Visible Learning

At Aubin Grove our teaching and learning practices are underpinned by Visible Learning research.

Visible Learning is based on the work of Professor John Hattie (University of Melbourne) who, with his research team, have conducted over 1 000 meta analyses of 50 000 educational studies involving over 250 000 students worldwide to identify those instructional practices that work best.

Visible Learning is not another initiative to layer on top of other programs and priorities. It is a deliberate mindset that shifts our focus from what our teachers are teaching to what students are learning.

At Aubin Grove we are seeking to shift the focus from teaching to learning. By understanding how students learn best, and by knowing what qualities are evident in the most successful learners, we seek to ensure that our teaching practices (our pedagogy) support every student’s learning more effectively.

We know that there are many instructional practices and school initiatives that work. Hattie’s work though, tells us what works best! We then seek to implement what works best in our classrooms and across the entire school.

Visible Learning occurs when teachers see learning through the eyes of their students and help them to become their own teachers, or as we like to call them, assessment capable learners.

After careful consideration of Hattie’s effect sizes, and reflection of our own pedagogies at Aubin Grove, we have committed to supporting all students to become assessment capable learners. We do this by ensuring:

• Every lesson begins with a visible, clearly stated Learning Intention (LI) and Success Criteria (SC) that make the objective of the lesson, and what the students need to do to achieve it, explicit and clear to the children and their teacher.
• Students seek and act upon feedback provided by the teacher that is directly linked to the LI and SC.
• Each lesson contains a plenary that “ties up” the lesson by referencing the LI and SC. The plenary concludes each lesson but can also be a mid-lesson plenary to redirect students to the LI and SC.
• Students and teacher negotiate learning goals that are short to mid-term in length and which the students own. Each student’s goals are clearly visible to them and the student decides when to approach the teacher to demonstrate their achievement of their goal. Once agreed, the next goal is negotiated.
• We teach and model the importance of a growth mindset that enables our students to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and not reasons to give up.

Figure 1

Our goal is to support every one of our students to become visible learners. In order to do this we have developed the Aubin Grove Learner Qualities. These qualities drive our pedagogy and are explicitly taught to students. Teachers have adapted their pedagogy to ensure that the way they teach supports students to acquire these qualities.

We support our teachers to achieve this successfully by appointing and training key personnel to take on the role of Visible Learning Impact Coaches.
Our VL Impact Coaches, model, demonstrate, observe, provide targeted feedback, develop resources and facilitate professional learning at the individual, small group and whole staff.

Visible Learning research asks the question: What impacts student learning the most?

Our purpose is to ensure that every student is a successful learner and by knowing what impacts learning the most we are well placed to achieve our purpose.