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This review has been accessed times since July 10, 2009
Nuthall, Graham (2007). The Hidden Lives of Learners. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research Press Pp. 174 ISBN 978-1-877398-7
Reviewed by Catherine Scott
Australian Council for Educational ResearchJuly 10, 2009
Graham Nuthall, eminent New Zealand education theorist, knew that he did not have long to live when he wrote an article reflecting on his long career as an educational researcher. In particular he reflected on the repeated experience of apparently discovering a variable that was significantly related to learning only to be unable later to replicate that finding. His experiences led him to note:
…. that classroom teaching is structured by ritualized routines supported by widely held myths about learning and ability that are acquired through our common experiences as students. These ritualized routines and supporting myths are sustained not only by everyone's common experience of schooling, but by teacher education practices, the ways we evaluate teachers' classroom performance, and many common types of educational research… . While ritualized routines are necessary to allow a teacher to manage the experiences of 20-30 students simultaneously, they also explain why individual student experience and learning remain largely invisible to teachers. (Nuthall, 2005, p. 895)In subsequent research Nuthall set out to reveal the "hidden life of learners" and to discover what students actually do in classrooms and how this affected what they learned—or didn't learn. The book under review, published posthumously, describes that research and its findings and reveals how little teachers—and everyone else—may know of that "hidden life." It is written with teachers and teacher educators in mind and is clear, accessible, and informative, and, for anyone who has spent time in classrooms, it is thoroughly engrossing.
To reveal what really happens in classrooms, Nuthall and his collaborators collected detailed observations and other data in New Zealand classrooms. In preparation for the research they asked teachers what topics they planned to teach and obtained information about the content of the target lessons. In the weeks up to and during the targeted lessons, a battery of video cameras filmed activity in the classroom, and all students and teachers wore lapel microphones. Only the researchers knew which students in each classroom were the actual participants in the research. The design of the data collection methods meant that extremely rich and detailed information could be collected about the target students' talk and activities during lessons.
Before the target lessons began, the participating students, who were drawn from across the academic attainment spectrum, were tested on their existing knowledge of the topic to be taught, how they knew the information, and from whence they had learned it. After the topic had been taught, the participants were tested on what they had learned. As a result of these investigations, Nuthall found that even in classrooms characterised by the "happy buzz" that apparently signals student engagement little learning might be taking place. There were a number of reasons for this. In part, it was because students typically already knew 40-50% of what the teacher expects them to learn from an activity. This pre-existing knowledge influenced what learning activities students selected or created for themselves, which in turn determined what they learned—or relearned—from classroom activities.
Graham Nuthall What any one student knows is likely to differ from what other students know—or think that they know. Interactions around these differing conceptions of the subject matter are profoundly affected by relations between students, so that the student, say, with the loudest voice or the highest peer group status may influence other students' learning. Certainly the transcripts of students' interactions reveal many or most of these to be the disputatious, with prominent use of commands and assertions and relatively little negotiation and exploratory talk.
If students lack the necessary background knowledge to understand the learning tasks they undertake or to check their own and peers' understanding, they are unlikely to extract the intended meaning and may instead "learn" a collection of misinformation gleaned from peers. This has led to the observation that students "get 80% of their feedback on learning from their peers and 80% of that is wrong."
The main conclusion that Nuthall reached as a result of his study is that there is a rule of three in learning: if a student is to learn a new idea, concept, or procedure then he or she should encounter it three times. "Encounter" means more than just being in the room while it is mentioned; it means being actively engaged with the information. By tracking how many times students in the study had shown this type of engagement, Nuthall was able to predict with accuracy rates of 80-85% what each student would learn .
Visible Learning
Busy teachers in classrooms with 20 or 30 students cannot monitor everything an individual student does or all the interactions among students engaged in group work. As a consequence, teachers can find it difficult to catch misunderstandings as they are formed or to offer timely feedback on individuals' success at learning tasks. As Nuthall once wrote:
The teacher is largely cut off from information about what individual students are learning. Teachers are forced to rely on secondary information such as the visible signs that students are motivated and interested. They are sustained, however, by the commonly held belief that if students are engaged most of the time in appropriate learning activities that some kind of learning will be taking place …. Teachers depend on the response of a small number of key students as indicators and remain ignorant of what most of the class knows and understands. (2005, pp. 919-920)Fellow New Zealand researcher John Hattie (2009) has described the importance of timely targeted feedback for student learning, which means accurate feedback, rather than the hit and miss information gleaned from peers. Feedback that helps a student to answer the important questions of "Where am I going?", "How am I going?", and "Where to next?" has powerful positive effects on student learning. Timeliness is crucial: it is important to correct misunderstandings when they happen, rather than at some time afterwards, as can occur.
Hattie has also discussed the benefits of "making learning visible," that is, uncovering the hidden life of the classroom learner. He has drawn attention to how these advantages are manifested in successful learning experiences that occur outside the classroom, for instance during programs of outdoor education. He observes that these programs are very effective in enhancing student learning because:
These experiences help problem solving skills and peer and cooperative learning, and there is an enhanced level of immediate feedback. A major reason for the success is the way the activities are structured to emphasise very challenging learning intentions, the success criteria are clear, the peer support optimised, and not only is feedback given throughout the program but it is actively sought by the participants. (Hattie, 2009, p. 157)New Developments: Dialogic Teaching
Many of the aspects of life in New Zealand classrooms that Nuthall's research reveals as problematic are also characteristic of schools in English-speaking countries generally. To see things more clearly, it is sometimes necessary to broaden the scope of inquiry so that contrasts and comparisons can work their powerful magic. Robin Alexander's Five Nation study (2000) conducted in primary classroom in the USA, England, France, Russia, and India provides just such a set of comparisons.
While many features of classroom life were common across the contexts surveyed, whole class teaching was used more often in Russia, France, and India. Teachers in the first two countries made considerable use of sophisticated whole class teaching techniques that Alexander has called "dialogic teaching." Philosophical objections to teacher-led whole class teaching and a preference for individualising instruction among the English-speaking teachers made use of similar techniques less common in English and American classrooms.
The realities of life in a classroom with 20-30 children make individual instruction extremely difficult and resorting to group work has been teachers" compromise. In addition, group work is regarded as providing a number benefits for children"s learning and social development. However, as Nuthall's research has demonstrated, resorting to group work often renders learning hidden, not to say problematic. When classes do come together for question and answer sessions, these are generally characterised by competitive bidding by students to answer mostly closed questions (or else by students carefully avoiding attention if they do not know the right answer).
In standard classroom Q&A sessions in English-speaking classrooms, answers are usually very brief —routinely of three words or fewer—and teachers only infrequently pick up and elaborate on these student responses. Instead they pass from one student to another in quick succession to ensure the maximum number have a speaking turn. Students neither have the opportunity to talk through ideas and concepts at length nor to witness others doing so. Instead they concentrate on adding only their own part to the overall puzzle, and frequently miss the big picture, not to mention the chance to engage with learning material on their way to tallying up the requisite three encounters.
As a result of these practices students in traditional classrooms in English-speaking countries spend a great deal of time waiting: for the teacher's assistance and feedback while doing seat work individually or in groups, or to be called upon to answer a question. Disengagement, sometimes followed by misbehaviour is the frequent result. Transcripts from Nuthall's book provide illustrations of this process in operation. In contrast, in French and Russian classrooms characterised as they are by teachers' skilful use of whole class teaching, "marking time" is an infrequent experience and the children remain engaged and well-behaved the large majority of the time.
Scaffolded dialogue, or dialogic teaching as it is widely known is very different from practices commonly seen in Anglophone classrooms, e.g., the classic question-and-answer sessions described above, characterised by students bidding to offer brief answers to closed, questions. In contrast, dialogic teaching is characterised by comparatively lengthy interactions between a teacher and a student or students in a context of collaboration and mutual support. These can occur in the context of whole class, group or one-on-one learning activities and are designed to help the child to build understanding, explore ideas and practise thinking through and expressing concepts. These interactions offer valuable opportunities for teachers to observe the learning "law of three" and provide all members of the class with the chance to encounter ideas and information the optimal three times.
Alexander (2005) describes dialogic teaching as:
… collective, supportive and genuinely reciprocal; it uses carefully-structured extended exchanges to build understanding through cumulation; and throughout, children's own words, ideas, speculations and arguments feature much more prominently.During these interactions teachers who practice dialogic methods deliberately model and explicitly teach strategies for reasoning, enquiry and negotiation, among others. These valuable skills can in their turn enable students to really get the maximum benefit group work in which they participate. For example, in this excerpt, from Mercer and Littleton (2007, pp. 124-125) a 5th grade teacher is leading a class discussion establishing the language and skills needed to work successfully in learning groups:
T. This time we are going to be sorting numbers. So that's our objective, sorting numbers.
[Teacher takes on role of child with a grumpy expression] I'm going to work with Donal and Alan today and in my group I've decided I'm going to sort the numbers by multiples of three, and I don't care what they think.
What's the matter, Maya?
M. You should, um, decide as a group.
T. Oh super. There's one of our ground rules already, "Decide as a group." OK, how am I going to do that? Because I want to sort my numbers by multiples of three. How am I going to make sure that we decide as a group?
K. Ask them what they think. Also, when you ask them what they think, don't turn your back on them because that is not positive body language.
T. You mentioned positive body language. What other type of language do we need to make sure is positive? Not just our body language . . .
C. The way we talk.
T. The way we talk! Am I going to say "I'm going to sort these in multiples of three!"?
C. No.
T. Maya, what would you say if you were in my situation?
M. Um, I want to sort them by multiples of three. What do you think about it?
. . .
T. OK, I am wandering around the classroom . . . I wonder what I might hear you saying [. . . ]
D. What do you think?
T. What do you think? Brilliant.
E. Why do you think that?
T. Why do you think that? That's another good one, not just what but why you think that. Brilliant.
Conclusion
Graham Nuthall's thought-provoking book presents the typical classroom as it really is, warts and all. It reveals that we are often mistaken when we think we know what is occurring in classrooms and how much is being learned, especially purely on the basis of the outward signs of student engagement. To truly discover what children have learned, we have to deliberately seek to find out, to uncover the "hidden life of the learner" and "make learning visible." Talking with children at length, individually, in groups or in a whole class context, can serve that purpose. It can afford valuable feedback on what has been learned or otherwise and offer opportunities to extend and build on learning.
References
Alexander, R. (2000) Culture and pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education Blackwell: Malden MA.
Alexander, R. (2005) Culture, dialogue and Learning: Notes on an emerging pedagogy Paper delivered at the conference of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology. University of Durham, UK, 10-14 July 2005. http://www.robinalexander.org.uk/docs/IACEP_paper_050612.pdf Retrieved March 10, 2009
Hattie, J. (2009) Visible learning. Routledge: London
Nuthall, G. (2005) The Cultural Myths and Realities of Classroom Teaching and Learning: A Personal Journey. Teachers College Record, 107 (5), 895-934. http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=11844
Mercer, N. & Littleton, K. (2007) Dialogue and the development of children"s thinking. Routledge: London.
About the ReviewerCatherine Scott has worked as a teacher in elementary and secondary schools and universities. She is currently employed as a senior research fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research.
Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.
Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman
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