students are able to spend more quality time with a teacher in small groups (fewer than 8 or so) or individually, learning and achievement almost always increase in exponential ways. Not many studies address the importance of small groups and individual meetings with teachers and as such, this type of research is not represented. This is a problem of "over-synthesizing" the work that is done in academia.
Second, socially, it is difficult to appropriately understand the impact of schools and school practices on kids' learning without considering characteristics of kids and their families. The Hattie book does not consider whether results apply to grade school or high school (or other) kids. There is no consideration for how different factors play in achievement as a function of socioeconomic risk (which is where most of the academic problems are encountered) or for kids who experience challenges because of family issues, handicaps or disabilities. Many practices are implemented with specifically these kids in mind and overgeneralization of results from non applicable research may lead to faulty conclusions.
Third, those who study academic achievement are increasingly integrating the idea that family and child factors dominate the prediction of who will do well and who will have trouble in their journey through school. These factors have explicitly been ignored by Hattie.
I do not want to be overly harsh with Hattie. He has done everyone a great service in synthesizing results and getting a whole bunch of new conversations started with the results he has obtained. And he has done a masterful job of making the research accessible to non academic readers. However, the potential danger is one of deciding that the synthesis that is offered is a conclusion, rather than a starting point for discussion. There are only starting points in this book. No conclusions.
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